In celebration of Black History Month: The Ridge area includes one of Chicagoland’s most historic African American cemeteries, Lincoln Cemetery at 12300 S. Kedzie Avenue.
By the early 1900s, the growing population and the encroachment of segregationist ‘Jim Crow’ laws from the South had made it increasingly difficult for blacks to find burial plots in white cemeteries. So as many ethnic groups were doing, African Americans established their own cemeteries. In 1911, a group of black undertakers approached the owners of Oak Hill Cemetery on Kedzie Avenue, established in 1902 for Swedish families, to ask if some of their unused land could be opened to African Americans. The request was agreed to and Lincoln Cemetery was founded.
This is the final resting place for notable musicians and other personalities associated with blues music, including Big Bill Broonzy, Mathis James ‘Jimmy’ Reed, Jack L. Cooper, Lillian ‘Lil’ Hardin Armstrong, and several others.
A number of men connected to the Negro Baseball Leagues are buried there.
Bessie Coleman (1892-1926), the first woman of African-American descent and the first woman of Native American descent to earn a pilot’s license, is buried there. She was a successful air show pilot but died in a crash while testing a new plane.
Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1870 – 1940), lawyer and newspaper publisher, is buried there. He founded The Chicago Defender in 1905 and started the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic in 1929.
The most famous person buried in Lincoln Cemetery is the poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000). She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985. Her tombstone is a marble book.
Pictures: Gwendolyn Brooks, and the grave of Ms. Brooks; Big Bill Broonzy, Bessie Coleman, Robert S. Abbott.