City of Lubbock Cemetery
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In March 1892, a delegation of Lubbock residents requested five acres of pasture land from rancher H.M. Bandy for use as a cemetery. That same month, they held the first burial, that of a Cochran County cowboy, Henry Jenkins, who died of pneumonia while staying at a local hotel. The first Lubbock resident buried at the city cemetery was Joseph R. Coleman, who died in June 1892. His small cross-shaped headstone, no longer in existence, was the first erected in the cemetery. The cemetery has held as many as four separate burial grounds, segregated by race, faith and economic level. Records indicate various and distinct cemetery associations maintained these burial grounds throughout the 20th century. One such group, Los Socios del Sementerio, or Associates of the Cemetery, provided for the burial of area migrant workers. The cemetery was integrated in the late 1960s. With more than 60,000 graves, the City of Lubbock Cemetery is one of the largest in Texas. Burials here represent a broad cross-section of the city's history. Among those interred here is the noted rock and roll musician and songwriter Charles Hardin Holley (Buddy Holly). Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In March 1892 Lubbock residents secured five acres of pasture for a cemetery, holding their first burial that same month for a cowboy who died of pneumonia. For much of the 20th century the grounds were divided into separate burial areas segregated by race, faith, and economic standing, with groups like Los Socios del Sementerio providing for migrant workers before integration came in the late 1960s. Now holding more than 60,000 graves—among them rock-and-roll pioneer Buddy Holly—it is one of Texas's largest cemeteries.
Why it matters
Its once-segregated grounds, later integrated, trace in miniature the racial history of an American city, while the grave of Buddy Holly links a windswept plains town to the birth of rock and roll.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1892 Lubbock was barely a town. Ranching had only recently taken over the South Plains, after the great buffalo herds had been destroyed and the Comanche had been forced off the land in the 1870s. Big cattle outfits now ran across a vast, treeless grassland, and Lubbock was just getting organized as a county seat. It was a small settlement in an enormous landscape, far from any railroad.
The frontier was still close in those early years. Cowboys moved between distant ranches and came into town for supplies and lodging. Getting sick far from family was a real danger. A community that hoped to last needed the basics: a courthouse, churches, schools, and a place to bury its dead.
Over the following century Lubbock grew from that outpost into a major West Texas city, the center of a huge cotton-growing region and home to a university. Its cemetery grew with it, and it recorded both the city's growth and the divisions that ran through it.
People & events
The cemetery began with a request. In March 1892 a group of Lubbock residents asked rancher H. M. Bandy for five acres of his pasture to use as a burying ground. They needed it almost immediately. That same month they held the first burial, for Henry Jenkins, a cowboy from Cochran County who had caught pneumonia and died while staying at a local hotel. The town's cemetery began with the death of a working man far from home.
The first actual Lubbock resident buried here was Joseph R. Coleman, who died in June 1892. His small cross-shaped headstone was the first one set in the cemetery. It no longer exists, but it was the first of many.
As the city grew, the cemetery reflected its divisions. At different times it contained as many as four separate burial grounds, segregated by race, religion, and economic status. Separate associations looked after different sections through the twentieth century. One of them, Los Socios del Sementerio, or the Associates of the Cemetery, made sure that migrant workers, many of whom came to work the region's cotton fields, could be buried with dignity. The divisions ended when the cemetery was integrated in the late 1960s.
The cemetery's best-known grave belongs to Charles Hardin Holley, the world's Buddy Holly. Born in Lubbock, he helped shape early rock and roll with songs like "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue." He died in a plane crash in Iowa in February 1959, at just twenty-two, along with fellow performers Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. He was brought home to Lubbock to be buried.
Its place in the American story
Many American cities have a cemetery like this one, and that is why it matters. Segregation in the United States reached even burial: whole communities were kept apart by race and class after death. The separate sections here, and their integration in the late 1960s, follow the same national arc as the civil rights era, when legal segregation was being taken apart in schools, lunch counters, and public spaces across the country.
The work of Los Socios del Sementerio points to another part of the story: the Mexican American and migrant workers whose labor built the agricultural economy of the Southwest, often for little recognition. Making sure those workers had a proper burial was a quiet act of community care and dignity.
Then there is Buddy Holly. His music, recorded in a short burst of a few years, influenced a generation of rock musicians on both sides of the Atlantic. His early death became one of the most remembered tragedies in American popular music. That a West Texas plains town produced him, and that he chose to rest here, is a reminder that American culture is often made in unexpected places.
If you visit
The City of Lubbock Cemetery is large, with more than 60,000 graves, so allow time to explore. It is an active municipal cemetery, and many visitors come to grieve, so be respectful as you walk. The grounds show more than a century of change, from older sections with weathered stones to newer burials.
Most visitors come for Buddy Holly. His grave is modest, and the stone uses the family's original spelling of the surname. Fans often leave small tributes, and guitar picks are a familiar sight. Take a moment there, but also look at the rest of the cemetery: the cowboys, the founders, the migrant families, and the ordinary townspeople whose graves together tell the city's story.
The cemetery pairs well with a broader Lubbock visit, especially for music lovers, since the city celebrates Holly in other places too. If you are crossing the South Plains, stop here to see how a cattle town on an open grassland grew into a city, and how its dead record both its divisions and its pride.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Charles Hardin Holley (Buddy Holly)
- · Henry Jenkins
- · Joseph R. Coleman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mary & Mac Private School
Lubbock, TX
In 1954, educator Lucille Graves founded Mary & Mac Private School in Lubbock as a preschool for African American children, at a time when private schools for Black students were exceedingly rare. Named for a version of the hand-clapping rhyme 'Mary Mack,' the school began in a Baptist church auditorium, grew into its own building by 1961, and eventually offered classes through high school for as many as 120 students. Graves — the first African American accepted at Texas Tech — ran the school with her family until it closed in 1993, shortly after her death.
Hockley County Cemetery
Levelland, TX
When the Santa Fe railroad reached Hockley County in 1925, the population exploded and drew many minority laborers to work the land in an era of strict segregation. In 1927 the county set aside two acres for a segregated cemetery for indigent and minority residents; the first recorded burial, in 1930, was of Jerry McHenry, an African American man. Little used after Levelland's cemetery was desegregated in the 1960s, it holds fourteen marked graves and over 100 unmarked burials.
Willie Lusk Jr.
Lubbock, TX
Willie Lusk Jr. started shining shoes at twelve and apprenticed under a Czech bootmaker for a dollar a day before rising to foreman over 22 bootmakers in Lubbock. When a Dallas gambler asked why such a skilled craftsman had no shop of his own, he loaned Lusk the money — a rare chance for a Black business owner in 1946. Lusk's handcrafted boots, marked by a distinctive flame stitch and wooden-pegged soles rather than any logo, were sought by actors, musicians, and cowboys worldwide.
Mount Gilead Baptist Church
Lubbock, TX
Organized in October 1917 by the Rev. A. Wilson, this congregation nearly dissolved in its first years until a strong 1919 cotton harvest drew new families to Lubbock and swelled its membership. Believed to be Lubbock's oldest Black congregation, Mount Gilead became a host for the West Texas Association of Baptist Churches and a longtime center of music and evangelism. It has held a place of community leadership for over a century.