Olivewood Cemetery
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery served the early African-American community in Houston for approximately 100 years. The Olivewood Cemetery Association incorporated in 1875 and purchased 5.5 acres of this property that same year from Elizabeth Morin Slocomb. The organization bought two adjacent acres in 1917. Also known in its early years as Olive Wood, Hollow Wood and Hollywood, it is one of the oldest known platted cemeteries in the city. The original 444 family plots comprising over 5,000 burial spaces were laid out along an elliptical drive. The burial ground contains several hundred marked graves, in addition to an unknown number of unmarked graves. Interred here are pivotal leaders of Houston’s post-emancipation African-American community, including the pastor of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, the Rev. Elias Dibble; businessman James B. Bell; Alderman and landowner Richard Brock; attorney J. Vance Lewis; educator James D. Ryan; physician Russell F. Ferrill; and dentist Milton A. Baker. Also buried here are ex-slaves, laborers, sororal and fraternal organization members, and military veterans. This cemetery features obelisks, statuary, curbing and interior fencing. The burial ground also includes examples of pre-emancipation burial practices, including upright pipes (symbolizing the path between the worlds of the living and the dead), ocean shells as grave ornaments and text containing upside down or backwards letters (as used in some West African cultures to signify death). Today, Olivewood Cemetery remains as a key historical site in Houston, serving as a testament to the foresight and perseverance of the cemetery founders. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1875 when the Olivewood Cemetery Association bought 5.5 acres from Elizabeth Morin Slocomb, this was one of Houston's first platted cemeteries and served the city's African-American community for roughly a century. Laid out along an elliptical drive with over 5,000 burial spaces, it became the resting place of post-emancipation Black leaders — pastors, an alderman, an attorney, a physician, a dentist — alongside laborers, veterans, and formerly enslaved people. Its grounds preserve West African-rooted burial customs such as upright pipes marking the passage between worlds and ocean-shell grave ornaments.
Why it matters
Olivewood stands as physical testimony to a self-organized Black community claiming permanence and dignity in the generation after slavery, and to the survival of African spiritual traditions in American soil.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Rev. Elias Dibble
- · Richard Brock
- · J. Vance Lewis
- · Russell F. Ferrill
Related events
- · Emancipation in Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
J. Vance Lewis
Houston, TX
Born enslaved in Louisiana around 1863, J. Vance Lewis rose through teaching and a Chicago law degree to become, by 1904, one of only a handful of Black attorneys admitted to the Texas Bar. Settling in Houston's Freedmen's Town, he built the home he called Van Court in 1907, published his autobiography, and moved his law office here. Beyond the courtroom he funded a Black-owned bank, joined the Colored Commercial Club, and championed education and equal rights across the nation.
New Zion Temple Church - Worldwide Fellowship, Inc.
Houston, TX
New Zion Temple began in 1933 as 'The Little Church on Ruthven Street,' a storefront Church of God in Christ congregation that Bishop Hayward W. Falls built from donated supplies in Houston's Freedmen's Town. Falls later led it out of the denomination to become nondenominational and made it the headquarters of the Worldwide Fellowship, from which affiliated churches spread across several states and abroad.
College Memorial Park Cemetery
Houston, TX
Founded in 1896, College Memorial Park is among Houston's three oldest African American cemeteries, taking its name from the nearby Houston College and serving the freedmen's town that grew in the Fourth Ward after the Civil War. Here rest many of the community's founders—including the Rev. Jack Yates, who championed Black property ownership and was reinterred here from Olivewood—along with educators, veterans of both world wars, and participants in the 1917 Houston riot. Neglect and vandalism scarred the grounds before late-century efforts revived it as a site of heritage.
Rutherford B. H. Yates, Sr., House
Houston, TX
Built in 1912 in Houston's Fourth Ward — the district known as Freedmen's Town, a hub of Black spiritual, cultural, and commercial life since the Civil War — this house belonged to Rutherford B. H. Yates, son of the pioneering Rev. Jack Yates. A trained printer and teacher, Yates co-founded the Yates Printing Company in 1922 and taught at the Houston Academy his father had established. With few hotels open to African Americans, the Yates family regularly hosted visiting dignitaries and convention delegates in this home.