SAME SOIL SEGREGATED SOULS: The Story of Two Cemeteries in One Place in Plano, Texas. They are buried only yards apart, yet their treatment made a world of difference.
DIGGING FOR DIGNITY PROUDLY PRESENTS
SAME SOIL SEGREGATED SOULS: The Story of Two Cemeteries in One Place in Plano, Texas. They are buried only yards apart, yet their treatment made a world of difference.
By the Digging for Dignity Legacy Project
Link: https://youtu.be/CbcCBV_WMPY?is=b3nPWFcK3whYsDZp
PLANO, TEXAS — Behind a beautiful black fence in Plano’s historic Douglass Community rests a history too important to overlook, too painful to ignore and too powerful to forget.
Walk toward the northern entrance and a stately black sign announces:
OLD CITY CEMETERY
1848
Continue a short distance south and another sign appears:
DAVIS CEMETERY
1945
Only a few yards separate the two entrances.
The people buried beyond them rest beneath the same Texas sky and within the soil of the same growing city. They endured droughts and depressions, plowed fields, raised families, established churches, built businesses and answered the call of military service.
Yet the histories represented by those two entrances are worlds apart.
Old City Cemetery recalls some of Plano’s earliest European American settlers—Peters Colony pioneers, farmers, church members, community leaders and military veterans.
L.A. Davis Cemetery stands as a testament to a Black community that survived slavery, Reconstruction, racial intimidation, Jim Crow segregation and generations of restricted opportunity.
Together, these two cemeteries form one of Plano’s most revealing historical landscapes—a place where Black history and white history rest side by side.
It is peaceful ground.
But it is not silent ground.
Every grave has something to say.
Before There Was a Plano
The land occupied by Old City Cemetery reaches back to the earliest period of Anglo settlement in North Texas.
Joseph K. Klepper came to Collin County from Illinois during the 1840s as part of the Peters Colony settlement effort. After receiving a Republic of Texas land grant, Klepper designated a portion of his property as a burial ground before 1848.
The cemetery predates Plano’s incorporation by approximately 25 years.
Klepper and his wife, Nancy, later deeded property adjacent to the cemetery to the Methodist Episcopal Church. Considered Plano’s earliest Methodist congregation, the church worshipped there from 1874 until 1894.
Five Peters Colony settlers, members of their families and other early residents were eventually buried on the grounds.
Although the land was designated as a cemetery before 1848, the earliest death date found on a surviving gravestone is 1881. Approximately 200 burials are believed to remain there. The burial sites include professionally carved marble and granite monuments, homemade markers and rows of depressions where no visible headstones survive.
The cemetery’s historical record also documents military burials, including veterans of the Civil War and World War I.
These were people who cleared land, planted crops, raised families, established churches and helped transform a frontier settlement into a town.
But they did not do that work alone.
Plano’s Other Pioneers
Plano was also built by people whose names were seldom engraved on public buildings, printed in history books or placed on street signs.
Black men and women plowed Collin County’s fields, harvested its cotton, constructed its homes, cared for its children, worked along its railroads, established churches, opened businesses and served the community—first while enslaved and later under laws designed to restrict their freedom.
They were pioneers, too.
Following the Civil War, formerly enslaved families began establishing a community near what is now downtown Plano. Andy Drake and Mose Stimpson are remembered as founders of the neighborhood that became known as the Douglass Community, named in honor of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Andy Drake, who died in 1934, is identified on the Old City Cemetery historical marker as the first free African American to reside in Plano. He is buried in the cemetery that began on Klepper’s land.
That fact reveals the complexity of this sacred place.
Old City Cemetery was not exclusively white throughout its history. After the Methodist church relocated and the surrounding area developed into an African American neighborhood, Black families began using the cemetery during the 1920s.
But even within the cemetery, race influenced the placement of the dead.
Historical documentation identifies older European American graves in the northeastern portion and later African American burials in the northwestern and southern sections.
The invisible boundaries of segregation extended beyond schools, restaurants, businesses and neighborhoods.
They reached into the graveyard.
Separate Was Never Equal
For generations, the words “separate but equal” were used to defend racial segregation in America.
But separate was never equal.
Black residents of Plano faced restricted access to schools, businesses, housing, public accommodations and property ownership. The Douglass Community therefore developed its own churches, stores, gathering places, funeral services and community institutions.
Descendants remember Douglass as a self-sustaining, front-porch community where neighbors watched over one another, families shared what they had and every adult accepted responsibility for the neighborhood’s children.
That self-reliance was beautiful.
But it was also necessary.
Black residents were forced to create “their own everything” because segregation prevented them from participating fully in the larger city.
Out of those conditions emerged Lee Andrew Davis.
The Dignity L.A. Davis Purchased | Link: https://youtu.be/kCtD9XFNtP8?feature=shared
In 1910, L.A. Davis arrived in Plano from South Texas and found work as a sharecropper.
Sharecropping was physically demanding labor that often trapped Black workers and their families in cycles of debt and dependency. But Davis refused to allow the conditions surrounding him to determine the limits of his life.
He became a businessman, community leader and investor in stocks and real estate.
At a time when racial discrimination made it extremely difficult for African Americans to purchase property, Davis accumulated enough financial strength to acquire a large section of land in the Douglass Community. He then sold individual lots to other Black families, helping them secure property and establish homes of their own.
In 1945, Davis purchased another tract of land and established L.A. Davis Cemetery as a burial ground for African Americans in the Douglass Community.
He did not simply purchase cemetery property.
He purchased dignity.
He created a sacred place where Black families could bury their loved ones when racial customs and institutional barriers limited their choices.
Davis Cemetery was born from Black enterprise, community responsibility and resistance to Jim Crow. It became a place where Black citizens—people who helped build Plano but were not always treated as full participants in its progress—could be laid to rest by their families and community.
L.A. Davis began his Plano journey behind a plow.
He completed it as a landowner, businessman and builder of Black community power.
His cemetery remains a monument to what Black determination could accomplish under almost unbelievable conditions.
Two Headstones, Two Americas
Among the most powerful witnesses to this divided history are two military headstones.
One belongs to Fred L. Adams, a white soldier who served as a private in the 9th Alabama Infantry of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War.
The other belongs to Wesley McDonald, a Black soldier who served the United States during World War I in a military organized and operated under racial segregation.
Their headstones stand as stone witnesses to two different wars, two different military systems and two very different experiences of America.
Adams served the Confederacy during a Civil War inseparably connected to slavery and the future of the Union.
More than half a century later, McDonald served the United States in World War I. He wore the uniform of a nation that called Black men to defend democracy abroad while denying them equality at home. Like thousands of other African American servicemen, he served in a segregated formation because the military judged soldiers by race before evaluating their service.
These two graves should not be forced into a false equivalence. Their causes, circumstances and experiences were not the same.
That is precisely why they matter.
Their headstones reveal the long reach of America’s racial order.
Fred L. Adams entered military service as a white man in an army fighting for the Confederacy.
Wesley McDonald entered military service as a Black man in a United States Army that separated its own soldiers by color.
Adams lived during slavery and the Civil War.
McDonald served decades after emancipation, yet still confronted a system in which freedom did not guarantee equality.
One served in the 19th century.
The other served in the 20th.
But race shaped the America surrounding them both.
Their headstones demonstrate that separation did not begin at the cemetery gate. It followed people through the city, through society and into military service.
They lived in separate social worlds.
They served in separate military realities.
They were ultimately buried within a landscape still divided by race.
The distance between their graves may be measured in yards.
The distance between their experiences must be measured in generations of unequal treatment.
They Served, but They Were Not Treated the Same
Across this historic burial landscape rest other people who answered the call to military service.
They fought in wars, endured hardship and wore military uniforms. Some served during periods when the armed forces were segregated by law, policy and custom.
Black soldiers risked their lives for freedoms they could not fully exercise when they returned home.
White veterans often returned to a country prepared to honor their service and expand their opportunities.
Black veterans frequently returned to segregated schools, restricted neighborhoods, discriminatory employment and public accommodations that continued to treat them as second-class citizens.
They could carry the American flag into battle.
They could defend the Constitution.
They could shed the same red blood on foreign soil.
But they could not always eat at the same lunch counters, attend the same schools, purchase homes in the same neighborhoods or be buried in the same sections of a cemetery.
For Black servicemen such as Wesley McDonald, segregation did not end when the uniform came off.
It followed them from the barracks to the battlefield, from the battlefield back to the city and from the city to the cemetery.
The sacrifices represented across these burial grounds are immeasurable.
But the treatment of those sacrifices was not equal.
The Graves We Could Not See
Time and neglect eventually placed both cemeteries at risk.
Headstones weathered. Markers leaned or sank. Biological growth covered inscriptions. Some burial places were identified only by depressions in the soil. Others appeared to have disappeared entirely from the visible landscape.
In 2016, the Plano Conservancy for Historic Preservation, with support from the City of Plano Heritage Commission, began restoration work at Davis Cemetery. Headstones were cleaned, repaired and carefully leveled.
Additional research revealed that the number of documented burials exceeded the number of visible graves. Ground-penetrating radar investigations subsequently identified an estimated 29 possible unmarked graves across the two cemeteries.
Those discoveries carried a profound message:
A missing headstone does not mean a missing life.
An unmarked grave does not represent an unimportant person.
Historical silence does not erase human significance.
The people buried here had names.
They had families.
They experienced love, faith, struggle, disappointment, laughter and triumph.
Their labor helped build Plano, even when Plano did not always recognize their humanity equally.
Two Histories, One American Story
In 2026, the United States observes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
It is a moment for celebration.
But it must also be a moment for truth.
America’s complete story cannot be told by recognizing only those who possessed freedom while ignoring those who were forced to fight for it.
Plano’s history cannot be told solely through the lives of its white pioneers. Neither can it be understood without honoring the Black pioneers whose labor, land, faith, military service and perseverance also built the city.
Old City Cemetery and Davis Cemetery invite us to confront both histories.
On one side rest people who arrived through settlement programs, received land and helped establish early civic and religious institutions.
Nearby rests a community descended from people who endured enslavement and then built homes, churches, businesses and institutions under Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
Some inherited opportunity.
Others created opportunity where almost none existed.
Some had their histories carved deeply into marble and granite.
Others rest beneath soil where no marker remains.
Some entered through one gate.
Others were directed toward another.
But all of them are part of Plano.
The Museum That Keeps the Voices Alive. Link: https://youtu.be/zTmS8SsEYdw?is=ZIbZuhRC-dPJVyT4
A short distance from these sacred grounds, the Plano African American Museum preserves the history, resilience and contributions of the people whose stories were too often excluded from traditional accounts of Plano’s development.
Established in 2002 by local community leaders and reopened in June 2023, the museum stands within the historic Douglass Community—the neighborhood created and sustained by generations of Black families during segregation.
The museum gives voice to the history represented by the graves.
Through permanent and rotating exhibitions, guided tours, educational programs and community events, it introduces visitors to North Texas civil rights history and the local pioneers, trailblazers and community builders who turned oppression into opportunity. Link: https://www.nbcdfw.com/video/texas-today/visit-the-plano-african-american-museum/3977069/
The cemetery preserves where the people rest.
The museum preserves how they lived.
The cemetery safeguards their names.
The museum shares their voices.
Together, Old City Cemetery, Davis Cemetery, the Douglass Community and the Plano African American Museum form a living classroom. They allow residents and visitors to encounter the complete history of Plano—not as unrelated Black and white stories, but as intertwined chapters of one American experience.
A Peaceful Place in Plano
Today, one beautiful black fence embraces this historic landscape.
There are still two entrances.
There are still two cemetery names.
There are still two dates that tell very different stories: 1848 and 1945.
And there are two military headstones that expose the lasting consequences of that divided history.
Fred L. Adams and Wesley McDonald served in different wars, under different flags and within different military realities. Their graves remind us that segregation was not confined to one building, one neighborhood or one generation.
It was embedded in society.
It was enforced in the city.
It was practiced in the military.
It was carried into the cemetery.
Those distinctions should not be erased.
They should be explained.
The purpose is not to rewrite history by pretending there were no differences. The purpose is to tell the complete truth about why those differences existed—and then to honor every person buried there with equal dignity.
Old City Cemetery and Davis Cemetery should become more than places where people are buried.
Together, they can become an outdoor classroom, a memorial to all of Plano’s pioneers and a sacred place of reconciliation where residents can learn how Black history and white history intersect.
Schoolchildren should walk these grounds.
Veterans should be honored here.
Descendants of both communities should be invited to share their family stories.
Every marked and unmarked grave should be identified, documented, protected and remembered.
The people buried here fought in wars.
They plowed the fields.
They built churches, businesses, homes and families.
They helped build a city under circumstances ranging from difficult to nearly unimaginable.
In life, laws and customs separated them.
In military service, racial systems defined their experiences.
In death, cemetery boundaries continued that separation.
But segregation could divide their graves without diminishing their humanity. It could separate the ground without determining the worth of the souls entrusted to it.
Now, beneath the open Texas sky, they share something no ordinance, racial custom or cemetery boundary can take away:
They are part of the same history.
They belong to the same city.
They rest side by side in a peaceful place in Plano.
Two headstones.
Two soldiers.
Two different Americas.
Same grounds.
Segregated souls.
Two entrances.
One American story.
They were buried only yards apart.
Their treatment made a world of difference.
Telling their complete story can help bring a community—and a country—together.
Plano African American Museum
900 13th Street, Plano, Texas 75074.
Telephone: 469-863-7226
Website: https://planoafricanamericanmuseum.org/
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