Lakeport African American Cemeteries

The African American cemeteries at Lakeport -- Old Lakeport Cemetery, Lakeport Cemetery, and Morning Star Missionary Baptist Cemeter -- represent the enslaved and freed laborers living on the Mississippi River plantations of Lakeport, Ford and Redleaf dating as far back as the 1890s.  The graveyards and grave decorations offer a unique glimpse of traditional African burial rituals and traditions and have been maintained by the ancestors of those interred for some 130 years.  Each of the Lakeport cemeteries tells a distinctive story and records family history and genealogy dating from slavery to the present.  Archeological work and preservation of grave markers continues at the three sites.