NAACP to dedicate grave markers for buried Black residents at Oak Hill cemetery

The Lawrence NAACP will restore names to Oak Hill Cemetery’s potter’s field with 30 newly installed granite grave markers, a public act of remembrance that also confronts Lawrence’s racial terror history. The dedication is set for 7 p.m. June 10 at the cemetery’s potter’s field, 1605 Oak Hill Ave., and the public is invited.

The markers honor 31 members of Lawrence’s African American community who died between 1871 and 1917 and were buried in ground that long held few visible signs of who was there. Before the project was completed, the NAACP said fewer than 10 markers identified the resting places of more than 1,000 people buried in the section. The work was partially funded by a $10,000 grant from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council in 2025.

The timing gives the ceremony added weight. June 10 marks the 144th anniversary of the June 10, 1882 lynching of Isaac King, George Robertson and Peter Vinegar. Historical marker text says a mob of at least 100 white men killed the three men after they intervened when they found a white man sexually assaulting Peter Vinegar’s 14-year-old daughter, Margaret. Her name is engraved on a marker placed with her father’s marker, even though her body was lost, a detail that extends the memorial beyond the men who were killed and toward the family the violence shattered.

The commemoration also places the legal and civic failures of the era in plain view. Historical sources identify Margaret Vinegar, also called Sis Vinegar, as a central figure in the story, and say she later died of tuberculosis after being imprisoned. The marker project turns that history into something visible at Oak Hill, where burial records and cemetery mapping now help make long-neglected graves easier to find.

That digital access is part of the reason this work could advance now. The City of Lawrence cemetery website launched in March 2025 and made more than 1,000 Oak Hill Potter’s Field burials searchable for the first time, giving researchers and descendants a clearer path to identify graves. The current effort also follows related Oak Hill preservation work in 2022, when a separate project was funded by a $13,000 Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council grant and a $10,000 Humanities Kansas grant. Together, those efforts show Douglas County moving to repair a record of neglect with names, markers and public accountability.