Lawrence’s NAACP chapter will reclaim the stories of more than 30 Black people who were buried in unmarked graves in Oak Hill Cemetery, including three men that a mob lynched in 1882, with new granite headstones and a digital biography archive.

The project bubbled up when City of Lawrence employees discovered a cemetery plot chart that roughly outlined where folks were buried in Potter’s Field, situated in the northeast corner of Oak Hill, in February 2021. 

Like many such burial grounds sprinkled throughout the United States, Potter’s Field in Oak Hill was where unknown or poor folks were buried. The plot was used between 1866 and 1917 and was not segregated by race.

Blair Schneider, an associate researcher and science outreach manager with the Kansas Geological Survey, started on a geophysical survey of the field in July 2021. Thanks to her work, the suspected outer limits of Potter’s Field are now marked with four granite markers.

Kerry Altenbernd, the chair of the Community Coordination and History Committee within the Lawrence, Kansas Branch of the NAACP, said there are likely more than 1,000 people who were buried on top of one another in the puny patch of land.

“Families especially, like a mother with a bunch of children, are all buried in the same grave,” Altenbernd said. “And 30 centimeters is maybe the average depth of the burials. I’m saying centimeters, not feet, not inches.”

Altenbernd and Ursula Minor, the branch president of the local NAACP, look forward to granting these folks the recognition and dignity they were denied upon their deaths.

In a matter of months, if not weeks, their collaborators will have installed 30 headstones with 31 names, plus years of birth and death, over the graves. A corresponding digital archive will share those people’s biographies, written by KU professor emerita and historian Jeanne Klein.

Lynching victims located

Altenbernd and Minor joined forces years ago through a mutual drive to recognize the three Black men who had been murdered by a white mob atop the Kansas River bridge on June 10, 1882.

Early that morning, Isaac King, George Robertson and Peter Vinegar were dragged from the Douglas County Jail to the middle of the Kansas River Bridge and hanged over its side by an angry mob of more than 100 white men. No members of the lynch mob were ever charged or faced any legal consequences for the murders.

The men were killed for defending Margaret “Sis” Vinegar, Peter’s 14-year-old daughter, who was raped by a white man. She, too, was arrested and almost killed by a mob that ultimately voted against her lynching by a margin of one. She remained in prison until she died of tuberculosis at 20 years old.

The Lawrence community held a marker dedication for King, Robertson and Peter near Lawrence City Hall in 2022. A twin dedication ceremony saw a marker placed near Eighth and Kentucky streets for Margaret a year later.

Minor, remembering the men’s marker dedication, said just about everyone cried.

“It was nice to give them something they couldn’t have, and send them off that way,” she said. “And then, later on, here we are. We found the bodies. And that’s what affects me the most is we actually know they’re here.”

Altenbernd and Minor have cobbled together three grants to buy the granite markers through Douglas County Monument Works. King, Robertson and Peter will finally have their names engraved in stone, alongside other community members.

One headstone will be a cenotaph for Margaret, whose body hasn’t been located. 

“As far as we know, she’s … lost,” Altenbernd said. “And we figured, rather than have her completely lost forever, we’re going to put her marker” on the same plot with her father, Peter.

Family stories, city histories

Klein spoke about the people from the bios she wrote as if they were old friends.

She selected many of the folks whose names will appear on the headstones, aiming to include a cross-section of Black experiences of the time. After combing through years of newspapers and historical records to write their bios, she had memorized their names, professions, children, friends, accomplishments and passions.

She selected Joshua Jackson, a teenager who died swimming in the Kaw River, to represent the many children and teens who met the same fate. She narrated the stories of folks on the roster, including Elias Bradley, an early settler, barber and Mason; Judy Shepherd/Shepard, who underwent surgery for breast cancer but died due to the illness; Randolph Morgan, a Civil War veteran; Harry Reeves, a teamster; and on.

The story of Edward P. Washington particularly struck Klein, Minor and Altenbernd. Lawrence Mayor Justin DeWitt Bowersock personally sent Washington to a smallpox island the city marooned in the Kaw River when the epidemic hit.

“And this is the year after the lynching, so you can see that there was still a lot of attitude then,” Altenbernd said. “And he died out there.”

Stories like Washington’s don’t surprise Minor anymore.

“(I) wasn’t shocked, because I grew up hearing it with things my family was telling me. I was appalled,” she said. “That’s how, really, I got attached with the NAACP, was listening to my family tell stories.”

Minor’s family has roots in town stretching back to the 1800s. Her father described moments from his childhood when Lawrence Klu Klux Klan members would walk by his porch and nod at him. He joined the military, and when he and his buddies came back to visit, his white peers left him standing outside a downtown restaurant while they went inside to eat.

“I love Lawrence, I do,” Minor said. “But Lawrence had a very shaky past that a lot of people don’t want to deal with or act like it even happened.”

Minor said that when she and Altenbernd first presented the ideas for a lynching memorial throughout the community, some folks were shocked the murders occurred. Some refused to believe it.

“People are going to say, ‘Well, you’re just wanting to bring up the bad part of Lawrence,’” Altenbernd said. “But it’s important to balance out the perhaps rosy attitude of Lawrence, because if you don’t understand your history, you’re going to experience it again, like we are now.”

A community dedication

The team plans to host the official memorial dedication June 10 during the annual commemoration of the lynching. 

It’s proven tricky to place any grave marker with 100% certainty. The chart dug up by city employees is deceptively bare, not to scale and often contradicts Schneider’s geophysical survey.

However, Altenbernd’s NAACP committee recently signed off on a final headstone map with City Surveyor Jeff Kubota, representing their best attempts at placement.

According to Altenbernd, once Kubota is able to physically mark the field per the approved map, a contractor of Douglas County Monument Works will pour concrete bases and place each headstone. Altenbernd and Minor suspect work will wrap in the next couple of months, if not the next few weeks.

Minor is also still working to set up a home for the digital archive and hopes to install signs with QR codes in the field.

“The important thing is (the people buried in Potter’s Field) will be recognized as having been citizens of Lawrence and human beings that existed,” Altenbernd said. “Their names and dates will be in the cemetery where they’re buried.”

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

Molly Adams (she/her), photo editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2022. She can be reached at molly@lawrencekstimes.com.

Check out more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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