African Americans have made an indelible mark on the history of the Kanawha Valley. From the earliest Blacks who arrived pre-Civil War as slaves to work in the salt industry to leaders like Booker T Washington and other African Americans in the Kanawha Valley who built strong businesses, fought discrimination and achieved world-wide recognition such as anti-apartheid pioneer Leon Sullivan, the first African American to serve on the board of directors of a major US corporation. And the region was touched by the lives of thousands of Blacks who attended West Virginia State University (formerly College) – a premier institution of higher learning for African Americans such as many of the Tuskegee Airman and Katherine Johnson, the mathematician whose calculations were critical to early space flights and on whom the movie “Hidden Figures” was based.

Many early Black leaders interred at Spring Hill Cemetery may have been lesser known than Washington, Johnson or Sullivan, but nevertheless achieved great milestones in Charleston’s history. We hope you enjoy their stories.

This tour can be explored in four major sections:

1) Mausoleum Area

2) Historic Spring Hill Section 31

3) Western End (Wherle/Lynn)

4) Top of the Hill (Jeffries Addition)

One interesting burial without a marker stands outside of these areas in the Jeffries Hill- Land Section.

William Edward Davis (1838-1960 (aged 121) At the time of his death, he was the oldest pensioner receiving social security. There are no records of his birth, but he always maintained he had been born on Christmas Day 1838. He was born into slavery at Winston Salem, N.C., and his parents worked on a tobacco farm. He came to Charleston as a free man after the Civil War and worked first on a river boat for 30 years and later for the C&O Railroad. He claimed to have been married twice and had 18 daughters.