The African Cemetery at Higgs Beach: Key West’s Sacred Ground

The Summer of 1860

In the spring and summer of 1860, the United States Navy was patrolling the Florida Straits to enforce the laws banning the transatlantic slave trade. Three American-owned ships — the Wildfire, the William, and the Bogota — were intercepted while running human cargo bound for the sugar plantations of Cuba. The U.S. steamships Mohawk, Wyandotte, and Crusader carried out the captures and brought the survivors to the nearest American port: Key West. In all, 1,432 Africans were freed and brought ashore. They had endured weeks below deck in conditions the captain of the Mohawk described as packing people into a space barely four feet high, with almost no air. They arrived with nothing.

A Community’s Response

What happened next is the part of the story Key West has carried for more than a century and a half. The island’s roughly 3,000 residents, led by U.S. Marshal Fernando Moreno, came together to help. They built housing and a hospital, donated clothing, and brought food and medical care to people they had never met. By many accounts, the local marshal even paid for some of that care out of his own pocket. It was an act of collective humanity in a place and time where it would have been far easier to look away. Despite those efforts, many of the rescued were already gravely ill from the voyage. Over the following weeks, 294 of them died at Key West, most likely from typhoid and dysentery brought on by their confinement at sea.

294 Lives, Unmarked Graves

The dead were buried in closely spaced, unmarked graves along the island’s southern shore — the stretch of sand now known as Higgs Beach, near where the West Martello Tower stands today. The survivors did not stay long. By August, more than 1,000 of them were sent on to Liberia, the West African nation founded as a home for formerly enslaved people. Hundreds more died on that passage. Those who lived were returned to the continent of their birth, though not to the homes and communities they had been stolen from. Two years later, as the Civil War reshaped the island’s defenses, construction expanded the fortifications over part of the burial ground. In time, the graves faded from public memory entirely.

Lost to Memory, Then Found Again

The cemetery might have stayed forgotten if not for a single clue: an 1861 Army Corps of Engineers map that marked nine graves with small X’s and the notation “African Cemetery.” In 2002, the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society used that map to guide an archaeological survey. Rather than dig, the team used ground-penetrating radar so the graves would never be disturbed. About 40 feet east of the fort’s brick walls, the radar revealed rows of closely spaced burials, confirming what the old map had promised. In 2012, the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a nationally significant archaeological site. It remains the only known cemetery of African refugees rescued from the slave trade anywhere in the United States. 

Visiting the Memorial Today

The memorial sits on Higgs Beach near the White Street Pier, alongside the West Martello Tower and its lush garden. A raised platform is set with tall columns and a series of pedestals topped with bronze plaques bearing Adinkra symbols — a visual language from West Africa that speaks to memory, endurance, and the journey of the spirit. At its center is a tiled map of the Atlantic, tracing the routes the slave ships sailed and the points where they were stopped. African dignitaries have visited to consecrate the ground and honor those buried here. It is a quiet place, and visitors treat it as one. Come early, when the beach is calm and the light is soft. Read the marker. Walk the platform. It takes only a few minutes to stand where this history happened — and those few minutes change how you see the whole island. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the African Cemetery at Higgs Beach? It is on Higgs Beach in Key West, near the White Street Pier and beside the historic West Martello Tower, on the island’s south-facing Atlantic shore. The memorial platform is open to the public and free to visit.

What is the story behind the cemetery? In 1860, the U.S. Navy intercepted three American-owned slave ships bound for Cuba and brought 1,432 rescued Africans to Key West. Local residents provided food, shelter, and medical care, but 294 people died from illnesses contracted during the voyage and were buried here in unmarked graves.

How was the cemetery rediscovered? The graves had been lost to memory for more than a century. In 2002, archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar — guided by an 1861 map — to locate the burials without disturbing them. The site joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

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