✅ FULLY READ 2026-07-31 — all 84 pages of 84, opened and read in place. Every quotation below is verbatim and citable.

🔴 READ THE FINAL SECTION FIRST. Two findings from the last pass change how this document’s central claim must be worded, and both would be embarrassing to meet second-hand:

1. The word “Zion” DOES appear in this study (p.58, p.50) — attached to a church, a private school and a denomination. Zion Cemetery does not appear. Never write “the study never mentions Zion.” Write what is true: the study never records a burial ground.
2. Burial appears a second time, as money — p.65’s women’s-lodge table carries a column headed “Burial Association.” The men’s table on p.64 has no such column.

Everything above the final section was written while the document was partially read. Where an earlier passage says “N pages remain unread” or “Zion is not named,” the final section governs.

Why it matters to ABANDONED

abandoned.mdx states, from Florida’s own 2021 task force report, that Zion Cemetery “disappeared from public view in the late 1920s.”

This is an 84-page systematic survey of Black Tampa from 1927 — housing, sanitation, health, employment, churches, schools — compiled with the cooperation of the Tampa Welfare League. Its catalogued geographic terms include Robles Pond (Tampa, Fla.), the ground Robles Park is named for and the ground the essay is about, alongside Scrubbs, West Hyde Park, College Hill, Ybor City and Garrison.

It is contemporaneous with the disappearance, and it surveys the district.

If it discusses that ground and does not mention the cemetery, the silence is itself evidence — and it is precisely the kind of absence ABANDONED is built to read. That remains a hypothesis: four of 84 pages are read. SUPERSEDED — all 84 pages are read, and the silence hypothesis was replaced by something better. See the final section.

Its contributors are not minor: Arthur Raper, the sociologist of Southern tenancy and lynching, and Benjamin E. Mays, later president of Morehouse and mentor to Dr. King.

🔴 RIGHTS — not a licence, and the distinction is the whole point

Florida Memory publishes no licence and no rights statement on the item. Its Disclaimer and Copyright Information page (/learn/about/disclaimer.php) says, verbatim:

“The use of material in the custody of the State Archives of Florida is governed by state law and, in some cases, by the terms of the donation agreement under which the Archives acquired the materials. See Chapter 119, Florida Statutes—Public Records Law and Chapter 257, Florida Statutes—Public Libraries and State Archives.”

That is a pointer to statute and to per-item donation agreements. It is not a grant. Structurally it is the same shape as the UCLA/Calisphere contact-for-permission notice that DESIGNATED’s retracted hero was captioned over as “CC BY 4.0.”

What this permits and forbids:

Use	Verdict
Cite it, and quote from it once read	✅ Standard scholarly use of a primary document, as with every other record in this docket.
Reproduce its pages as an image — hero, card, carousel	❌ No. Requires clearance from the State Archives. Do not treat “Federal Documents Collection” as meaning federal authorship: that describes where it is housed. McGrew wrote it.

⚠️ Its copyright status is genuinely unresolved. A US work published before 1930 is public domain. This is a typescript and may never have been published, and unpublished works run on a different term. McGrew’s dates are unknown. Do not assert public domain.

What must happen before more of this is citable

1. Read the remaining 80 pages ✅ DONE 2026-07-31 — all 84 read. Every section named here (Health, Churches, Recapitulation, and every page naming Robles Pond) was located and read.
2. Quote only what is read, verbatim, from this edition. Still binding.
3. If any page is wanted as an image, write to the State Archives and get the answer in writing. Still open — draft at reference/docket/RIGHTS_REQUEST__FL_STATE_ARCHIVES__DRAFT.md, unsent.

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READ 2026-07-31 — what is now verified, and what is not

Pages opened and read: 1 (title), 3 (contents), 14 and 16 (Housing and Sanitation), 80 and 84 (photographic plates). Six of 84.

The contents, transcribed from page 3

I. Introduction · II. Population · III. Housing and Sanitation · IV. Health · V. Recreation · VI. Social and Corrective Agencies · VII. Employment · VIII. Churches · IX. Schools · X. Business and Professions · XI. Fraternal Organizations · XII. Recapitulation and Recommendations

🔴 There is no section on cemeteries or burial grounds. The study covers churches, schools and fraternal organizations — the institutional life of Black Tampa — and does not list the dead among them. That is an observation about the table of contents, not yet a finding about the text. Sections IV (Health) and VIII (Churches) are the places a burial ground would most plausibly surface, and neither has been read.

The title page (p. 1), verbatim

“A Study of NEGRO LIFE IN TAMPA / Made By J.H. McGREW / With the Cooperation of THE TAMPA WELFARE LEAGUE / THE TAMPA URBAN LEAGUE / - And the Tampa - / YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION”

Handwritten annotations on the same sheet carry the date 1927.

Housing and Sanitation (pp. 14, 16), verbatim

On comparative rent:

“Negro rates are decidedly higher in Tampa than in any of the other five southern cities listed. Rents are lower in Tampa than in most Northern cities.”

The four districts surveyed by rent quarters are Riverside Drive, W. Palm Ave. Section, Bellair Park, and Red Quarters — not Robles Pond. Bathing facilities: Riverside 100%, W. Palm Ave. 44%, Bellair Park none, Red Quarters none. City water: 100%, 100%, 15%, none.

“The short residence on Riverside is explained by the fact that these rent quarters, until recently, were inhabited by white renters.”

On the worst districts:

“The conditions which obtain in the cheapest rent areas, and which are most unsatisfactory, from the point of view of housing and sanitation, are very numerous and widely scattered, but particularly prevalent in West Tampa between Spruce Street and the river, in ‘The Scrubb’, and the old Garrison section.”

On Red Quarters, condemned by the City Health Department:

“Several of the inhabitants stated that they disposed of garbage by burying it. Two surface wells, one out of commission, provides water for the 22 families. 135 persons use this well, including 23 lodgers and 37 children under 15 years of age.”

And the passage that matters most to ABANDONED:

“‘Red Quarters’, on an out of the way lot, has been placed in the heart of the city by the recent expansion of the business district and the construction of the Lafayette Street viaduct, has been condemned by the city Health Department and will be vacated immediately. Within a few years, if the city continues to grow, this bunch of shabby houses will be replaced by a warehouse or factory. The growth of the city doubtless will also wipe out the shacks in the old Garrison section.”

In 1927 the study states, flatly and without alarm, that the city’s growth will wipe out Black housing. Not as a warning — as a forecast. ABANDONED documents Zion vanishing from public view in exactly these years, under a storefront, then warehouses, then a housing project. This is the same mechanism, described in advance, in the ordinary voice of a welfare survey.

🔲 STILL NOT ESTABLISHED

• Robles Pond has not been located in the text. It appears in the item’s catalogued geographic terms; it has not been found on a read page. Do not cite the study as discussing Robles Pond until a page is read that does.
• No mention of Zion, of any cemetery, or of any burial ground has been found — across four pages. That is not evidence of absence. 80 pages are unread.
• The silence hypothesis remains a hypothesis. It can only be settled by reading the document, particularly Health, Churches, and the Recapitulation.

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🔴 SECOND PASS 2026-07-31 — THE STUDY CONTAINS ITS OWN PHOTOGRAPHS

This is the finding of the pass, and it reopens the hero question through a different door.

The typescript does not end in prose. It ends in photographic plates, and there are plates in the body as well. Two were opened:

Page 84 — a four-photograph plate captioned “Negro rent quarters in India Street School area.” A handwritten annotation reads “This school was located in the ‘Scrubbs’ in an effort to improve the conditions…” Printed captions: “Note the prevalence of wash-tubs” and “This boy is selling wood[;] his father is unable to find employment.”

Page 80 — “PRIVATE CHURCH SCHOOLS IN TAMPA,” a single photograph above the text: “There are nine privately owned, privately operated, and privately supervised Negro school in Tampa. All of these are connected with Negro churches. 610 Negro children attend these school.”

Why this matters

ABANDONED has no hero, and searches of the LOC, NPS and the wider Florida Memory catalogue all failed. This document contains original 1927 photographs of Black Tampa housing — the exact subject, the exact city, the exact years in which Zion left public view.

The hero question is no longer “does an image exist.” It is “can these be cleared.” That is a different and far more answerable question: a written request to the State Archives of Florida naming item 326639 and a specific page.

⚠️ Nothing changes about rights until that answer arrives in writing. These plates are covered by the same disclaimer — governed by state law and, in some cases, donation agreements. Do not reproduce them. Do not assume the photographs share the typescript’s status; a photograph inside a document can have its own photographer and its own term. That is the lesson the NRHP nomination taught earlier the same day, where a federal form carried a third party’s photograph.

Structure, corrected

The sections are not in a simple linear run. Page 80 sits in the Schools material and page 84 is a plate, so the Recapitulation was not located and is not at the end as assumed.

🔲 STILL NOT ESTABLISHED after six pages

• Robles Pond: not found in any read page. ✅ FOUND on p.55 — see below.
• Zion, any cemetery, any burial ground: not found in any read page. 78 pages unread. This is not evidence of absence.
• Health (IV), Churches (VIII) and Recapitulation (XII): unread and unlocated. These remain the priority.

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✅ ROBLES POND FOUND — p.55, and it is not what was assumed

🔴 CORRECTED 2026-07-31 — see “ROBLES POND IS A NEIGHBOURHOOD TOO” below. The line that stood here — “It is a school, not a neighbourhood” — was wrong. It was written from p.55 alone, before p.8 was read. Robles Pond is both: a settlement of 315 people and a school standing in it. The correction is left visible rather than deleted, because the error was mine and it was confident.

In the study’s own text as read on p.55, Robles Pond is one of Tampa’s Negro public schools, appearing under “Building and Equipment” in the Schools section.

Verbatim, in full:

“Robles Pond was built for summer and dry weather only. The building is not ceiled inside, and one can see the clear sky from the inside without looking through the windows or doors. The children must suffer greatly during cold weather.”

Three sentences, and the third is the survey allowing itself a judgement.

The same page assesses the other seven schools. Harlem Academy is “considered very unsafe in view of the large number of students in attendance. It is even more dangerous in stormy weather.” Caesar Street sits “in a very congested district.” India Street is “a new building and modern” but “located in the crowded section of the ‘Scrubbs’.” Booker T. Washington High School “lacks laboratory facilities, a school library.” Dobyville in West Hyde Park “is next to the railroad, and is hardly suitable.” West Tampa Public School is “no doubt the most crowded of the eight schools,” 577 students, eight teachers, an average of 72 per room.

What this changes for ABANDONED

The essay’s ground is Robles Park Village, the housing project built over Zion. This is the same place-name a generation earlier, attached to a school with no ceiling. The study surveys that ground in 1927 — it names it, inspects a building standing on it, and describes children under an open sky in cold weather.

And it says nothing about a cemetery.

⚠️ That is one page. It is now a located, quotable absence rather than an assumption, but it is still not the finished argument. Health (IV), Churches (VIII) and Recapitulation (XII) remain unread, and Churches is where a burial ground would most plausibly appear.

Read log

Pages read: 1, 3, 14, 16, 55, 80, 84 — seven of 84. 77 unread.

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THIRD PASS 2026-07-31 — the Churches section counts the living

Read pp. 48, 50, 52. Read log now: 1, 3, 14, 16, 48, 50, 52, 55, 80, 84 — ten of 84.

Churches (section VIII), pp. 50 and 52

Both pages are statistical tables, not prose.

p.50 totals the denominations: 42 churches, 9,171 total membership, with active membership, average attendance, and a male/female split above and under 15. By denomination — Baptist 13 · A.M.E. 9 · Sanctified 6 · Primitive Baptist 4 · M.E. 3 · A.M.E. Zion 2 · Episcopal 2 · C.M.E. 1 · Christian Church 1 · Seven Day Adventist 1.

p.52 breaks the same 42 churches down again by Church School enrolment.

🔴 The survey counts the living to the person and does not record where any of them are buried. Two pages of the Churches section inventory membership, attendance, age and sex across every Black congregation in Tampa — and there is no burial ground, no cemetery, no plot, no sexton.

⚠️ Note for anyone tempted: the tables list the denomination A.M.E. Zion. That is a church body, not Zion Cemetery. They are not the same thing and must never be conflated. The resemblance is a trap, not a lead.

Employment (section VII), p.48 — verbatim, and worth keeping

“In spite of the fact that he prefers Negro laborers, he is at present supplanting Negro labor by white labor. He is doing this because he wishes to help the white laborers, seemingly forgetting that the Negro, no less than the white laborer, suffers from unemployment.”

On the employment agencies, of which the study counts six serving “colored people”:

“In this particular agency, Negroes are compelled to enter through the back door and wait until the whites are served before they are considered.”

What the pattern now supports, and what it does not

Supports: the study inventories Black Tampa’s institutions exhaustively — 42 churches and 9,171 members, eight school buildings assessed one by one, six employment agencies, rent quarters counted house by house — and across ten pages spanning four sections it never once accounts for the dead.

Does not yet support: a claim that the study is silent on burial grounds as a whole. 74 pages are unread, including Health (IV), the Churches narrative pages (49, 51, 53–54), and the Recapitulation (XII). A cemetery could appear on any of them.

The absence is now consistent across four sections rather than one. It is still not proven.

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🔴 FOURTH PASS — THE SILENCE HYPOTHESIS IS WRONG. READ THIS FIRST.

Read log: 1, 3, 14, 16, 19, 22, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 74, 75, 80, 84 — sixteen of 84.

Everything above this line was building toward a hypothesis: that the study never mentions a cemetery, and that the silence was the evidence. That hypothesis is dead. The document says something better.

p.74 — the study photographs cemeteries in Black Tampa, and names whose they are

A photographic plate headed “NEGRO HOMES AND RENT QUARTERS.” Both photographs are of cemeteries. The captions, verbatim:

“College Hill

Negro homeowners and Negro renters live on all sides of this Italian cemetery.”

“College Hill

Note the Negro rent quarters in the background. On the other side of this Spanish cemetery many Negroes own homes.”

🔴 Corrected by receipt-gate 2026-07-31. These captions previously read “College Hill — Negro homeowners…”. The em-dash is not in the document. “College Hill” is a separate centred line above each caption; an em-dash was invented inside quotation marks to join them. A quotation reproduces its source exactly, and that includes where the source breaks a line. (In the first caption the typist also struck a duplicated “and”; the clean reading above is what the page yields.)

The study is not silent about burial grounds. It photographs two of them, in a Black neighbourhood, and identifies them as Italian and Spanish.

Black Tampa is in both frames — living on all sides, in the background, across the road. The graves in frame belong to other people. The Black dead are not pictured, not counted, and not named anywhere in the sixteen pages read.

That is a stronger finding than silence, and it is the one the essay can actually use. ABANDONED argues Zion “was abandoned by the record.” Here is the record, in 1927, standing in a Black neighbourhood photographing a cemetery — and the cemetery it photographs is somebody else’s.

⚠️ What this does NOT establish. It does not show Zion, does not mention Zion, and says nothing about where Black Tampa buried its dead. Do not write that the study “ignored” Zion or “chose” these cemeteries over it. Sixty-eight pages are unread. What is established is exactly what the two captions say.

p.75 — the improvements plate, and a number

“SOME DEFINITE IMPROVEMENTS / CITY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH.” On the Red Quarters, 22 houses between the Lafayette Street viaduct and Union Station:

“A cluster of eight chronically stopped-up water closets serve these 22 families. Two wells are available… Many inhabitants stated that they disposed of their garbage by burying it.”

And:

“Since January 1926 more than 3000 privies have been condemned by the City Department of Health, many of these were located in Negro settlements… Even when present orders of the Health Department have been complied with there will remain more than 1000 privies in Tampa — many of these are in the Negro neighborhoods.”

p.49 — the register undercounted, and the study says so

Opening the Churches section:

“Aside from the home, the Church is the most important factor in the life of the Negro… Any study of Negro Life that excluded the Negro church, would be a vital omission.”

“The city directory for 1926 listed thirty five Negro Churches within city limits. This report presents forty two — seven more than the city directory recorded for 1926.”

The official register was short by seven churches, and a private survey found them. ABANDONED’s argument is that Florida built a register and made consulting it optional. Here is the same register, in the same decade, in the same city, undercounting Black institutions — and the study naming its own standard for what a “vital omission” would be.

pp.50, 52, 53 — the Churches audit, including property

42 churches, 9,171 members, by denomination, active membership, average attendance, sex and age. Then again by church school. Then property: $539,925 estimated value across 23 churches, debts on nine, insurance on 18, and structure type — Brick 5 · Frame 33 · Stone 1 · Cement 3 · Tents 2. Ministers: 13 of 40 seminary-trained, 4 college graduates.

The section audits church real property in detail and lists no burial ground among it.

⚠️ The tables list the denomination A.M.E. Zion. That is a church body, not Zion Cemetery. Never conflate them.

pp.19, 22 — Health

“The first floor of a two story frame building — a ward with seventeen beds accommodating seventeen patients, with an annual appropriation of $5,800 a year ($600 of this amount used for drugs), is the municipal hospitalization provided for the Negroes of Tampa.”

Founded by Mrs. Clara Frye. The report records it is “non-fireproof,” with “no definite medical supervision” and “no definite provisions for the care of maternity cases.”

On hospital staffing:

“This society still appoints the staff of white physicians who are given absolute control of this service, no Negro physician being permitted to serve in this capacity.”

Still unread — 68 pages

Population (II), Recreation (V), Social and Corrective Agencies (VI), Business and Professions (X), Fraternal Organizations (XI), and the Recapitulation and Recommendations (XII), which was NOT located. Pages 74–84 are photographic plates, so the Recapitulation sits earlier than assumed and has not been found.

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🔴 THE RECAPITULATION — FOUND (pp. 67–69). It counts the dead and never asks where they went.

The Recapitulation was not at the end. The photographic plates run pp. 70–84; the text closes at p.69.

What the study says its own subject was, p.67

“Even a casual perusal of this study under such headings as ‘Housing, Health and Sanitation,’ ‘Social and Corrective Agencies,’ ‘Employment’ etc., one would easily see the source from which arises many, if not most of Tampa’s social problems. It also suggests, at least, the inescapable responsibility of Tampa’s privileged citizens.”

And its refusal to let Tampa off:

“Having made similar studies in other cities, it would be easy to make the entire report in the following words: ‘The conditions in Tampa are no worse than those found in other cities studied.’ This would be begging the question and saying that ‘The small pox epidemic, Juvenile Delinquency, Crime record, Illiteracy or Bad Housing Conditions in “Timbuctoo” are no worse than those found in Centersville.’”

🔴 p.68 — the number

“To a group practically deprived of all these helpful influences, including over-crowded and inadequate school facilities; health menacing housing conditions, lack of parks, playgrounds, bathing places, suitable hotels and restaurant accommodations (and finally to a group where in 1926, largely because of existing conditions, there were 57 more deaths than births) a YMCA is of vastly more importance.”

Fifty-seven more deaths than births. In 1926. The year before this survey, and the decade Zion left public view.

The study counts the dead. It has the figure, it knows the cause — “largely because of existing conditions” — and it deploys the number as an argument for a building.

And it never asks where those fifty-seven went.

The whole Recapitulation, having named excess mortality, recommends: a joint committee of white and colored citizens, definite plans for a city branch of the YMCA, a trained Secretary, and further study to determine the strategic location for the building. For “the 9,422 colored men and boys of Tampa, between the ages of 10 and 44.”

p.69 — who signed it

“Mr. B. E. Mays, of the Urban League, and Mr. A. F. Raper, of the Interracial Commission heartily join the representatives of the National Council of the YMCA in offering the above recommendations.”

Benjamin E. Mays and Arthur F. Raper endorse the recommendations by name. Their role is now established from the document, not from the catalogue record.

What this settles for ABANDONED

The Recapitulation is where a survey states what it believes matters. This one names Housing, Health and Sanitation, Social and Corrective Agencies, Employment. It records 57 excess deaths in a single year. It recommends a YMCA.

Burial grounds appear nowhere in it.

Set beside p.74 — the plate that photographs two cemeteries in a Black neighbourhood and labels them Italian and Spanish — the record now reads: this survey saw cemeteries, named whose they were, counted Black Tampa’s dead to the person, and never once recorded where Black Tampa buried them.

⚠️ Still bounded. 57 pages remain unread, and this does not mention Zion by name. What is established is what these pages say.

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🔴🔴 VITAL STATISTICS (pp. 23–24) — the study counts 534 Black deaths and never says where they went

This is the conclusive material. Everything the essay needs is here.

The counts, verbatim

“Out of a total of 2710 births reported to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in 1926 for Tampa, 477, or 17.6% were colored.”

Stillbirths in Tampa in 1926 — Total 204 · White 108 · Colored 96, 47% of total.

“These figures are quite significant when it is remembered that the Negroes make up but approximately 20% of the total population, no less than when the relative number of births are considered.”

🔴 Corrected by receipt-gate 2026-07-31. This quotation previously ended at “total population.” with a closing period, presented as a complete sentence. The clause “no less than when the relative number of births are considered” was dropped. Condensation drops qualifiers, and a truncation marked as a full stop is a fabricated sentence boundary.

Deaths, exclusive of stillbirths, Tampa, 1926 — Total 1,612 · White 1,078 · Colored 534, 33% of total.

“Negroes in Tampa for 1926 exceeded the births by 57. Of the 534 Negro deaths in 1926, 323 or 60.4% were male, and 211 or 39.6% were female.”

The rates, per 1,000 population

	White	Negro
Births	23	20.1
Stillbirths	1.1	4.1
Deaths (excl. stillbirths)	11.1	22.9

Black Tampa died at twice the white rate and lost stillborn children at nearly four times it.

And the study goes further

“50% of Negro deaths in 1926 occurred between 15-44, the most productive period of life… Although all must die somewhere beyond 45, many of the deaths now occurring between 15-44 could be prevented.”

“42 homicides reported out of 534 deaths, is approximately 8% of all the deaths.”

Causes broken to the percentage: nephritis, homicide, tuberculosis, organic disease of the heart, pneumonia, diarrhea and enteritis, cerebral hemorrhage.

What this settles

The study counts 534 Black deaths in a single year. By sex. By age band. By cause, to one decimal place. It counts 96 stillborn children. It computes the death rate against the white rate and finds it doubled. It states that half those deaths were preventable.

It does not record where a single one of them was buried.

Set the whole record together now:

• pp. 23–24 — 534 dead, counted exhaustively, no burial ground named.
• p. 68 — the Recapitulation carries the 57 excess deaths into a parenthesis and recommends a YMCA.
• p. 74 — a plate photographs two cemeteries in a Black neighbourhood and labels them Italian and Spanish.
• pp. 50–53 — 42 churches audited; 23 of them valued to the property line at $539,925. No burial ground among it.
• p. 49 — the city directory undercounted Black churches by seven.

A 1927 survey of Black Tampa counted its dead to the person, photographed other people’s cemeteries, inventoried its churches’ land, and never once asked where Black Tampa buried anyone.

That is what ABANDONED means by “abandoned by the record” — and it is now documented from the record itself, in 1927, a generation before the storefront, the warehouses, and the housing project.

⚠️ Bounded, still: Zion is not named anywhere in the 31 pages read. 53 pages remain unread. What is established is what these pages say.

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🔴 p.38 — BURIAL DOES APPEAR. As paperwork, never as ground.

This is the sharpest finding in the document and it refines everything above.

In the Social and Corrective Agencies section, a Red Cross service list for ex-service men. Two lines, verbatim, in a column of twenty-odd:

“Burial Claims, re-imbursement of expenses,”

“Headstone Applications,”

Alongside: Compensation claims · Dependency Claims, filed after Veteran’s death · Guardianship papers of Minor Children of Deceased Soldiers · Insurance Claims · Letters of Administration secured · Locating Lost Persons.

What this changes

The word burial is in this survey. So is headstone. They appear once, together, as items on a benefits-claim list.

Burial exists in the 1927 record of Black Tampa as a reimbursement of expenses and an application. A federal entitlement, processed by a chapter office, for a category of person — the ex-service man — whose death the government had already agreed to acknowledge.

It never appears as a place. No cemetery, no plot, no ground, no sexton, no acreage. The survey that counted 534 deaths and 96 stillbirths records burial only where burial had a form attached to it.

Why this is stronger than the absence

ABANDONED’s closing argument is that Zion “was abandoned by the record” — that it “fell out of the register, out of the permit process, out of the map, out of the paperwork that a right depends on.”

Here is the paperwork, in 1927. Burial is legible to the record exactly to the extent it is a claim. A veteran gets a headstone application. Everyone else — the 534 — gets counted as a death and nothing after it.

The record did not fail to notice that Black Tampa was dying. It noticed precisely, to one decimal place. It simply had no field for where they went unless a federal form supplied one.

⚠️ Bounded. This is a service list, not an account of Black burial practice. It says what the Red Cross processed, nothing about Zion, and nothing about where the 534 were laid. 46 pages remain unread.

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Also read this pass

p.25–27 — mortality analysis continued. “while the population stood at a racial ratio of 4-1, the racial death ratio was approximately 2-1: that is, the Negroes in Tampa… died nearly twice as fast as the whites.” And 81% of diarrhea/enteritis deaths occurred within the first twelve months of life.

p.28, 33 — Recreation and Amusement. “Tampa has a Negro population of 23,323. No public park is provided for them. Negroes are not allowed in the city parks except in the capacity of servants.” The section’s conclusion: “For a colored population of 23,000, Tampa provides a Branch Library and a salaried playground Supervisor.”

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Read log — 44 of 84, as of this pass

Read: 1, 3, 6, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 38, 41, 44, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84.

Every section of the study has now been entered, and the plates (70–84) are read in full.

Additional material from this stretch

p.6 — Population. Negro population of Tampa: 1900 4,382 (27.7%) · 1910 8,951 (23.7%) · 1920 11,531 (22.3%) · 1925 18,583 (19.6%) · 1927 23,323. The 1927 figure is derived from heads of families in Polk’s Directory, March 1927, unpublished, with household size set by a count of four hundred representative Negro homes. Full sex-and-age distribution table.

p.41 — Arrests. Total arrests excluding traffic, six months Sept 1926–Feb 1927: 10,273 — White 6,293, Negro 4,002. Broken by cause: disorderly conduct, drunk, gambling, possessing liquor, vagrancy, assaults, larceny, carrying concealed weapons, robbery, murder 16. The study then refuses the obvious reading: “it is not necessarily true that the Negroes are born with criminal inclinations, or that they are fundamentally anti-social. Any consideration of the number of arrests in one group as compared with another, is unfair unless conditions in both cases are taken into consideration.”

⚠️ An internal inconsistency to flag: p.41 puts Negroes at “only 29% of the entire population” while pp.23–24 use “approximately 20%” and p.6’s table gives 19.6% for 1925. The document disagrees with itself on the denominator. Do not quote a percentage from this study without saying which page it came from.

p.44 — trades. “No Negro in Tampa has the proper license to do electrical work, plumbing work, or expert mechanical repairing, except under the supervision of a master mechanic, all of whom are white.” On the cigar factories: Negro artisans “are seated indiscriminately throughout the work floor, and receive equal amounts of pay on a piece price basis.”

pp.71–73 — housing plates. Types of Negro homes; “Homeownership among the Negroes of Tampa is limited generally to business and professional men”; College Hill streets “are only sand beds, electric lights are scarce”; homeowners “being crowded by the erection of cheap rent quarters on adjoining lots.”

The burial question is now answered from five independent angles

1. pp.23–24 — 534 deaths and 96 stillbirths counted; no burial ground named.
2. p.38 — burial appears only as “Burial Claims” and “Headstone Applications” on a veterans’ benefits list.
3. p.68 — the Recapitulation carries 57 excess deaths into a parenthesis and recommends a YMCA.
4. p.74 — a plate photographs two cemeteries in a Black neighbourhood and labels them Italian and Spanish.
5. pp.50–53 — 42 churches audited; 23 of them valued at $539,925 of real property. No burial ground among it.

40 pages remain unread, all within sections already entered and characterized: Population detail, Recreation detail, Social and Corrective Agencies detail, Schools detail, and two Churches pages. Zion is not named in any of the 44 pages read.

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🔴🔴 p.60 — FOUR UNDERTAKERS. The study counts the trade and never names the ground.

Business and Professions. The study inventories 185 Negro business establishments in Tampa, employing 400 people, gross estimated value of stock and equipment $213,050.00, and classifies every one of them by kind.

In that list, verbatim:

“4 Undertakers”

Alongside: 35 Grocery Stores · 23 Barber Shops · 21 Cleaning and Pressing (Tailor) Shops · 19 Cafes and Restaurants · 14 Confectionery Shops · 9 Insurance Companies (8 Branch Offices)(1 Home Office) · 9 Pool Rooms · 4 Bakeries · 4 Transfer Companies · 3 Shoe Repairs · 3 Real Estate Brokers · 2 Hotels · 1 Drug Store.

This closes the argument

The study knows there are four Black undertaking businesses in Tampa. It counts them. It classifies them. It folds their stock and equipment into a citywide valuation.

And it never records where any of them took anybody.

Put the whole thing in one line: a 1927 survey of Black Tampa counted 534 deaths, 96 stillborn children, a death rate of 22.9 per thousand against 11.1 for whites, four undertakers, and 42 churches, 23 of them holding $539,925 of real property — and produced no burial ground at all.

The dead are a rate. The disposal of the dead is a trade with four proprietors. The ground is nowhere.

That is “abandoned by the record” demonstrated from inside the record, and it is now sourced from six independent places in one document.

p.64 — Fraternal Organizations, and a lead worth chasing

Secret Societies listed with membership, value of property, monthly collections and bank balance: St. Andrews 142 · St. James 91 · Prolific 118 · Joseph Turner #63 157 · Joseph Turner #44 32 · “P.T. Cessions” 25 · K. of P. “C” 36 · K. of P. “P” 39 · Woodmen of World 200. Total 840 members, $17,075 of property, $1,161 monthly collections, $1,711.71 in the bank.

“Next to the church as a moral and social uplift agency among Negroes, have stood the Secret Societies… Capital has in the past and continues to come from behind the closed doors of the Negro lodge rooms.”

⚠️ Unverified lead, flagged not asserted: Black fraternal orders of this period were the principal providers of burial insurance, and Woodmen of the World is historically associated with grave markers. This page does not say that. It lists property values and collections, not benefits. If anyone wants to connect Tampa’s lodges to Zion, that connection must come from a document that states it. Do not infer it from the name.

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🔴🔴 ROBLES POND IS A NEIGHBOURHOOD TOO — p.8, and it corrects this file

Read pp. 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. This overturns a confident claim made earlier in this same document.

The correction

Earlier this file states, of Robles Pond: “It is a school, not a neighbourhood.” That was wrong. It was written from p.55 — the Schools section — before the Population section had been read. p.8 settles it. Robles Pond is one of the eight Negro settlements of Tampa, and it is named in the study’s own survey of where Black Tampa lived.

Verbatim, in full:

“Robles Pond has a population of 315 - all old inhabitants - many home owners. It is one of the oldest Negro neighborhoods in Tampa. The Negroes lived in this area first, but it has been surrounded by Whites and is now confined to its former boundaries.”

Three sentences, and every one of them matters to ABANDONED. One of the oldest. The Negroes lived in this area first. Surrounded by Whites and now confined to its former boundaries.

This is the ground. Robles Park Village — the housing project built over Zion — carries this place-name. The study surveys it in 1927 as an old, contained, home-owning Black settlement of 315 people.

And it records no burial ground there.

The eight settlements, and the arithmetic that closes

p.7: “The majority of the Negroes in Tampa live in eight areas. Each has its own churches, schools and other community centers in accordance with its age and character.” Basis stated: 1925 Precinct Population, “Verified and brought to date by conference with old inhabitants.”

Settlement	Population
Tampa Proper (incl. Central Avenue Section and “Scrubbs”)	8,362
College Hill	4,094
West Tampa	3,331
West Hyde Park	2,835
West Palm Ave. Section	2,478
Ybor City	896
Garrison	812
Robles Pond	315
In white residence areas (p.9)	200
Total	23,323

The arithmetic closes exactly on the study’s own stated Negro population of 23,323. Every living Black resident of Tampa is placed, by settlement, to the person.

Not one of the eight is recorded as containing a cemetery.

That is the sixth and seventh angle folded into one: the survey locates the living to a closed total and the dead to nowhere.

Garrison, and the mechanism named again

“Garrison, including all small Negro settlements in the Fifth Precinct, has a Negro Population of 812. Within this entire area the scattered Negro settlements are being replaced by storage warehouses. Those leaving this section go to Ybor City for the most part.”

Warehouses over Black ground, stated in 1927 as something already underway. This is the second time the study forecasts the mechanism ABANDONED documents — p.16 predicted Red Quarters would become “a warehouse or factory,” and here Garrison is being converted in the present tense.

Who actually collected this

p.2 names the fact-finders. Under COLLABORATORS: “J.H. MCGREW—Secretary National Council YMCA. ARTHUR RAPER—Field Representative, Interracial Commission. B.E.MAYS—Executive Secretary, Tampa Urban League.” Then, under CHAIRMEN OF FACT FINDINGS GROUPS, fourteen names: Robert P. Stewart · R.G. Griffin · Dr. J. A. Butler · Dr. R. R. Williams · Mrs. C. D. Williams · Jno. R. Hall · Father Jno. E. Culmer · Prof. A. J. Shoots · R. Thomas · Edward McRea · A. E. Ashley · Mrs. Lilla B. Robinson · Mrs. J. E. Williams · F. Barnby Leach (Supt. Seamen’s Church Institute).

p.10, on the housing fieldwork:

“Volunteer colored workers, who after being schooled as to exact use of the house cards and provided with a sheet of detailed instructions, collected the data on housing and sanitation.”

p.4 records the study’s own object: “to determine the social needs of the Negro Community, to ascertain the extent to which these needs were being met by existing agencies, and to suggest a basis upon which to build a more effective social program.” It thanks “the Fact Finding Committee of the Negro Community, whose untiring efforts made this study possible.”

Why that matters, stated carefully

This was not a survey done to Black Tampa from outside. Black Tampa’s own physicians, ministers, teachers and volunteers gathered the data, and Mays ran the Urban League office that carried it.

⚠️ Do not overwrite this into an accusation. It does not show that anyone chose to omit a burial ground, and it must never be written as though Black Tampa erased its own dead. What it establishes is narrower and harder: the omission is not a white surveyor’s inattention. The instrument was built with the community inside it, it counted 534 deaths, and the ground still did not become a field the record had.

Also read this stretch

p.5 — Population, opening. “In 1880 only 720 persons resided in Tampa. In 1925 Tampa had a population of 94,743.” Present metropolitan estimate March 1927: approximately 150,000. On the city’s character: “Tampa not only has grown more rapidly than most Southern cities, but is unlike the typical Southern city in that it is cosmopolitan in type.” And on the colour line: “Unlike most Southern cities, the Negroes do not attend any of the down-town theaters, no provision being made for Negroes… A separate waiting room is provided at the railroad station. In the main, orthodox Southern traditions as to race relations, prevail in Tampa.”

p.7 — Nativity table. Total Negro population 23,323 · Born in Florida 13,532 · Born in other states 8,978 (Georgia 6,460 · Alabama 762 · N.C. & S.C. 786 · others 790) · Born in foreign countries 993 (Cuba 572 · British possessions 253 · others 168). “The greatest influx of States Negroes has occurred within the past five years.” Cause given: the boll weevil and Tampa’s building boom.

pp.10–11 — Housing method and home ownership. 397 house cards tabulated of approximately 400 Negro living quarters: 71 Negro home owners, 305 white-owned Negro rent quarters, 21 Negro-owned rent quarters. Approximately 950 Negro home owners in Tampa. Of the 71 homes studied: average length of residence 8.18 years, 6.19 rooms, 2.37 occupied bedrooms; bathing — shower 9, tubs 40, none 22; water — piped to home 59, yard hydrant 8, well 4; toilet — inside water closet 49, privies 4; roof sound 59, leaking 12. “the Negro home owners live in the most choice locations available for Negro residents.”

p.9 — the settlements list closes with the 200 living on white lots: “Most of these occupy a house on the back of the landlord’s lot and work for him and his family as yard tender, chauffeur or domestic servant.”

p.47 (top of page only — see read log). Employment, hotels: “Tampa Terrace Hotel has nine maids, ten bell boys, one head waiter, nine waiters, and two cooks - all colored. Five of the bell boys have been at the hotel since it opened. Bell boys receive $30 per month and tips.” And: “Floridan Hotel: 22 out of 150 employees are Negroes - 15 chamber maids, $10.00 a week; 5 linen carriers, 40¢ each per meal; 2 in public toilets, $60.00 per month and tips.” On the wider labour market: “There is hardly an office building, retail establishment, bank or newspaper office, which does not employ some Negroes as janitors, truck drivers, or general errand boys. Falks Department Store, for example, employs four maids and six porters. White and colored receive the same pay for the same work.”

Read log — 46 full, 1 partial, of 84

Read in full: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 38, 41, 44, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 60, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84.

Partially read: p.47 — top of the page only. The quotations above are verbatim from what was read; the lower third of p.47 has not been seen and may not be characterized.

⚠️ The read log printed earlier in this file (the “44 of 84” list) was stale — it omitted pp. 60 and 64. The list above supersedes it. 37 pages remain unread: 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66 — plus the foot of p.47.

Zion is not named in any of the 47 pages read.

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✅✅ ALL 84 PAGES READ — 2026-07-31. The absence is total, and it is not the absence we thought.

Every page of this typescript has now been opened and read. The bounded caveat that qualified every earlier finding — “N pages remain unread” — is discharged. What follows supersedes every read log above it.

Two findings from the final pass are more important than the completed count.

🔴🔴 1. “ZION” IS IN THIS DOCUMENT. Zion Cemetery is not.

p.58, Other Private Schools, verbatim:

“The Mt. Zion Private School is located on Michigan Avenue near 25th Street. The teacher is a member of Zion Church, and for five years has been the church organist. Three years ago she was asked by members of the church and community, to start a private school.”

And p.50’s denominational table lists A.M.E. Zion, two churches.

So the name is present. A church called Zion. A school called Mt. Zion. A denomination called A.M.E. Zion. What is absent is the cemetery.

🔴 This changes the wording, permanently

Every earlier section of this file closes with some form of “Zion is not named in any of the N pages read.” That sentence is now retired. It was true of the pages then read and it is false of the whole document, and if it reached print, one search of the typescript would break it.

The claim that survives, and it is the stronger one:

The study names Zion three times — a church, a school, a denomination — and never once as ground where anyone is buried.

⚠️ The A.M.E. Zion warning printed twice above now applies to Mt. Zion Private School and Zion Church as well. A church body, a schoolhouse and a burial ground are three different things. The resemblance is a trap, not a lead. Do not write that the study “mentions Zion” without saying which Zion.

🔲 A lead, flagged and NOT asserted. A congregation called Zion Church was operating in Tampa in 1927, and a school it sponsored stood on Michigan Avenue near 25th Street. This page says nothing whatsoever about a cemetery, and nothing connecting that congregation to Zion Cemetery. Any such connection must come from a document that states it — a deed, a charter, a church record. Do not infer it from a shared name. This is the same discipline the p.64 Woodmen lead was held to, and it matters more here because the name is the essay’s own subject.

🔴🔴 2. p.65 — BURIAL AS A FUND. The study asked the women’s lodges and did not ask the men’s.

The Fraternal Organizations section carries two tables. They do not have the same columns, and the difference is the finding.

p.64 — the men’s lodges. Columns: Name of Lodge · (For Men) Membership · Value of Property · Monthly Collections · Bank Balance. Nine lodges, 840 members, $17,075 of property, $1,161.00 monthly collections, $1,711.71 in the bank. There is no burial column. (Verified by re-reading p.64 against p.65 — the earlier record of this page was correct.)

p.65 — the women’s lodges. Columns: Name of Lodge · (For Women) Membership · Monthly Dues · Weekly Sick Benefit · Burial Association.

Lodge	Members	Monthly dues	Weekly sick benefit	Burial Association
House Hold of Ruth (7 Lodges)	339	$.50–1.00	$1.00–4.00	—
Order of Calanthe (K. of P.)	378	.75–1.00	2.00–3.00	$350.00
Daughters of Elks	72	.50	3.00	—
Paul Barrier (9 Lodges)	980	.40	3.00	100.00
Heriones of Jericho (Masons)	131	.50	2.00	—
Eastern Stars (Masons – 6 Lodges)	71	.50	—	—

This is the third time burial enters this document, and the third time it enters as paperwork or money rather than as ground.

• p.38 — “Burial Claims, re-imbursement of expenses” and “Headstone Applications”, on a Red Cross veterans’ benefits list. (p.37 now supplies its head: the list runs alphabetically from Adjusted Compensation Claims and Adjusted Compensation Death Claims. Burial sits where the alphabet put it.)
• p.60 / p.62 — four undertakers, counted as a trade and as a profession.
• p.65 — a Burial Association, capitalised, with a balance.

$350.00 and $100.00. That is what the disposal of Black Tampa’s dead looks like in the 1927 record: two sums held by two women’s lodges. No cemetery. No plot. No acreage. No sexton. No location.

And the asymmetry is itself a fact

The study’s instrument asked women’s lodges about burial and did not ask men’s. Whether that reflects who actually carried burial insurance, or only what the fact-finders thought to ask, this document does not say, and neither may we. What is recorded is the shape of the question.

p.62 — the undertakers, in their own section

Professions, distinct from the p.60 business count:

“Undertakers and Embalmers — There are four Negro Undertakers and Embalmers, all of whom hold degrees from creditable embalming schools. The number of years practiced, varies from three to sixteen years.”

Sixteen years of practice. Four trained, credentialed men who had been burying Black Tampa since around 1911 — and the survey records their diplomas and not one of their destinations.

Alongside them: nine Physicians, four Dentists, one Attorney at Law, one Pharmacist, no medical specialists. “at least 40% of the Negroes’ patronage, so far as medical treatment and counselor’s service are concerned, is given to White professional men.”

p.51 — and the answer to the obvious objection

The natural objection to all of this is: the churches would have handled burial, so of course a welfare survey wouldn’t record it. The study forecloses that, in its own numbers.

“The report on population shows that Tampa has 23,323 Negroes: this being true, the church enrollment is 39% of the total. To state it another way, 61% of Tampa’s Negroes are unchurched - that is, sixty one of every hundred have no church connection… only 21% of the 23,323 are active church members. That is to say that seventy nine Negroes out of every hundred in Tampa, are not active in any church.”

Also: “practically 50%… of the total number of church members” are inactive; “according to population, Negroes in Tampa have twice as many churches as the Whites.”

Four in ten belonged. Two in ten were active. Whatever happened to the other 534-a-year, the churches whose 23 valued properties came to $539,925 were not, on this study’s own arithmetic, the institution that covered them.

The record, complete

A 1927 survey of Black Tampa, read end to end:

It counted	It did not record
534 Negro deaths in 1926, by sex, age band and cause (pp.23–24)	where one of them was buried
96 stillborn children, 47% of the city’s total	any ground receiving them
a death rate of 22.9 per thousand against 11.1 white	—
57 more deaths than births, carried into a parenthesis recommending a YMCA (p.68)	—
four undertakers, their stock, their diplomas, their years of practice (pp.60, 62)	where any of them took anybody
42 churches, 9,171 members, 23 of them valued at $539,925, structures listed down to Tents 2 (pp.50–53)	a burial ground among that property
nine social and corrective agencies, named exhaustively (p.34)	any agency touching the dead
23,323 living people, placed across eight settlements, arithmetic closing exactly (pp.7–9)	a cemetery in any of the eight
two cemeteries, photographed in a Black neighbourhood — labelled Italian and Spanish (p.74)	a Black one
burial itself, three times — a claim, a headstone application, a Burial Association balance	burial as a place

The dead are a rate. Their disposal is a trade with four proprietors and a fund with a balance. The ground is nowhere.

That is “abandoned by the record” demonstrated from inside the record — not by silence, but by a survey that looked directly at death, counted it to one decimal place, priced its handling, photographed somebody else’s graves, and had no field for where Black Tampa’s dead went.

Honest notes on the document

It is not uniformly sympathetic, and the essay should not pretend otherwise. p.17 says of the worst district that “it appears that the inhabitants never clean up their own back yards” and that “many of the renters fail to discharge their own responsibility in matters of garbage containers.” p.46, on domestic workers: “Others are lazy and shiftless like many in all groups.” p.56 attributes over-age pupils partly to parents who “are still ignorant.” Quote the study’s insight without laundering its condescension — and note that in the same breath it repeatedly refuses the racial reading (p.41 on arrests, p.42 on anti-social behaviour, p.39 on juvenile court).

The denominator problem is worse than recorded above. p.41 says 29%, pp.23–24 say “approximately 20%”, p.6’s table gives 19.6% for 1925, and p.29 quotes the Library Journal (September 1926) saying “Tampa’s colored population is a little over 17,000.” That last is a quoted external source, not the study’s own count, and must be attributed as such. Any percentage from this study must name its page.

A named preface was never located. p.17 carries the note “(See Dr. Levy’s preface for present status following section).” No Dr. Levy preface appears anywhere in the 84 pages. Either it was never bound in, or it is a reference to a document held elsewhere. Do not cite it.

Read log — FINAL

Read: 1 through 84, complete. No page of this item remains unread. Superseding all read logs above.