For decades, students at Upper Arlington High School walked across their campus, unaware of the history buried beneath their very own feet. The land—now home to classrooms and athletic fields—once held the graves of Black Ohioans who built businesses and communities despite the denial of basic civil rights.
Among them was Pleasant Litchford, a formerly enslaved man who became one of the area's most influential landowners in what is now Upper Arlington. His legacy was nearly lost until 2020 when construction crews uncovered six unmarked graves beneath the school’s renovation on the parking lot, forcing the community to confront a past it had long ignored.
An Ohio pioneer
Litchford was born in 1789 on a Virginia plantation. After purchasing his own freedom, he moved to Ohio in the 1830s, bringing his blacksmithing skills and the vision of a self-sufficient, thriving Black community.
Over time, he acquired 227 acres in Perry Township—now Upper Arlington—to build a community for his Black friends and family, a place where they could protect each other from being kidnapped, lynched or sold back into slavery.
In alignment with his faith as a founding member and deacon of Second Baptist Church, Litchford donated funds to build a school for Black children—something nearly unheard of at the time.
Today, Toya Williams, a descendant of Litchford, lives in Gahanna and continues to shed light on his legacy.
“He wanted a place for children of color to be educated. And in the 1800s there was no place for that. Everyone deserves a fair shot, and that's what he wanted everyone to have,” Williams said.
By the time of his death in 1879, Litchford had 25 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His land also held a cemetery for his loved ones and friends, and it served a practical purpose: At the time, Black people weren’t allowed to be buried anywhere else.
A shift in ownership
In 1955, Upper Arlington City Schools purchased the land, and the cemetery’s existence was largely erased. Approximately 30 bodies were relocated to Greenlawn and Union Cemeteries—but some were left behind.
Diane Runyon and Kim Shoemaker Starr, co-authors of “Secrets Under The Parking Lot,” long suspected that graves remained at the site, given the carelessness of the 1955 excavation: After being the bodies had been transported to a cemetery in a different location and were placed together, unnamed, in a mass grave.
Yet, for many in the school district, including former Superintendent Paul Imhoff, the historic Black cemetery had faded from public memory.
“I’ll be honest, and I’m not proud of this, but we were not aware of this history,” said Imhoff in a 2020 interview with WOSU.
Natalie Harrison, a former student from Upper Arlington, was shocked when she learned bodies had been discovered under her school in 2020.
“I had no idea that this was happening in my community, that my high school could potentially have a cemetery underneath that we had never learned about,” Harrison said.
It sparked her interest in writing and directing a play in her senior year titled, “Legacy,” which is available to watch on YouTube.
Today, Upper Arlington is working to honor Litchford, placing a historical marker in a memorial garden where his cemetery once stood.
But still, it saddens Williams to consider that for decades, the cemetery that honored the lives of her ancestors was virtually erased from the landscape where it once stood.
Litchford's legacy
Williams said she’s extremely proud of her family history, and in particular, the incredible achievements of Pleasant Litchford.
“To me, he is my four-time great-grandfather on my father's side of the family, and he has become my hero.,” she said.
Litchford’s contributions extended beyond his own success; as a participant in the Underground Railroad, he played a vital role in guiding enslaved people toward freedom, shaping the course of Black history in America.
Despite his significance, the treatment of his final resting place tells a different story.
“At Union Cemetery, it just says ‘Litchford Cemetery.’ So they didn't take the time to try to figure out who each person was, and they just put them in a mass grave, like one after the other after the other after the other,” Williams said.
A larger trend
This disregard for Black burial spaces is not just an isolated incident.
Noël Voltz, an assistant professor of history at Case Western University, points to a cemetery in Darke County, Ohio, that remains unmarked with no historical placard.
“We drove and we found this cemetery that was filled with people's stories and actual people. And it was this Black cemetery that, who knows what would happen to it… in 10, 20, 30 years?” Voltz said.
Another long-forgotten Black cemetery in northwest Ohio only recently received recognition.
The cemetery in Defiance County was owned by Archibald Worthington, a formerly enslaved man who moved from Virginia to Ohio in the mid-1800s.
There are broader implications of such neglect of sacred Black spaces, Voltz said, preserving and honoring these sacred sites respects the human dignity of those buried there.
“When we come in to bulldoze space and we don’t pay attention to who was there before and we don’t honor that … we’re oftentimes destroying things like cemeteries, spaces where folks lived and died and their families honored them and we have to think about what that means,” Voltz said.
This story is part of the Black Excellence in Ohio series, made possible by the America 250-Ohio Commission.
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