Grace Heritage Community Development serves as steward of historic Southern Hills Cemetery (also known as 6th Street Cemetery) in Gadsden, Alabama — one of Etowah County’s oldest cemeteries. Established in the early 1800s as a burial ground for enslaved Africans, Southern Hills later became a leading cemetery for Gadsden’s African American community. In the late 1950s, an urban renewal initiative displaced over 300 nearby African American families, after which the cemetery fell into decades of neglect before coming under Grace Heritage’s custodianship.
Grace Heritage works to document, preserve, and advocate for the site. The organization maintains a database of over 800 burials and an archival collection which includes primary sources relating to those interred there, the surrounding historic African American community, plus Gadsden’s and Etowah County’s broader Black history. The collection is open to scholars and genealogists.
Today, Southern Hills Cemetery is listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage and is a member of the Alabama African-American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium.
Grace Heritage Community Development 