Odd Fellows Cemetery

We are helping a community rediscover its heritage.

In 2009, college faculty and students led by Katherine Ambroziak joined the East Knoxville community to reclaim and reanimate Odd Fellows Cemetery, a deteriorating African-American burial ground that dates back to 1880.

This initiative addresses the negative physical and social influences affecting the area and offers the community a safe, engaging and respectful environment to rediscover its heritage.

Odd Fellows Cemetery is one of Knoxville’s first dedicated African-American burial grounds, containing more than 6,000 graves. It is located at 2001 Bethel Avenue, Knoxville.

Since 2009, we along with the Knoxville ReAnimation Coalition and the City of Knoxville have collaborated with community and student volunteers to bring about change in the cemetery. Led by KRC founder Stephen Scruggs and our own Katherine Ambroziak, the reclamation project is a community-oriented outreach initiative that seeks to restore community memory and pride by engaging participants in a process of restoration and design of a memorial landscape.

Over the past years, our faculty have worked with more than 1,500 community and student volunteers. Volunteers from Project GRAD, Chi Sigma Iota and Liberty Church have helped map the 250 stones in the cemetery, and work also has included designing and building a community passage.

Read more about the Odd Fellows Cemetery project.

This project gives us an opportunity to give back to this community that has taught us so much about pride and grace.

Katherine Ambroziak, Associate Dean and Associate Professor

Each summer, up to 150 Architecture students and university freshmen in UT’s Center for Leadership and Service Ignite Serves program build and fortify the earthen walkways that provide safe, accessible passage through the cemetery. So far, they have constructed more than 1,300 linear feet of passage.

The Knoxville ReAnimation Coalition is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization whose mission is to educate and create a greater sense of self-worth amongst Knoxville’s African-American community through projects that illuminate and valorize its past achievements. It strives to strengthen social structures and restore community identity.

The Odd Fellows Cemetery sign describing its history.

A woman in the foreground speaks to a large gathering of students standing on the path that is under construction.

Student headstone rubbings displayed among trees

A group of five University of Tennessee students with rakes work alongside the path through the cemetery.

A group of students with shovels stand around a large pile of dirt while another male student pushes dirt in a wheelbarrow.

A male student dumps a wheelbarrow load of dirt onto the path where two female students are working.

A group of students with rakes work on spreading dirt on a path.

Three side-by-side images of a path showing the progress on the community passage.

Closeup photo of an old, lichen-covered wooden sign with trees in the background.

Three female students with numerous grave markers in the cemetery.

Closeup of a headstone with red flowers, surrounded by dense ivy and ground cover.

A headstone at night, illuminated by two paper bag lanterns.

A collection of gravestones standing in the cemetery marked with pink ribbons.

A group of four women kneel on the ground while working with a collection of headstones.