Save Old Summit Cemetery

Old Summit Cemetery in Chattanooga, Tennessee is a historic Black cemetery established as the first community cemetery of the Summit community of Hamilton County, which was settled by Black families in the 1890s. According to a WPA Survey of Death Records in 1938, the cemetery has 200 unmarked burials in addition to several marked headstones. The Summit community lost access to the cemetery when the federal government took a large portion of the community's land for the Volunteer Ordnance Works (TNT Plant) to produce munitions for World War II. After the federal government discontinued use of the TNT plant, part of the land became what is now Enterprise South Nature Park and the land the cemetery lies on was sold to a private landowner. 

In 2025, the cemetery came under threat from Hamilton County proposals to use part of Enterprise South Nature Park for industrial development and to extend Hilltop Drive as a purported way to relieve traffic issues in the Ooltewah Exit 11/Hunter Road area. 

Thanks to the efforts of Save Enterprise South Nature Park, the Unity Group, and thousands of concerned citizens, Old Summit Cemetery is no longer threatened by industrial development. However, the Hilltop Drive Extension remains under consideration. The initial engineering report, which proposed the road extension running directly beside the fenced area of the cemetery, stated that there were no historical or cultural resources within the viewshed of the proposed road. The TN Historical Commission confirmed that there are unmarked burials on multiple sides of the presently fenced area of the cemetery. 

We understand that traffic is a serious concern in the area, but we won't allow the resting place of people who were building community amidst the violence and oppression of the Jim Crow era to be sacrificed for traffic relief or any other development that might encroach upon burials. 

We need your help to let Hamilton County know that sacred ground is not a shortcut !