Sweet Olive Cemetery

Additional Cemetery Info...

Officially dated to 1898, Sweet Olive was the first cemetery for African Americans incorporated in the Baton Rouge city limits. The exact date that burials began occurring is unknown and is thought to be earlier than 1898. From 1898 to 1912, Sweet Olive was owned and maintained jointly by two benevolent societies. In 1912, the property was divided and was separately owned by the two societies until 1975. It was at this time that the Sweet Olive board was incorporated as a nonprofit organization and became recognized by the Louisiana Cemetery Board.

Sweet Olive is the oldest African American cemetery established in Baton Rouge by an African American fraternal organization. Sweet Olive and the Lutheran cemetery were the only African American cemeteries in Baton Rouge until 1926, and of the two, Sweet Olive was the closest to the center of 19th century Baton Rouge.

Sweet Olive is currently 4.95 acres bounded by North Boulevard on the north side, Delphine street and Baxter Street on the east side, Louisiana Avenue on the south side, and South 22nd on the west side. (Mahoney, Anne (2014), Nominating Sweet Olive Cemetery: Baton Rouge’s Oldest African American Cemetery and the Preservation Process of Urban Historic Cemeteries in Southeast Louisiana, M.A., University of Louisiana at Lafayette, United States of America). The two plots that the cemetery occupies on either side of America Street are identifiable as square 21 and 22 of the Fuqua and Lamon subdivision, which was created in 1871 (Conveyance Records, transfer from Fuqua to T. S. Jones, East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court, Baton Rouge Louisiana, Original Bundle No. 24:48).