Burial plots were quickly laid out, and Woodlawn Cemetery opened on May 13, 1895. A 22.5-acre (91,000 m 2) plot of land adjacent to Payne's Cemetery was purchased, a portion of which was the site of the American Civil War's Fort Chaplin. They formed the Woodlawn Cemetery Association, and were incorporated on January 8, 1895. Van Horn, secretary-treasurer and directors Seymour W. Woodlawn's incorporators consisted of five white men: Jesse E. With Graceland on the verge of closing, a number of white citizens decided that a new burial ground, much farther from any development, was needed. The Commissioners of the District of Columbia (the city's government) pressed for the closure of Graceland to accommodate the need for housing.
By the early 1890s, the decomposition of bodies in the partially filled cemetery was polluting the nearby water supply and creating a health hazard. Graceland Cemetery, founded in 1871 on the edge of the Federal City, was rapidly engulfed by residential development. Woodlawn Cemetery was founded because of a crisis among the black burying grounds. Just two cemeteries met the needs of the city's black populace: Graceland Cemetery (what is now Hechninger Mall at the corner of Maryland Avenue NE and Bladensburg Road NE) and Payne's Cemetery (now the site of Fletcher-Johnson Elementary School and the Fletcher-Johnson Recreation Center). By the 1880s, most of the city's African American population lived in the eastern part of the Federal City and Washington County and east of the Anacostia River. Many cemeteries refused to bury African Americans, while others separated whites from "colored people" (African Americans, Native Americans, and Asians). The District of Columbia was established in 1791, and for the first 160 years of its existence nearly all non-Catholic cemeteries in the city were segregated by race. 1.1 Closure, reopening, and current status.
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