Tuskegee University Cemetery Stories chronicles the important contributions of those whose last home on this earth is the Tuskegee University Cemetery—those many men and women who diligently built on the foundation laid by Tuskegee founders Lewis Adams and Booker T. Washington. Some of the notable names among those interred in the cemetery include Washington himself, American literary and jazz critic Albert Murray, football coach Cleve Abbott, supporter of Rosenwald Schools Clinton Calloway, treasurer Warren Logan, founder and editor of the Negro Year Book Monroe Work, musician and conductor William L. Dawson, and photographer Prentice Polk.

This book also tells the stories of dozens of others whose names are less well known but whose contributions to their families, to their communities, and to Tuskegee were no less valued, whose memories are no less cherished. Mingled amongst the tales of the great and the good, the brilliant and the powerful, are the shortest stories—the heartbreaking headstones that memorialize the briefest lives.

What emerges through the portraits of each of the ninety-three individuals featured in these pages is a portrait of a school and a community united—striving together, working together, living and dying together—and a portrait of our human race, united in our desires—to build, to create, to love and be loved—and in our ultimate fate. Tuskegee University Cemetery Stories is a celebration of those who have come before us and an inspiration to all of us who are still here.