Bethany Cemetery Designated a City of Austin Landmark, Honoring Austin’s Oldest Black Cemetery
AUSTIN, TX (September 3, 2026) – Preservation Austin is thrilled to announce that Austin City Council voted to designate Bethany Cemetery as a City of Austin Landmark at their August 27 meeting. The cemetery, located at 1300-1308 Springdale Road, is the oldest known Black cemetery in Austin and one of the city’s most significant sites of Black heritage. Preservation Austin is honored to partner with Bethany Cemetery Association President Sue Spears-Martin to prepare and bring forward this nomination.
“Preservation is resistance against erasure. Bethany Cemetery testifies to Black communal effort and perseverance—women like Eva Taylor Ross and Sue Spears-Martin holding the line, sustaining the stories that belong to Austin's foundation. When we preserve, we honor that legacy and say: You matter. Your ancestors matter. Your place in Austin's story is permanent. We protect the truth about who built this city and ensure that future generations inherit not just buildings but a sense of belonging,” said Preservation Austin immediate past-president Miriam Conner.
“Bethany’s Historic Landmark designation is more than recognition of a cemetery,” said Sue Spears-Martin, president of Bethany Cemetery Association, “ It is recognition of generations of Black Austinites who helped build this city, but whose stories were too often left out of the written history. This designation says: they were here, their lives mattered, and their history is Austin’s history. This sacred place is worth preserving.”
Designating underrepresented heritage sites is one of Preservation Austin’s key advocacy priorities. Per 2025 data collected by our organization, only 58 of Austin’s 690 local landmarks honored Austin’s Black heritage, and only 18 landmarks were associated with Mexican American heritage. In working with property owners to designate underrepresented heritage sites, the non-profit aims to increase the presence of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, the LGBTQ+ community, women, the disabled, and the working class in our city’s inventory of historic resources and better tell the full story of Austin’s diverse history.
Sue Spears-Martin (center) with Preservation Austin and advocates at City Hall on August 27. (Photo: Preservation Austin)
About Bethany Cemetery
Established in 1893, Bethany Cemetery is the oldest known Black cemetery in Austin, providing burials to African Americans in Austin at a time when there were few options to do so. The cemetery encompasses hundreds of known burials, dating from 1879, before the official founding of the cemetery, to 1985. The people laid to rest at Bethany speak to the plurality of the African American experience in Austin, including stories of enslavement and emancipation, Buffalo Soldiers, State of Texas employees, religious leaders, domestic workers, entrepreneurs, and athletes. During an era when Black life was chronically under-documented in the official record, Bethany Cemetery provides a critical genealogical record for hundreds of lives.
With no municipal cemetery available to African Americans at the time, five Black businessmen established the Bethany Cemetery Company in 1893, purchasing the land and providing burials to Black Austinites. By the 1930s, Eva Taylor Ross led the effort to care for the cemetery, working to bring attention and remembrance to Bethany Cemetery until her passing in 1992. In the mid-1990s, the mantle was assumed by Sue Spears-Martin, current president of the Bethany Cemetery Association, whose leadership has mobilized community support, preserved Bethany’s stories, and sustained restoration efforts amid nearby development pressures.
Read the complete nomination, with additional historic context and images, here.