TEMPLE TERRACE, FL — For 60 years, students in King High School’s agricultural program tended farm animals and maintained farm equipment on a 1-acre lot on the south side of the school’s 56th Street campus.

On Nov. 20, the Hillsborough County Schools announced that those farm animals had been grazing on top of at least 145 coffins of people buried in a historical black pauper’s cemetery.

The school district said ground-penetrating radar confirmed the presence of a cemetery on the school campus dating from the 1940s.

The discovery took place after Tampa historian Ray Reed suggested the possibility to the school district in October following his research of old deeds.

He said the cemetery, known as Ridgewood Cemetery, was owned and maintained by the city of Tampa and contained between 250 and 286 graves. It was on 56th Street and Robles (now Sligh) Avenue.

He told the school district that confusion about the cemetery’s location may be due to a discrepancy between a county appraisal and the recorded deed from 1959, when the school district purchased the property.

The mistake may have been made when someone accidentally inserted the word “east” in the appraisal instead of “west,” he said.

See related story: King High School Campus May Contain Black Pauper’s Cemetery

Upon hearing the news, the school district immediately relocated the high school’s agriculture program and installed temporary fencing around the site, said Hillsborough County Schools Superintendent Jeff Eakins.

“We’re dealing with a tragedy,” Eakins said. “It’s like they’ve been forgotten. We want to make sure we bring their voices back in some way.”

He said the school district has made this a top priority.

“We will show the highest level of respect for the individuals who may be buried in the cemetery, and their descendants,” he said.

At the same time, he had strong words for officials who allowed this to happen in 1959.

“There’s no way that any leadership at that time did not know about it,” Eakins said. “I don’t want to presume anything; I wasn’t even born in the 1950s. But you’re looking at the way African Americans were treated in the Jim Crow era, and the fact that they were not even respected in their burials.”

Within days, the district hired a team of geophysical technicians from GeoView Inc. to map and scan two areas on the campus.

The first area that was scanned, on the southern edge of the King High School campus, showed clear evidence of burials, according to GeoView. Ground-penetrating radar found 145 coffins buried 3 to 5 feet deep.

“The radar, by itself, cannot tell exactly what is under the surface,” school district spokeswoman Tanya Arja said. “However, the pattern of the findings matches with historical records of a one-acre cemetery on the site.”

She said the area contains agricultural lab facilities and an agricultural workshop built in the late 1970s. The school district is now making plans to remove the workshop.

GeoView also scanned a second area, on the northeast corner of the campus. There was no evidence of burial sites there.

Although radar detected only about 140 coffins, Arja said that doesn’t mean 250 to 268 people weren’t buried there as historical records indicate.

Many of the dead buried in the cemetery were infants or small children— possibly 77. Their smaller coffins would be difficult to locate by scanning, especially after the amount of time that has passed.

Additionally, some coffins containing adult burials may have decayed underground to the point where they cannot be detected 75 years later.

Others may be located beneath the agricultural workshop, and still others may have been moved to another cemetery.

The school district has delivered the findings to the county medical examiner and state archaeologist, as required by Florida law.

“We expect they will take the next 30 days to review this report,” Arja said. “They can then keep possession of the land or decide to turn the land back over to the school district.”

If the land is turned back over to the Hillsborough County Public Schools, Eakins said, school leaders will work with members of the Historical Response Committee to discuss the best ways to memorialize the people buried there and maintain the cemetery.

The committee is made up of representatives from community groups and faith-based leaders, as well as city, county and state elected officials.

In the meantime, the city of Tampa is relocating residents of the Robles Park Village housing projects in Tampa to alternative housing after archaeologists hired by the Tampa Housing Authority confirmed two months ago that the housing project was built on top of at least 127 gravesites from the all-black Zion Cemetery.

And there could be more sites. MacDill Air Force Base is investigating a wooded lot on the base that may have been a cemetery for black residents.