In this year of limited travel, I’ve been featuring places close to home and tagging them #secretsocialdistancing. After hiking to a nuclear reactor with WGN producer Tom Barnas for the Chicago Scene, he invited me back on the show to share some little known history of Oak Woods Cemetery.
Did you know that the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere is in Chicago? No Civil War battles were fought in Illinois, but Chicago holds a deadly and overlooked chapter of the war. Oak Woods Cemetery, located in Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood, is secret #71 in my Secret Chicago book.
Bronzeville was the site of a Confederate prison camp during the Civil War. Camp Douglas opened in 1861 as a Union Army training camp. As the war raged on, the camp accommodated Confederate prisoners of war. Living conditions plummeted as overcrowding, swampy ground, and poor sanitation spread disease among the inmates. Camp Douglas was nicknamed “eighty acres of hell.” It was the deadliest Union prison camp of the war.
More than four thousand Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas were eventually buried in a mass grave at Oak Woods Cemetery. A towering thirty-foot monument inscribed with each soldier’s name marks the site. The plot also includes twelve headstones marking the graves of unknown Union camp guards. Nearby, a cenotaph memorializes Southerners who stood with the Union.
Oak Woods Cemetery is also notable as the final resting place for iconic African Americans like Jesse Owens, Ida B. Wells, Thomas A. Dorsey, and Mayor Harold Washington. For more secret spots in Chicago, you can order the book online now!
Visit WGN or watch the clip below: The Silence of Chicago’s Past is Deafening at Oak Woods Cemetery in Greater Grand Crossing
Jessica Mlinaric founded Urban Explorer in 2010 to inspire curious travelers by highlighting history, culture, and hidden gems in Chicago and beyond. She is the author of ‘Secret Chicago’ and ‘Chicago Scavenger.’ Jessica has visited 20+ countries and 30+ U.S. states. She has more than 16 years of experience as a marketing strategist and works as a freelance writer and photographer.
