Morningstar Tabernacle No. 88 Order of Moses Cemetery and Hall

Morningstar Tabernacle No. 88 Order of Moses Cemetery and Hall

Morningstar Tabernacle No. 88 Order of Moses Cemetery and Hall were established around 1885 alongside a post-Emancipation Black settlement known as Gibson Grove. Residents, some of whom had been formerly enslaved, established a local benevolent society to care for the sick and destitute, bury the deceased, and provide overall support to the local Black community. In an act of racial injustice, highway construction in the 1960s ran through the Gibson Grove community and took a portion of the cemetery site.

Today, foundations are all that remain of Moses Hall, and the planned expansion of the Washington, D.C.-area Beltway further threatens the cemetery, where known burials span from 1894 to 1977. A coalition of neighbors and descendants is leading the effort to save this place by advocating that new Capital Beltway construction avoid the cemetery and hall site.

Morningstar Tabernacle No. 88 Order of Moses Cemetery and Hall was placed on America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2021 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.