On August 23, 1929, a solemn funeral service was held at Arlington National Cemetery for James Parks, a civilian granted full military honors through a rare authorization by the U.S. Secretary of War. Parks had died two days earlier on August 21st, closing a life uniquely intertwined with the evolving history of the Arlington estate.
Born into slavery on the original Custis–Lee property, Parks spent his entire life tending the same grounds on which he would one day be buried. After the Civil War transformed the estate into a national cemetery, he became Arlington’s first official gravedigger, excavating the resting places of thousands of Union soldiers and later guiding families searching for the graves of their loved ones. His intimate knowledge of the cemetery made him a living archive of its earliest decades.
By ordering a flag-draped casket and a full military escort, War Department officials turned his burial into a lasting tribute to the labor that shaped Arlington’s identity. Parks remains the only person interred in the cemetery who was also born on the property — a powerful symbol of continuity, devotion, and the human hands that built a national sanctuary from the fractured aftermath of war.
Image via Arlington National Cemetery, public domain.
