White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery

White Chapel Memorial Cemetery or simply White Chapel Cemetery is a memorial cemetery at 621 West Long Lake Road in Troy, Oakland County, Michigan. In the 1920s, a group of financiers led by Clarence J. Sanger had a brand-new vision for a cemetery and proposed their idea to Detroit architect Alvin Harley. Building began in 1925 and the cemetery began operation in 1929. Troy Michigan Information. 

Polar Bear Memorial

The state of Michigan dedicated a memorial on May 30, 1930, honoring the U.S. Army’s Polar Bear Expedition. It recognizes the efforts of the American North Russia Expeditionary Force (ANREF) against the Bolshevik Red Army in North Russia throughout 1918 and 1919. The remains of 56 ANREF soldiers exhumed from Russia were on this occasion re-buried in plots surrounding the Polar Bear Monument by carver Leon Hermant.

Discrimination

On August 10, 1960, an honorably released 66-year-old World War I veteran, George Vincent Nash, was gotten rid of from resting together with his Caucasian wife at the White Chapel Cemetery. [5] [6]

The explanation was that 40,000 plot owners “had actually paid for the restriction” for the type of people that might be buried at White Chapel Cemetery. According to the cemetery’s officials, corpses had to be at least 75% Caucasian to be buried at White Chapel. The Michigan state legislatures in both 1961 and 1962, failed to pass bills that would have restricted cemeteries to discriminate who might be interred in them on the basis of race.