The Plateau Cemetery is a historically important cemetery that has its beginnings with the history of the Last Slave Ship Clotilda (1860),and the establishment of the Africa Town community (known today as Africatown) by the survivors and their descendants. With the end of the US Civil War and the freeing of slaves in 1865, the survivors of the Clotilda having established a local community continued to have the dream of returning home to Africa. When this dream went unrealized, the survivors first paid rent then pooled their resources and eventually owned the land they had settled on and in 1870 founded Africa Town in what is now the Plateau - Happy Hills - Magazine Point areas north of Mobile. In 1872 they founded a church now known as Union Baptist Church and by 1876 the Africatown Graveyard was formally established, later becoming known as the Plateau Cemetery as well as Old Plateau Cemetery which today is directly adjacent to the New Plateau Cemetery and collectively they form the Plateau Cemetery. A historic marker for the Old Plateau Cemetery was erected in 2010 by The African-American Heritage Trail of Mobile, Alabama.

The Plateau cemetery is situated on a landscape that consists of the two sections noted above but separated and surrounded on several sides by watershed/storm drainage creeks that existed and/or were created as part of the development of the cemeteries and community around it. The oldest section of the cemetery is the area on the north side that was originally established as the Africatown graveyard and today is known as the Old Plateau Cemetery and is the final resting place of many of the enslaved Africans (Clotilda survivors), African-American community members and early African American veterans of US Armed Forces including an early Buffalo Soldier. This burial ground was formalized approximately 16 years after Africans arrived on the Clotilda, the last documented slave ship to leave Africa for the Americas. This older graveyard sits on gently sloping high ground that has a dry creek/drainage bed on the southern edge and another along its eastern edge. There are approximately 2,000 marked graves as well as many unmarked graves that were identified by the College of William and Mary's Africatown (CWM) Archaeological Project in 2010. It is also believed that additional earlier graves have been lost to time; however they remain in the memories of the community.

As the Old Plateau grave sites were sold and the area filled, a New section was needed. The unused land to the south of the Old section, whose ownership is also traced back to large landholding/plantation/slaveholding families (Meahrer, Foster, and others) and the Mobile Lumber and Mobile Coal companies of that era, was set aside in the late 1940's for use as the New Plateau cemetery area with the earliest documented burial in 1950. It should be noted that according to accounts of the time that this new area was low ground subject to flooding thus it was backfilled to raise the area to a more suitable higher ground for burials. This new area is today bounded by the creek/drainage bed to the north (Old Plateau southern edge) and another to the south and one to the east. This cemetery area will be fully occupied within the next couple of years as well and will likely comprise approximately 1700 graves.

Both cemeteries are also bounded on the west by the Bay Bridge Road Cutoff that serves a large industrial complex of lumber yards, an asphalt plant and other related businesses. Parking for the cemetery is limited on the cemetery side (east) of the street; however there is a parking area on the west side of the road that is to become the future home of the Africatown Welcome Center. The ownership history of both cemeteries is rooted in the history of both sections. The Plateau Cemetery Association that managed the Old Plateau cemetery has transferred management of this section to the Africatown Heritage Preservation Foundation. There are many plans underway in the Africatown Community for the management and preservation of the community including both the Old and New Plateau Cemetery areas, the latter of which is currently managed by the Union Missionary Baptist Church, Yorktown Baptist Church, First Hopewell Baptist Church, and Greater Pine Grove AME Church. There are no offices on site and visitors using the Find A Grave APP should understand that plans are underway to mark memorials with OLD or CWM in the plot location of the graves in the old section and ones with NEW are located in the new section of the cemetery. It should be noted that in 2018-2019 the Last Slave Ship Clotilda, through the efforts of many, was located in Mobile Bay and more recently the documentary Descendant (2022) tells the story from the community and descendants' heritage reinforcing the need for preservation of all the historical aspects connected with the Plateau Cemeteries both Old and New. Since there is no central office or data repository for the cemetery; anyone with questions should contact the Mobile County Public Library Local History and Genealogy located adjacent to the main library on 753 Government Street, Mobile, Alabama. For additional information on African American Heritage of the area contact the African American Heritage Preservation Foundation or the Dora Franklin Finley African American Heritage Trail project.