The Negro League Baseball Grave Marker Project at Eden Cemetery is giving recognition to those who have received none, writes Brian Seltzer for KYW Podcasts.

Take Daniel McClellan, for example.

McClellan, born in 1878, pitched in the Negro League for 12 seasons.

 “He was the first Negro League pitching great. He also threw the first perfect game in Black history,” said Hakeem Thomas Sr., Eden Cemetery’s superintendent.

A perfect game honor has only gone to 21 pitchers in all of Major League baseball.

Daniel McClellan died in 1962 and was buried at Eden with an unmarked grave.

The grave marker project was created in 2019.

These days, at least 19 of the graves for Negro League players and executives need markers.

The cemetery includes 20,000 unmarked graves overall among the 56,000 people buried there.

Eden Cemetery is the oldest existing Black-owned cemetery in the United States and was part of the  National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

Pioneers like Philadelphia-born singer Marian Anderson, abolitionist William Still, and activist Octavius Catto are buried there.

Unmarked graves are just part of the challenges African Americans face when trying to trace their roots.

Read more about this effort to identify unmarked graves at Eden Cemetery at KYW Podcasts.

WHYY takes a look at historic Eden Cemetery.