TAMPA, Fla. — MacDill Air Force Base will begin work in January to determine whether an African American cemetery is buried on property.

RELATED STORIES:

The forgotten Port Tampa cemetery could be in a wooded area on the Northeast side of the base.

Back in the late 1800s, African Americans who lived in Port Tampa were buried there. The military eventually purchased the property to build the base.

"If there is a cemetery, what we're going to do is first and foremost go above and beyond to make sure that those buried there are honored and we're going to make the public aware that the cemetery does exist," said Lt. Brandon Hanner, the spokesperson at MacDill Air Force Base. 

Engineers with the MacDill's Cultural Resource Department began studying the area a few weeks ago after getting a call from the Tampa History Center. Historian Rodney Kite-Powell was doing research on other forgotten African American cemeteries in Tampa when Port Tampa became a focal point.

"It kept coming up — Port Tampa cemetery, Port Tampa colored cemetery — and there are no cemeteries in Port Tampa right now and that leads you to believe, well, where are they?" Kite-Powell asked.

Still, Kite-Powell said it's not shocking to hear about a community losing a cemetery.

"Being an African American cemetery, it's a community that already doesn't have a voice during that time period, so they felt powerless because in large part they were powerless from stopping the powers that be from taking over their property," Kite-Powell said. 

Now a team at MacDill Air Force Base will determine whether to use ground-penetrating radar to determine what's underground. 

If a cemetery is there, the military base would be the fourth location where lost graves have been found in Tampa this year, but it may not be the last. 

Researchers are currently looking into two more cemeteries that were forgotten somewhere in Hillsborough County.