Books by John Soward Bayne

This book presents the graves of writers from the American South. The selection is based on the authors' popular or critical reputations and the appeal and accessibility of their grave sites. Some may dispute whether these subjects were sufficiently Southern, and whether they were truly writers, but this is certain: they're all dead. The pictures of their graves, presented chronologically, illustrate Southern literary history, and this book memorializes the artists, some famous and some obscure.

This is a guidebook to South-View Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia. The cemetery was chartered 21 April 1886 by African-American businessmen, all former slaves, faced with exhaustion of Oakland Cemetery (1850) and desirous of a respectful burial ground. The Watts family has managed the cemetery from its earliest days; the current president is the great-granddaughter of the patriarch, Albert Watts. Notable burials include the parents and grandparents of Martin Luther King, Jr.; John Wesley Dobbs, the "Mayor of Sweet Auburn"; and Alonzo Franklin Herndon, who was born a slave, worked as a sharecropper, established a chain of opulent and successful barbershops, then became Atlanta's first black millionaire through the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. Through the lives and accomplishments in death-year order of over 100 people buried at South-View, this book tells the history of African-American Atlanta. Introductory essays are by Traci Rylands and Herman "Skip" Mason, Jr.

This is a guidebook to Westview Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia. The cemetery was founded in 1884, after all the burial lots at Oakland Cemetery had been sold. Westview is the largest cemetery in the Southeast, and it features the Abbey mausoleum, built by Cecil E. Bryan, designed to accommodate over 11,000 bodies. Notable burials include Henry Grady, Joel Chandler Harris, Asa Griggs Candler, and William Berry Hartsfield. The Afterword is by official Atlanta historian Franklin Miller Garrett (1906-2000). His history of the cemetery, commissioned by Westview and written in 1987, is published here for the first time.