Rosa Dixon Bowser

The most famous of those buried at East End Cemetery, Rosa Dixon Bowser was a pioneering educator, writer, and civic leader. She graduated from the Richmond Colored Normal School in the early 1870s at age 17 and became president of the Virginia State Teachers Association in 1890. Five years later, she founded the Richmond Woman’s League to raise funds for three African American women convicted of murdering a white woman in Lunenburg County; the women were eventually acquitted. A committed reformer until her death, Mrs. Bowser played an active role in a host of organizations geared toward social and racial justice. Her son, Oswald Barrington Herndon Bowser, a noted physician, is buried in the same plot.