The outdoor portion of African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan includes the Ancestral Chamber and the Ancestral Reinterment Ground/Jennifer Bain
By Jennifer Bain - February 1st, 2024
For all those who were lost
For all those who were stolen
For all those who were left behind
For all those who were not forgotten
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In a sacred sliver of outdoor space near City Hall in Lower Manhattan, those four sentences are etched onto a 24-foot-tall green granite monument alongside a heart-shaped Sankofa, a Ghanian symbol that means “learn from the past to prepare for the future.”
The dramatic memorial forces us to acknowledge the role that enslaved Africans played in building New York City. It’s a shameful story that might have been forgotten had workers building a federal office tower in 1991 not unearthed human remains 24 feet below the street.
All told, 419 human skeletal remains were exhumed, studied and eventually reinterred after a public outcry. That’s only a fraction of the estimated 15,000 enslaved and free Africans that were laid to rest between the mid-1600s and 1795 in a cemetery here that once spanned 6.6 acres or what’s now five city blocks.
The rediscovery sparked a grassroots movement to protect this hallowed ground and tell this important story. In 1993, 0.34 acres of the cemetery became the first below-ground New York City landmark and a national historic landmark. On Feb. 27, 2006, the African Burial Ground National Monument was proclaimed by President George W. Bush.
“Do you know why you just had to go through that airport-style security — put all your stuff through the X-ray machine and go through the metal detector?” ranger Bethany Burnett asked when I joined two other people for a public orientation tour in January. “This is a federal office building. So, I know it’s hard for people to picture when we’re in this museum, but on the other side of the wall, there’s an office building that houses the IRS, FBI, EPA and federal courts.”
This National Park Service unit — one of 12 surrounding the port of New York City — is divided over two separate spaces. The outdoor memorial is at African Burial Ground Way and Duane Street. The visitor center is around the corner on the ground floor of the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway and has its own entrance.
During the 30-minute tour, Burnett brought the sobering story of slavery to life.
“This is the oldest and largest non-excavated burial ground in North America for free and enslaved Africans,” she said to begin. “Its rediscovery in 1991 really changed how we talk about the history of New York. Often when we talk about slavery, we’re focusing on the south or we’re focusing on plantations or we talk about the Caribbean. Often we don’t talk about slavery in northern urban areas like New York itself, and yet the rediscovery of this burial ground really showed the prevalence of slavery in norther urban centers like New York.”
Africans were captured and brought to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on slave ships from different regions with diverse cultures, religions and languages. In 1664, the British took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.
Before the American Revolution, the NPS says, New York had more enslaved Africans than any other colony in the north. Along with free Africans, they were forced into manual labor. Men cleared farmland, filled swamps and built structures and roads. Women sewed, cooked, harvested and cared for their owners’ children as well as their own. Children carried water and firewood.
These enslaved people usually died of physical strain, malnutrition, punishment and diseases like yellow fever and smallpox instead of old age. But they were buried with CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLETE STORY