New York's African Burial Ground

Company

National Park Service

Price

$7.99

Source

Official Store

By the end of the 18th century, over 15,000 enslaved African men, women, and children had arrived, labored, and died in what is now known as New York City. The African Burial Ground was a forgotten memory—the only evidence of its existence a blip on historical maps. However, in 1991, the construction of a new federal building in Lower Manhattan would exhume this memory, and past African lives lived and lost, to the literal surface. Crews unearthed a massive 6.6-acre cemetery, or five city blocks, which silently housed the skeletal remains of these African New Yorkers for centuries. Initial…