African Burial Ground National Monument – New York

In the very center of New York City, surrounded by federal buildings and urban motion, sites the powerful historic space: African Burial Ground National Monument.

This sacred ground came into view in the early 1990s during excavation for a new federal office building. What construction crews uncovered stopped the project in its tracks: hundreds of burial remains dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. These remains belonged to enslaved and free Africans who once made up a large portion of colonial New York’s population.  In an era when the city’s northern boundary ran far below today’s streets, this area had served as a cemetery outside the limits of the town, a place where Black New Yorkers laid their dead to rest when other burial grounds were closed to them.

In one of the most expensive real-estate markets on earth, the decision was made not to build over the discovery, but to preserve it, interpret it, and honor the lives found there. The effort culminated in 2006, when President George W. Bush officially designated the site a National Monument, securing its future and recognizing its national importance.

The African Burial Ground is a reminder that beneath modern streets lie layers of lives and stories of whole communities that built, served and endured long before Manhattan became what it is today. When history is uncovered, it deserves space, permanence and reverence.