BLACK HISTORY MONTH: NYC’s sacred — and segregated — Black burial sites

Many New Yorkers tin mention section and verse astir the African Burial Ground National Monument successful downtown Manhattan adjacent City Hall, but lone a fewer cognize astir the burial grounds and segregated Black cemeteries scattered passim New York City’s boroughs.

Fortunately, we person Mary French, who has been tirelessly compiling information astir the historical sites with the purpose of memorializing them.

Locations specified arsenic the African Burial Ground National Monument astatine the Ted Weiss Federal Building connected Broadway tin beryllium traced backmost to the Colonial era. There were 419 skeletons of enslaved radical exhumed and reburied determination successful 1991. It is considered 1 of the oldest and largest of the Black burial grounds successful the city.

Harlem Burial Ground Task Force co-Chair Rev. Patricia Singletary (center) consecrates remains recovered astatine 126th St. and Second Ave. successful East Harlem. The reverend is joined by task unit members erstwhile New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (r.), and Sharon Wilkins (l.). (New York City Economic Development Corporation)

Since the excavation and renovation astir the monument, it has received a dependable travel of visitors, but little attraction is fixed to the Johnson Burial Ground tract successful Bayside, Queens, which is 1 of the smallest and astir obscure burial sites.

As French notes successful her research, it is located connected “a tiny elevation tucked betwixt a conception of the Long Island [Vanderbilt] Motor Parkway Trail and the flat buildings of the Alley Pond Owners Corp.” More disposable and accessible is the New Lots Burial Ground successful East New York, Brooklyn, replete with thoroughfare signs, a memorial plaque connected Livonia Ave. and precise large plans for the adjacent future.

A 1905 photograph of a Bronx African burial crushed that dates to the aboriginal 18th century. Today, it’s located successful Joseph Rodman Drake Park. (Obtained by Daily News)

The Brooklyn Public Library is touting “a transformational vision” for the New Lots Library branch, which features a caller room to “honor the site’s past arsenic a formerly-unacknowledged African Burial Ground, and observe African-American culture.” It calls the large plans an accidental to “create a abstraction that volition beryllium a hub for knowledge, remembrance, and community.”

Designed by the Boston-based MASS Design Group and Manhattan’s Marble Fairbanks architecture firms, the caller 25,000 square-foot room volition diagnostic much nationalist and programme abstraction for each property groups, abstracted floors for kid and big services, caller nationalist accumulation areas, a euphony room, expanded assemblage gathering spaces and a abstracted New Lots Library Adult Learning Center “where adults tin get their precocious schoolhouse equivalency diploma and instrumentality classes successful literacy, citizenship mentation and more,” successful summation to “significant outdoor areas, viewing terraces” and a “landscaped plaza surrounding the library.”

Construction is scheduled to commencement successful autumn of 2025 and the tract is scheduled to reopen successful 2028, with the room unit providing services and programs during the construction. This effort to admit a “formerly-unacknowledged African Burial Ground” reflects the tireless efforts of French and her New York City Cemetery Project.

An artist’s rendering of the exterior of the renovated New Lots Library Branch, which is owed to beryllium completed successful 2028. (MASS Design Group & Marble Fairbanks Architects)

Armed with master’s degrees successful anthropology and room science, French has visited 70 cemeteries and burial grounds truthful far, and she plans to adhd much sites to her registry.

“I’ve ever enjoyed visiting cemeteries, for the stories they archer and for their earthy and creator beauty,” diagnostic astir her NYC Cemetery Project blog connected the “Boroughs of the Dead” website.” “When I moved to New York City, I began exploring the city, coming crossed assorted cemeteries and learning astir ones that had been removed oregon built over. I’m precise overmuch a ‘why?’ person; ever funny astir wherefore things are the mode they are, and I started wondering wherefore immoderate cemeteries were preserved and others lost, who are these radical that are buried successful this cemetery, and wherefore are they were buried present and not determination else. … I couldn’t find a bully publication that truly had the accusation I was looking for, truthful I started doing the probe myself with the volition of penning my ain publication someday,” she said.

While anticipating the publishing of her book, she has created an extended blog astatine the New York City Cemetery Project website that has a proliferation of narratives, images and accusation for inquiring minds that spans each 5 boroughs.

In Brooklyn, the Cemetery Project tours statesman with a 17th-century past of slavery mirroring the little Manhattan acquisition for enslaved Africans. Brooklyn, which provided immense amounts of produce, besides witnessed the largest burial of slaves and aboriginal escaped radical of African descent. Many of the Black burial sites were segregated from their owners oregon achromatic neighbors successful the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church’s cemetery.

Circumstances present are precise akin to the segregation successful the Reformed Church burials successful East Harlem, wherever underneath the Metropolitan Transportation Authority installation connected 126th Street Depot is the Harlem African Burial Ground. Thanks to the indefatigable enactment of the Harlem African Burial Ground Initiative (HAGBI), helmed by the Rev. Dr. Patricia Singletary of the Elmendorf Reformed Church and erstwhile City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the past of the Harlem burial crushed has been wide disseminated.

Two years agone successful the Bronx, members of the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Project and students from the Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School and PS 48 — the Joseph Rodman Drake School — hosted a collaborative lawsuit focused connected connecting, learning and remembering. They gathered to grant their corporate ancestors, chiefly those resting successful bid wrong the Enslaved People’s Burial Ground.

The tract astatine Joseph Rodman Drake Park & Enslaved African Burial Ground — located astatine Oak Point Ave., Drake Park South, Longfellow Ave. and Hunts Point Ave. — was called the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground and was forgotten to past until it was designated a metropolis landmark successful 2023. The tract has since drawn sizeable attraction with the assistance of the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Project and its supporters.

The city’s Landmarks Commission wrote successful 2023, “The Joseph Rodman Drake Park and Enslaved People’s Burial Ground is simply a New York City Park containing 2 colonial-era cemeteries: the Hunt-Willett-Leggett Cemetery for those descended from, and associated with, these 3 aboriginal settler families; and an enslaved people’s cemetery, for those forced to labour for these families.” The burial tract of noted achromatic writer Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820), PS 48’s namesake, is located there.

“This designation is simply a wide illustration of the dignity and respect we indispensable wage to each radical who are portion of our city’s history, including astatine this determination successful the bosom of the Hunts Point Peninsula,” said Maria Torres-Springer, lawman politician for Housing, Economic Development and Workforce. “The Landmarks Preservation Commission continues to fulfill its pledge to execute practice that reflects the diverseness of our metropolis done equitable and cautious information of worthy buildings and places passim this large metropolis done its constitution of historical districts and idiosyncratic landmarks successful places that person overmuch little representation, for which I americium truthful appreciative.”

Much similar the different boroughs, Staten Island has aggregate African burial grounds; the astir notable is the Sandy Ground Cemetery successful Rossville. According to a Landmarks Conservancy report, determination are much than 500 unmarked graves astatine the Sandy Ground cemetery, which was location to the oldest continuously inhabited Black colony successful the U.S.

The Sandy Ground Historical Society Museum and its yearly festival observe of Black history, civilization and freedom. The depository is besides chartered by the New York State Department of Education to bring acquisition astir and consciousness of Sandy Ground to adults and children done guided tours, exhibits and interactive activities, including arts, crafts and lectures.

Beginning with Black History Month successful 2023, the museum’s organizers person been untiring successful their efforts to alert the Staten Island assemblage and the metropolis astir the request for funds to sphere the past and bequest of Sandy Ground. Sandy Ground Cemetery faces problems communal to each the burial sites — the situation of protecting and preserving the locations and passing the torch to the adjacent generation. Abandonment, neglect and vandalism endanger the gravesites, and indispensable beryllium dealt with to sphere and decently memorialize them.