The seventeenth and eighteenth century burial ground of free and enslaved Africans in lower Manhattan, rediscovered in 1991.
Discovery During Federal Construction
In 1991, during preliminary excavation for a federal office building at the corner of Duane and Elk Streets in lower Manhattan, archaeologists uncovered the remains of more than 419 men, women, and children of African descent who had been buried at the site in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The discovery, eventually understood to be a small portion of a much larger burial ground that may have held the remains of as many as 15,000 free and enslaved Africans, transformed both American historic preservation practice and the public understanding of the African presence in colonial New York.
Colonial New York and the Negros Burial Ground
The burial ground, known to colonial New Yorkers as the Negros Burial Ground, served the African community of Manhattan from approximately the 1690s through 1794. African Americans were prohibited by colonial and early state law from being interred in the city's church yards; the burial ground, located outside the wall that gave Wall Street its name, was the only consecrated space available. Over its century of active use, the burial ground received the remains of an extraordinary cross-section of colonial African American life: the enslaved laborers who built much of colonial Manhattan, the free Black tradespeople and merchants who sustained an autonomous African community despite legal subordination, and the many children whose mortality rates reflected the brutal conditions of urban slavery.
Activism and the Federal Response
The 1991 discovery prompted an unprecedented mobilization by African American activists, scholars, and clergy in New York City and across the country. Initial federal plans to proceed with construction over the burial ground were halted in the face of sustained protest; the General Services Administration was ultimately compelled to redesign the project, to fund extensive archaeological and bioarchaeological study of the recovered remains, and to support the establishment of a permanent memorial at the site. The case became a landmark in the development of American consultation requirements for federally funded projects affecting African American historic resources.
Reburial and the Howard University Study
The recovered remains were transferred to the W. Montague Cobb Biological Anthropology Laboratory at Howard University, where they were studied by a team led by the late Michael L. Blakey. The Howard study, the largest sustained scientific investigation of an African American historical population ever undertaken, generated detailed evidence of the harsh living and labor conditions of colonial New York's African community. After the conclusion of the study, the remains were reinterred in 2003 at the site of the original burial ground in a ceremony that drew thousands of participants from across the African diaspora.
The National Monument
President George W. Bush designated the African Burial Ground National Monument in February 2006, placing the site under the administration of the National Park Service. The monument, which occupies a small portion of the original burial ground, includes an outdoor memorial designed by the architect Rodney Leon and an interpretive visitor center in the adjacent federal office building. It is the only federal unit dedicated specifically to the colonial-era African American experience and remains one of the most-visited African American historic sites in the United States.
Significance for the National Movement
The African Burial Ground in New York is in many ways the precursor to the contemporary movement to preserve historic African American cemeteries across the United States. The activism that secured federal recognition of the site, the professional standards established for the bioarchaeological study, the model of descendant-community consultation, and the eventual establishment of a National Park Service unit at the site have all served as templates for subsequent African American burial ground preservation work. The 2024 federal Burial Grounds Preservation Act has its genealogy, in significant part, in the precedent set by New York three decades ago.