Hundreds Celebrate Opening of Burial Ground Monument

By Carl Glassman and Nick Pinto
POSTED OCTOBER 8, 2007

Sixteen years after the remains of 400 slaves and other colonial-era African-Americans were discovered at a Lower Manhattan construction site, hundreds came to celebrate the memorial that now honors them.

The African Burial Ground National Monument officially opened Oct. 3 with drumming, dramatic readings, speeches and spirituals, and a candlelight procession from the Battery to Foley Square.

The memorial, located east of Broadway on Duane Street, is the site of interment for bones found during the excavation of the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway. The building was redesigned to accommodate the memorial. It is believed that 15,000 to 20,000 African-Americans were buried in an expanse of 6.6 acres during the 18th century and early 19th centuries. As blacks could not be buried within New Amsterdam, the burial site was located outside the settlement’s walls.

The memorial, costing more than $50 million and declared a national monument in 2005 by President Bush, is the design of architect Rodney Leon. "All of Lower Manhattan was built on our graveyard with our sweat and blood," Leon, one of five finalists in a design competition, said during the presentation of his idea. "Our intention was to mark this as a sacred place. People in Lower Manhattan should no longer be able to walk past it without knowing the importance of the spot and the contribution that African Americans made to New York City."

Now complete and open to the public, Leon’s memorial succeeds in making a dramatic visual statement to passers-by. One side of a tall black granite passageway faces the street, bearing the words “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.”

Next to the wall, seven low grassy mounds mark the tombs of the 419 people found at the site. The tunnel itself – called the “Door of Return” in reference to the “Door of No Return” that led enslaved Africans away from their homes forever – leads to a circular courtyard set into the earth. Traditional West African symbols adorn the walls, and the paving stones are engraved with the ages and genders scientists at Howard University were able to attach to some of the bodies.

More than half of the remains recovered belonged to children under the age of twelve, and many died violent deaths, according to the Howard researchers.

Among the visitors gathering at the site over the recent Columbus Day holiday was Kathleen Goodin, an elderly Manhattan resident who described herself as “of Jamaican ancestry.”

“I first came the day after it opened, but I wanted to come back again,” she said, gesturing to the words on the wall. “Every time I think about that statement I cry.”

William and Laverne Floyd, visiting the memorial for the first time from the Bronx, said they were pleased to see a public acknowledgement of Africans’ early presence in the city.

 “People don’t think of New York as a slave state, but it was,” Laverne Floyd said. “There was a major slave market here, and this was the area many of them lived in. People think black people history in New York started in Harlem, but it goes much further back.”

William Floyd said he hopes the memorial can help young people like his grandchildren better understand their history.

“In schools today they don’t teach that slavery existed in New York,” he said. “People today are so disconnected from their tradition and history. This won’t change that all by itself, but it’s a start.”

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