A Tale of Two Cities: Part One

When you live in New York City, you often don’t see the city.  You’re too busy working, and when you have play time, the last thing you want to do is share your space with excited tourists cluttering the sidewalks in awed stupor.  But I was on a mission to discover history, specifically Black American history.  I knew Africans had been brought to New York as early as the 1600’s, but were there any remaining sites that chronicled our earlier existence prior to the Harlem Renaissance?

My search led me to an informative article on theroot.com, which in turn, led me to the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan, and the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn.  The African Burial Ground is in two parts: a National Parks Service Visitor’s Center at 290 Broadway, that houses exhibits about the discovery, excavation and reinterment of 419 African remains dating from the early 18^th century, found in 1991, and the outdoor memorial around the corner, the actual site of the reinterred remains.  I recommend starting with the Visitor’s Center to learn about the lives of these early African settlers who came to Manhattan in the 1620’s as slaves to work in the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam, which later became New York under the English in 1644.

You can view a short film in the Center’s theater, which portrays the preparation and burial of a beloved husband and father in this Colonial African community.  Reenacted ritual is interposed with present day interviews and footage of how the burial ground was discovered during the construction of the Ted Weiss Federal Building in the 1990’s and its ensuing controversy.  It took a major outcry from community leaders, activists and concerned citizens to stop building so that the uncovered remains could be examined, removed and preserved without further damage.  This clash of past and present, of life and death is evident throughout the exhibit.  You can see pictures of the remains during the excavation, and artifacts of silver pendants, buttons and cufflinks found with the burials.  You learn about slave laws: no more than 12 slaves could assemble for a funeral which was only permitted during daylight hours; slaves could be whipped for making noise in the streets on Sundays.  Maybe that’s why we holler so much in praise of the Good Word in church on Sundays!  You can try your hand at rolling a barrel up a steep incline to experience how physically punishing their work was.  The average life span was 30 to 45 years of age if disease or physical abuse didn’t kill you. By the middle 1700’s, 20% of New York’s inhabitants were African and 40% of households were slave holding.  Slavery in New York was not abolished until 1827.

I took this dissonance around the corner, towards the end of the block to the memorial site.  It is open to the sidewalk, with only a slender, waist high, metal wire fence surrounding the 7 grassy burial mounds, and the imposing 24 Foot Ancestral Libation Chamber and Circle of the Diaspora Memorial.  Again I felt the uncomfortable compromise of past and present. Our ancestors in a solemn, simple row with no adornment and a small wire fence to prevent you from reaching them directly, to mourn and remember them unencumbered in our own way.  They deserve our visits, to bear witness and to celebrate those who came before us to help build this city and make it what it still is today, despite our problems and complexities, Great.