‘A sacred space in Manhattan’: Monument pays tribute to African slave legacy
Published at | Updated at
Slave labor, complete with unforgiving overseers, miserable lives and early deaths, is a part of the history of the United States — not just in the cotton fields of Georgia, but in New York City as well.
From the late 17th century until the early 19th century, slavery was permitted, and widely practiced, right in the Big Apple. Much of lower Broadway, the stockade that lent its name to Wall Street, and the city’s first water system and street lamps were products of slave labor.
A 1991 archeological dig prior to the construction of a federal building in lower Manhattan uncovered a centuries-old cemetery that held the remains of hundreds of enslaved Africans. Like the graves, the city’s slavery heritage had been out of sight, out of mind for a long, long time.
Controversy resulted. Petitions, protesters and politicians joined together to reach a compromise about what should be done with the sacred ground. A total of 419 skeletal remains were removed and sent to Howard University in Washington, D.C., for research. They were returned to the burial ground, placed in mahogany coffins made in Ghana and reinterred according to African funeral tradition. Seven earthen mounds now mark the site of the reburial.
Those seven mounds are now part of African Burial Ground National Monument and are visible to anyone walking along Duane Street. Also visible is the outdoor memorial completed in 2007, referred to as "a sacred space in Manhattan" on the monument's website.
Step inside and walk across the Circle of the Diaspora with its symbols of varied aspects of African culture. The heart-shaped West African symbol Sankofa, translated roughly as “learn from the past to prepare for the future," according to a park brochure, is engraved on the exterior of the Ancestral Libation Chamber, built as a spiritual place for reflection and meditation. At 24 feet high, the chamber represents in part the distance between the current street level and the location where the remains were found.
Photos of skeletal remains packed together are displayed in the visitor center, a smallish, 2,500-square-foot complex where anyone could spend an hour, including taking 20 minutes to watch an introductory video to learn about both the site’s past and its recent politics.
A re-created African burial with four life-size models gathered around a basic wooden coffin is the centerpiece. Drawers contain artifacts found in the graves, shroud pins, coins, cuff links, waist beads.
One can attempt to push a bulky barrel stuffed with 60 pounds of weights up a small incline. Slaves did the same while unloading, according to Sean Ghazala, one of the park's guides, except the barrels slaves carried usually weighed around 400 pounds.
Slaves in the city generally toiled differently than those in the South. Yes, some worked farmland, and much of Manhattan was farmland at the time, but this was hardly plantation work with cash crops. Instead of picking cotton or tobacco as they would have in the South, many slaves crafted candles, barrels, shoes and saddles. Still others forged metal and dug trenches. A posted illustration depicts enslaved Africans setting a hollowed-out pine log pipe into a newly dug trench. They were paid $1 per day, but their wages went to their owners.
The visitor center walls are filled with reproduced period documents as well as sordid stories of slave life. One story is about Cuffee, a literate black man who was the property of Speaker of the New York General Assembly Adolph Philipse. Suspected of arson, Cuffee was found at the Philipse home and burned alive May 30, 1741, as punishment for “wickedly, voluntarily, feloniously and maliciously conspiring with Quack and divers(e) other negroes, to kill and murder the inhabitants of this city," according to a display at the site.
Not far away is a large image of a lost-and-found ad, colonial style, which ran in the New York Gazette on Oct. 27, 1763. The lost item in this case was a runaway slave. (“Whoever delivers either of the said Negroes to the Subscriber shall receive TWENTY SHILLINGS Reward for each beside all reasonable Charges.”) A set of shackles similar to those used to bind kidnapped Africans on ships used to transport slaves to the colonies is displayed nearby. Take a moment to peruse the list of laws regarding the treatment of slaves: “1692: No slaves shall play games or be disorderly on the Sabbath on pain of whipping,” “1702: Any slave who strikes a Christian man or woman shall be jailed for 14 days and receive corporal punishment,” “1708: All children born of slave mothers shall be slaves as well,” “Slaves may never give testimony against a white person.”
A posted timeline tells the tale of slavery in New York, stretching from the 1500s to the early 1800s. The tide of slavery began to ebb around the turn of the 19th century. Beginning in 1799 and over the next couple of decades, the New York state government passed legislation putting limits on slavery expansion, finally outlawing the practice on July 4, 1827.
If you go …
What: African Burial Ground National Monument
Where: New York City
When: Visitor center open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Memorial open daily, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Cost: Free
Phone: 212-637-2019
Web: nps.gov/afbg
Michael Schuman graduated cum laude from Syracuse University in 1975 and received an MFA in professional writing in 1977 from the University of Southern California. He lives with his family in New England and can be reached at mschuman@ne.rr.com .
