The African Burial Ground

The African Burial Ground

By 1703 New York City had the largest population of enslaved Africans outside of Charleston, South Carolina, and it is likely that some buried members of their population also contained enslaved Natives.

At least 15,000 of those nonwhites who were not allowed to be buried in the white church cemetery were buried instead in an area reserved for Africans that was excavated during construction. Only a few graves are visible in the memorial, and some of those might have been Native graves.

The memorial to that African community and their dead is surrounded by a wall of black granite inscribed with carved ideograms indicating the different religions they subscribe to in different parts of the African diaspora: Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

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