African Burial Ground Project

The African Burial Ground Project began in 1991 with the discovery of an African cemetery during the building of the Foley Square Project Federal Building in lower Manhattan in New York. The cemetery was the home of the remains of over 400 Africans. This finding, the largest bioarchaeological site identified in the Americas, immediately raised awareness as well as many questions about the colonial past of Northern states, especially New York, which had more enslaved Africans than had been realized. These questions were able to be answered in the years that followed, as a result of the close study of the remains at Howard University by a team of 70 to 80 researchers operating under the supervision of physical anthropologist Michael Blakey, the scientific director of the African Burial Ground Project.

The researchers combined information yielded by DNA with the study of skulls and historical data to tell the story of those whose skeletons they were examining—for example, their place of birth, age at death, cause of death, and general life conditions. They found that the Africans had come primarily from Congo, Ghana, and Benin. Their lives in New York had been quite harsh, as they clearly had frequently suffered from severe malnutrition and serious diseases. Children had died in great numbers, and as a whole, the birth rate was lower than the mortality rate.

On October 4, 2003, the excavated remains of the 17th- and 18th-century Africans were reinterred during a ceremony called the Rites of Ancestral Return, at the very site where they had been discovered almost 13 years earlier. The ceremony involved many cities, starting with an evening departure ceremony at Howard University in Washington, D.C., proceeding to Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, and finally reaching New York City. Over 3,000 people participated in what was to be, by all accounts, an emotional event, for the excavation and burial of those enslaved Africans brought the horror and evil of slavery to the fore once again, a most sensitive issue for many Africans who feel a special reverence for and gratitude to their ancestors. By the same token, it also raised the issue of the quite significant contributions Africans have made to the economic development of America, thus reinforcing the legitimacy and timeliness of the claim for reparations made by an increasing number of African Americans.

Above all, maybe, the African Burial Ground Project forced American society in general and African Americans in particular to deal with a painful chapter of history, Africans' enslavement in America, a chapter that has often been ignored or distorted, and whose scope and significance have therefore often been belittled. The African Burial Ground Project compelled Africans to revisit their identity, their relationship with the past, and their ancestors who suffered terribly not so long ago. As a result, as the public became aware of the African Burial Ground Project, many became committed and contributed to the proper and dignified handling and burial of the remains of their African ancestors. This was no easy battle in the face of federal indifference, if not resistance, to the right of African people to bury and treat their dead with the respect due them.

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