Memorial to Rise at African Burial Groun

By VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK -- As many as 20,000 slaves and free blacks who helped build New York's economy from docks to warehouses were buried a walk away from Wall Street -in earth where a permanent memorial to them will soon arise.

At a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday, African drumbeats accompanied the unveiling of the $3 million design by Rodney Leon, a Yale-trained architect who has lived in West Africa.

"We estimate that about 20,000 people were buried here in the 18th century, and half of the remains found were children. Some of them worked too. When they died, they could only be buried outside city walls," Leon said after the morning ceremony. "These people were part of a worldwide network of slavery, and they helped the New York economy run and thrive."
His design for the African Burial Ground --a spiraling, sunken court made of granite from Brazil and Canada --includes symbols and hieroglyphics inspired by his time in Ivory Coast. Jutting up from one side will be a slender, 24-foot-tall "ancestral chamber" meant to represent "the soaring African spirit embracing and comforting all those who enter," according to Leon.

The monument is to be completed in about a year, with funding from the federal General Services Administration, which manages the site along with the National Park Service.

"But we're not allowed to raise private funds," Leon said, explaining that proposals for the project had to fit the GSA's budgetary guidelines without relying on outside funding.
The colonial-era cemetery is now nestled between lower Manhattan highrises, near City Hall and adjoining the building that houses the New York offices of the FBI.

Closed in 1794, the five-acre burial ground was long forgotten as construction landfill eventually buried it 20 feet underground. When the cemetery was rediscovered during construction of a federal office tower in 1991, community pressure and public protests prompted the government to abandon work.

More than 400 sets of remains were discovered, buried in coffins and wrapped in white shrouds. Many of the people showed signs that they were malnourished, and some suffered from severe arthritis, muscle tears, and bone fractures caused by intense physical labor.

"No longer should one be able to walk past this site and not know the important contributions that ancestral Africans have made to this district," Leon said.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, based in Harlem, has planned an "Ancestral Heritage Weekend" surrounding the erection of the memorial. Celebrations were to include a youth "ring shout" ceremony with 1,500 students, Russell Simmons' Def Poetry and appearances by Wyclef Jean, Phylicia Rashad and cast members from Broadway's "Drumstruck."


African Burial Ground: http://www.Africanburialground.gov

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