A feel of African history away from home
No tour is complete without a historical site visit, and especially not a visit to New York City without seeing the African Burial Ground. It is the oldest and largest known excavated burial ground in North America for both free and enslaved Africans. It is located in the Civic Center section of Lower Manhattan, New York City in the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway.
The site was discovered in 1991 when construction workers stumbled upon the graves of 424 African Americans as they got ready to lay the foundation for a new federal building. It turned out that the site was once a swamp-like area where people of African descent—often enslaved—were buried in what was referred to as “Negro Burial Grounds.”
Juanita Jones, an elderly African American who interviewed with VOA about the site said the following, “most of these were young people but they didn’t live to be so old. They died very young. You looking down here you see babies, newborns, and young people dying. It’s very bad”.
The site is a National Monument and has been open to visitors since 2010.
