African Burial Ground National Monument is in the borough (district) of Manhattan , in New York City , New York, in the northeastern United States. It contains one of the nation’s oldest African American cemeteries. Thousands of free and enslaved Africans and African Americans were buried there from the late 1600’s to the 1790’s.
The first Africans to arrive in what is now New York City came in the early 1600’s. The city was then under Dutch control and known as New Amsterdam. Most of the early black residents were enslaved and employed as construction and farm workers. In the 1640’s, a number of these enslaved people gained their freedom and established the first free black community in what is now the United States. After the English gained control of the settlement in the 1660’s, they took away many of the rights of the free blacks. Africans and African Americans were denied the right to be buried in the city’s churchyards. A burial ground for them developed on a plot of land owned by the Van Borsum family in what is now Lower Manhattan. Up to 20,000 people of African descent were buried there between the late 1600’s and 1794. In 1795, the land was sold and subdivided into lots for houses.
Beginning in 1991, archaeologists examined the remains of hundreds of people at the site as it was being excavated for the construction of an office building. Further analysis of the bodies occurred at Howard University , a predominantly African American institution of higher learning in Washington, D.C. The burial ground became a New York historic district and a national historic landmark in 1993. President George W. Bush designated the site a national monument in 2006, and the official dedication of the monument occurred the following year. The National Park Service maintains the site.
