African Burial Ground National Monument United States

Legendary

A historic monument to the over 400 Africans buried nearby in the 17th century.

Photo by NatalieMaynor

In 1991, construction workers digging the foundation for a federal office building in lower Manhattan hit something unexpected: human bones. Excavations uncovered the remains of more than 400 enslaved and free African people, buried in a cemetery that dated back to the 1690s. The city had built itself right on top of them, and almost nobody knew they were there.

The Dutch West India Company brought the first enslaved Africans to the area in 1626, when the settlement was still called New Amsterdam. Slavery funded much of the colony's early growth, with enslaved people clearing land, building fortifications, and constructing the roads that still form the backbone of lower Manhattan today.

In 1664, England seized New Amsterdam without a fight and renamed it New York. Slavery continued and expanded under British rule. By the early 1700s, New York City had one of the largest urban enslaved populations in colonial North America.

The burial ground operated from the 1690s until 1794, when the city closed it and built over it. For nearly 200 years it sat forgotten beneath streets and buildings, until that construction crew broke through the concrete in 1991.

The monument sits at the corner of Duane and Elk Streets in lower Manhattan. The visitor center inside the federal building tells the full story with artifacts recovered from the site, including burial goods that show strong West African spiritual traditions survived the Middle Passage. 

Outside, a granite memorial marks where the remains were reinterred in 2003, returned to the ground with ceremonies led by African and African American community leaders.