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by
Dan Perkins
Source: U.S. Newswire. Photo of
President Obasanjo courtesy of Uniworld
Group via U.S. Newswire.
If
you visit the popular French Quarters in
New Orleans, you might discover the path
that slaves took from ships docked along
the Mississippi to the New Orleans slave
auction house. It is the kind of
discovery that can lead one to think
about American slavery in terms of being
a Southern institution, but the
institution of slavery was pervasive
throughout early colonial America.
Slavery
was a significant part of
early American life, even in such a
notable place as New York City.
The evidence is compelling, if one knows
where to look. Amidst the
imposing public buildings and office
towers of lower Manhattan is
the African Burial
Ground, a site that commemorates the nearly 20,000
17th- and 18th-century Africans who were buried
there.
In
1991, while excavating a site in Lower
Manhattan for a new
federal office building, workers unearthed the
largest colonial-era cemetery for
enslaved Africans in America. The
building, which now sits at 290
Broadway, rests on a site that was
formally part of a five-acre burial
ground. For roughly 200
years, other buildings, streets and
parking lots were constructed over the
site. Since the discovery, the
U.S. General Services Administration,
which has offices at 290 Broadway, has
assumed responsibility for memorializing
the site.
Today, the
African Burial Ground is a New York
City Historic Landmark and National
Landmark. According to the GSA,
there are an estimated 200 undisturbed
remains on the burial ground site, but
the agency has no way of knowing what may
exist within the confines of the larger,
original African Burial Ground site.
As
difficult as it is for some Americans to
associate slavery with New York City, it is even
more troublesome for many African
Americans to reflect upon the fact that
their ancestors were initially
enslaved by other Africans and then sold
to slave traders who brought them to the
New World.
The deep
psychological scars caused by Africans
enslaving other Africans was
acknowledged by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo,
during a dedication ceremony held in
September at the
African Burial Ground. President Obasanjo cited the need
for “reflection, healing and
reconciliation” between Africans and
African Americans.
The
Nigerian President's speech was the
first of a series of events in New York
City
commemorating the contributions of Africans in
the Americas. The celebration, entitled
“Africans in the Americas: Celebrating
the Ancestral Heritage,” was organized by
the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
and was held during the first three days
of October.
President Obasanjo is the
first African head of state to visit the Burial
Ground since the re-internment of the excavated
remains of enslaved Africans on October 4, 2003. Howard Dodson,
director of the Schomburg, said of President
Obasanjo's visit, “The
visit will go a long way towards affirming the
site’s importance and fostering improved
relationships between people of the African
continent and the people of African descent in
the Americas. The African Burial Ground … links
Africa and its Diaspora. It is deserving of
recognition as a world heritage site.”
The call for reconciliation
also draws attention to the strain that has long
existed between descendants of Africans who
were enslaved in North America and
descendants of Africans who profited from the
slave trade. Some of the dominant tribes of Nigeria participated
in the enslavement of other Africans.
In his speech, the Nigerian President
referenced the
unimaginable suffering endured by those who were
seized from the African continent and forced to
labor under brutal and exploitive conditions
in America. “We come here today to pay our respects to
some of those enslaved Africans who survived the
Middle Passage and went on to contribute their
labor and talents to the early development of
New York City and North America, and to those
children among them whose lives were ravaged by
disease, neglect and malnutrition,” said
President Obasanjo.
The Nigerian President concluded by sharing a
more hopeful future, one in which the hearts
Africans and African Americans would be united. “We share pains of the past and
hopes for the future with our African American
brothers and sisters throughout the Western
Hemisphere,” he said. “I extend to them
a hand of reconciliation, fellowship and
solidarity as beloved brothers and sisters," he
added. President Obasanjo called upon the citizens of New York to revere
the African Burial Ground as a sacred place of
meditation, reconciliation and healing, and as a
site of African history and heritage.
As part of the atonement, President Obasanjo
placed a wreath of roses near a five-foot marble
plaque - a gift from the people of Nigeria -
that sits on the African Burial Ground site. The
plaque reads, “our African ancestors are buried …
in the shadows of City Hall, beneath two
courthouses and numerous public buildings.”
A larger, exterior
memorial is planned for the site and five
designs have been selected in a
design competition. The designs can be viewed
and critiqued at www.africanburialground.com.
The reality of slavery in America is
difficult for many Americans to acknowledge,
however, the African Burial Ground, and other
such sites, offer important reminders of the
darker realities of our nation's beginnings.
While it is easy to focus on the buildings that
now dominate Lower Manhattan, the African Burial
Ground helps to make everyone more keenly aware
that some of those buildings, like the nation
itself, rest on the bones of Africans who were
enslaved.
As African Americans continue to honor
the contributions of their ancestors,
there is hope that overtures, such as
the one extended by President Obasanjo,
will contribute to a reconciled future
between African Americans their African
brothers and sisters.
The End
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