For my group’s project, we chose the African Burial Ground National Monument. It is often easy, in such a modern city, to forget the centuries of history that have passed through New York, shaping its public spaces, culture, and people. Oftentimes we look towards art, statues, and monuments to remember and memorialize the individuals, events, and places that have sculpted our collective past. The African Burial Ground National Monument is dynamic in that it not only attempts to preserve history, the site is one of a recovery of history – where black slaves and freemen were buried from the 17th to 18th centuries, relegated to forgotten soil until a construction project in 1991 uncovered the bodies which prompted the city to find a way to preserve the previously lost history. One particular aspect of the African Burial Ground National Monument that I found extremely fascinating was the inclusion of dozens of religious symbols on the walls of the monument, ringed by the burial sites. Although my image doesn’t do it justice, this includes symbols that are instantly recognizable to us such as the Cross or the Islamic crescent but also includes symbols from places as what is now modern-day Ghana, a former significant source of African slaves in the Atlantic Slave Trade. This was significant to me because it represented how colonialism and the experience of slavery painted the diverse African continent as a monolith, a source of labor and nothing else. This feature was touching in that it appeared to cut through the stereotyping of Africa, in respect of the massive diversity and differences in experiences of not just black slaves in American but the African-American experience throughout American history in general. One part of the experience that wasn’t part of the monument that truly made me appreciate the historical value of the monument wasn’t in the picture or part of the site itself, was that during our time examining the beautiful structure, a tour guide led a group of what appeared to be kindergarteners, as he explained the history behind the monument. Their eyes gaped with wonder and they were eagerly asking questions about the space, and in that, I could see the prominence and importance of the monument – in producing a physical connection and bridge between today and the crucial history that has passed where we stand.
