African Burial Ground National Monument

This monument in Manhattan honors African Americans and offers an education on the hardship they endured in early America.

From the late 17th through the early 18th centuries, free and enslaved Africans were buried in a 6.6 acre cemetery in what is now Lower Manhattan, outside the boundaries of the settlement of New Amsterdam (now New York). Lost and forgotten because of centuries of development and landfill, this burial ground for an estimated 15,000 Africans was discovered by construction workers during excavation for a federal office building in 1991. The remains of 419 men, women and children recovered at that time provided extensive insight into the lives of some of the earliest African settlers in America.