by KINGSTON, N.Y. (AP) – On a block of flats in upstate New York, college students dug up and sifted through backyard dirt as part of an archaeological investigation this summer of a centuries-old burial ground for African Americans.
Now covered with green lawns in the city of Kingston, this site in 1750 was part of a cemetery for enslaved people. It was located on the outskirts of the town at that time. An unknown number of people who were denied church burials were buried here until the end of the 19th century, when the cemetery was covered as the city grew.
The site is now being reclaimed as the Pine Street African Cemetery, one of many forgotten or neglected cemeteries of African Americans that are receiving renewed attention. Over the past three summers, the remains of up to 27 people have been located here.
Advocates in this Hudson River city bought a residential property covering about half of the old cemetery several years ago and now use the house as a visitor center. Funds are being raised to turn the urban backyard into a respectable resting place. And although the names of those buried here may be lost, tests are planned on their remains to shed light on their lives and identify their descendants.
“The hardships of the people buried here cannot be diminished in vain,” said Tyrone Wilson, founder of Harambee Kingston, the non-profit community group behind the project. “We have a responsibility to make sure we address that disrespect.”
Although the more than half-acre (0.2 ha) site was designated as a burial ground for enslaved people in 1750, it may have been in use before that. Burials continued until about 1878, more than 50 years after New York abolished slavery. Researchers say that people were buried with their feet to the east, so when they rise on Judgment Day they would face the rising sun.
Remains found on Harambee’s property are covered in patterned African clothing and kept where they are. Remains found on adjoining land are exhumed for later burial on the Harambee property.
Students from the State University of New York at New Paltz recently completed their third summer of supervised backyard excavations in this city 80 miles (129 kilometers) upriver from Manhattan. The students receive course credit, although Maddy Thomas, anthropology major, said there is an overriding sense of mission.
“I don’t like it when people feel upset or forgotten,” Tomás paused. “And that’s what happened here. So we have to fix it.”
Harambee is trying to raise $1 million to transform the modest backyard into a resting place that reflects the African heritage of those buried there. Plans include a tall marker in the middle of the yard.
Although some graves were apparently marked, it is still difficult to say who was buried there.
“Some of them were obviously marked with stone and no writing on it,” said Joseph Diamond, associate professor of anthropology at New Paltz.
The only intact tombstone recovered with a visible name was that of Caezar Smith, who was born into slavery and died a free man in 1839 at the age of 41. A researcher scoured historical records and came up with two others who could to have been buried there in 1803: a man was identified. as Sam and a 16-year-old girl named Deyon who were publicly hanged after being convicted of murdering the 6-year-old daughter of their slave.
The cemetery was originally covered by a lumberyard by 1880, although it appears that some gravestones were still standing by that date.
In 1990, Diamond was conducting an archaeological survey for the city and noticed that the cemetery was marked on a map from 1870. He and the city historian went out to find it.
As it turned out, Pine Street building owner Andrew Kirschner had just found bone chips buried underground while digging in front of the building in search of a sewer pipe. He put the pieces in a box. Kirschner said he was still digging when Diamond told him what they were looking for.
“The conversation starts and then I go, ‘Well, let me show you what I got.’ Of course, they were surprised,” said Kirschner, who currently owns the building next to the Harambee property.
Even after the discovery, Diamond said it was difficult to convince people that there were graves on Pine Street. There were even plans in 1996 to build a car park over much of the site. Advocates bought the property in 2019.
Similar stories of neglect and rediscovery can be seen elsewhere.
In Manhattan, the African Cemetery National Monument marks the site where approximately 15,000 free and enslaved Africans were buried until the 1790s. It was discovered in 1991 during excavations for a federal building. Further up the Hudson River, the 2008 renovation of a century-old school in Newburgh into a courthouse led to the discovery of more than 100 sets of remains.
Antoinette Jackson, founder of The Black Cemetery Network, said many of the 169 sites listed in their online archive had been destroyed.
“Many of them represent sites built over them — through parks, schools, stadiums, highways. Others were under-resourced,” said Jackson, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida.
She added that the cemeteries listed in the archive are only “the tip of the iceberg”.
Because of the sparse historical record in Kingston, advocates hope tests on the remains will help fill in some gaps. Isotopic analyzes could provide information on whether individuals grew up elsewhere – such as South Carolina or Africa – and then moved to the region. DNA analysis could provide information on where in Africa their ancestors came from. The DNA tests could also link them to living descendants.
Wilson said local families are committed to providing DNA samples. He sees the tests as another way to connect people with heritage.
“One of the biggest issues we have in African culture is that we don’t know our history,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of information about who we are.”
