ABOUT | African Burials in New York >> The City Expands >> A Community Reacts
HISTORY | History of Inwood >> Skeletons in Chains? >> March 1903 Excavations
TODAY | A Museum Gets Involved >> New Development Seeks Justice >> Get Involved
A COMMUNITY REACTS
Nearly a century after the 1903 discovery in Inwood was another case of a desecrated cemetery, the African burial ground in lower Manhattan in 1991. Apart from violating the graves by digging them up, Diana diZerega Wall and Anne-Marie Cantwell in Unearthing Gotham recall members of the African American community were, “offended that the archaeologists wrapped the bones in newspaper after removing them from the ground” (Wall & Cantwell 2001:284). However, the discovery and protests have led to the Lower Manhattan African Burial Ground receiving National Landmark and Monument status, bringing more awareness to the importance of African American history.
Pictured right are three blank New York historical markers, part of a 2019 art exhibition at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum by Peter Hoffmeister titled, “Ground Revision,” shedding light on the Inwood African burial ground.
In Inwood until the late 1800s, the Dyckman and Nagel family cemeteries remained with grave markings, enclosed by a fence, and appeared to be a well kept rural cemetery (Society, 1948:28). A few hundreds yards away were unmarked graves that were speculated by Inwood residents to be that of enslaved. Through available historical sources, there doesn’t appear to have been any attempt at recognition or preservation by community members for this unmarked burial ground.
Bolton, Reginald Pelham. “Colonial Cemetery.” Photo Album Scrapbook. 1915. Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Collections #1999.122. New York, NY: Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance.
During rapid development in the early 20th century, the site was discovered in March of 1903, and again, no means of protection came for those buried in this hilly knoll, and the bodies were exhumed, examined, and stolen. A few years ago, local community members, council members, and institutions began to undertake further research of the Inwood African burial ground and continues to seek recognition for this site by other community members, the city, and historical preservation societies.
The following section will explore the HISTORY of the neighborhood of Inwood and the detailed accounts of the discovery and excavations of the Inwood African Burial Ground in the early 20th century.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
