African Burial Ground

This past weekend, all Freshman Seminar classes were given the opportunity to visit the African Burial Ground Museum located in New York City. This was a special field trip for me, as I had never visited any kind of museum of this sort, and I found the fact that actual slaves were buried within the grounds of the museum quite fascinating. The trip began with us being led into a screening room and viewing a docudrama about the rituals slaves would practice beforing burying a loved one. They would prepare the bodies for burial by wrapping them in linen shrouds with their most prized-posessions. Africans were not able to bury their people in churches with proper memorial services however. Within the museum I viewed a great number of ancient artifacts, the most interesting to me being the cuffs used to enslave Africans and force them on slave ships. This was particularly heartwrenching, as I could not fatham my wrist being bound by the small metal cuffs, and being forced to work strenous labor in a land foreign to me. I also had the opportunity to view historical documents that were ratified during slavery, such as the Runaway Slave Act. The biggest artifact in the museum however, was hanging on a long wall. On the wall was a list of hundreds of buried slaves, and details about their nature of their body and bones during the time of death, age, and gender. What puzzled me the most was the amount of children and babies I saw buried next to their mothers or fathers. The innocence of a child being taken away by the monstrous reigns of slavery deeply saddened me. A lot of the bones also had missing body parts or objects brutally pierced between them. It was crazy to try and understand how people could treat an entire race of people so cruelly merely on the basis of their ethnicity. I was also confounded how these Africans buried here long ago were given no kind of credit or recognition for their feats in helping build many of the monuments and buildings we see in New York today. The trip to the museum saddened me a great deal, but I think that it was a much needed tour for me to realize how far we have come as a race and the journey and struggles my ancestors before me had to endure. I most certainly am grateful for this fact and since visiting the African Burial Ground, I will make sure that I never forget how the bodies that lay beneath me that day helped establish who I am today. I would like to thank Dr. Carr and all the other teachers and assistants who participated in the organizing of this field trip and giving students the opportunity to get a first hand look of their cultural background.