Memorial to Enslaved New Yorkers

Hand carved caskets from Ghana are carried by pallbearers to their final resting place at New York City's African Burial Ground in October 2003.

Stephen Chernin, Getty Images

Today we did a segment on a memorial placed at the Slave Burial Grounds in New York City, down near the site of the World Trade Center and near Wall Street.

The name "Wall Street" comes from a wall that separated colonial settlers from the Native tribes -- notably the Lenape, who gave the island its name, and then were driven off.

On one side of the wall were Native tribes. On the other were settlers -- Dutch and English -- and the Africans they enslaved. And there was yet another population: free blacks who lived on the "wrong" side of the wall and served as a buffer between native populations and colonists. They were almost literally between a rock (wall) and a hard place.

You can read an article about the bloody "slave revolt" of 1712 here.

I lived in New York for many years, walked the area near the burial grounds, and followed the news about the remains.

If you've got a story about history revealed in your area, go on and tell it here.

Farai Chideya

5:19 PM ET | 10-11-2007 | permalink

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