Manhattan is a fascinating place where you can witness the human drama play itself out day after day. It’s possible to go to www.besthotelsmanhattan.com to find an amazing space to accommodate your stay here, so that you can have a New York adventure that will no doubt hold many surprises. If you are in Lower Manhattan, the African Burial Ground is one of the most awe-inspiring new museums in recent years, and is a remarkable find.
It doesn’t happen every day that the ancestors make themselves manifest, and it’s rare that it’s this dramatic, and literal. But in 1991, during the construction of a building around Elk & Duane in Lower Manhattan, workers found what turned out to be graves of African-Americans who were slaves in the 17th century. In an area covering around 7 acres, there are approximately 20,000 people buried here, according to the estimates of archaeologists and historians. At the time of their discovery, scientists began excavating the graves, until there was enough outcry from the community to get them to stop. The bodies were taken to Howard University where they were studied, and then placed back in the ground with ceremonies offered for the dead who had been disturbed from a sleep that had lasted a couple of centuries.
This is the kind of story that novelists long for, because the idea is so rich in metaphor. The notion that in a city as large as this, the residents are literally walking on the bones of the deceased is something that seems ripe for a dozen new works. In this case, the metaphor is absolutely true, and works on physical and cosmological levels. The majority of these people were of Yoruba descent, and some Kongo, too, and the stories are there, waiting to be told. The African Burial Ground National Monument is nothing less than a necessary altar to mark the lives of those who have gone before us, and still continue to inform our waking worlds. It also speaks of a history of slavery in the country that is indeed connected to the history of New York, and marks another swath in a complex cloth that does seem to connect us all.
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