African Burial Grounds

Henry “Hank” Thomas, at the age of 19, was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders that departed from Washington, D.C. He also was a passenger on the Greyhound Bus that was burned outside of Anniston, AL. Photo provided by National Park Service (NPS).

members of the Ku Klux Klan, attacked the bus carrying African American and white Freedom Riders. The mob

threw rocks, broke windows, and slashed the tires of the bus. Following police intervention the bus was able to depart for Birmingham, with the mob in pursuit. The former bus station is not currently open to the public. Today, the side of the adjacent building that borders the bus station’s driveway features a mural and educational panels about the events of May 14, 1961.

Bus Burning Site (Old Birmingham Highway/State Route 202) At this site, about six miles outside Anniston, the slashed tires of the Greyhound bus gave out and the driver was forced to pull over. The segregationist mob continued its attack, and someone eventually threw a bundle of flaming rags into the bus that exploded seconds later. Joseph “Little Joe” Postiglione, a freelance photographer, captured the scene. Little Joe’s photographs of the burning bus – which appeared in hundreds of newspapers on Monday morning – became iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement. An Alabama Historical Marker identifies the site of the bus

burning. Please note that the houses located nearby are private residences (near the intersection of Old Birmingham Highway and Barkwood Dr., Anniston, AL 36201). The Greyhound Bus Station is part of the Anniston Civil Rights and Heritage Trail, which includes nine sites associated with the struggle for civil rights in Anniston. A self guided driving tour is available online at: annistoncivilrightstrail.org (Please note that website is only accessible with a mobile device). Sites on the Anniston Civil Rights and Heritage Trail, outside the monument, which are associated with the 1961 Freedom Rides include:

ANNISTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL (400 East 10th Street)

With great trouble the Freedom Riders made their way to the Anniston hospital, which provided little in the way of treatment, and where they found themselves once again under siege by a white mob. Their torment eventually ended when deacons dispatched by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham’s Bethel Baptist Church, rescued them and drove them to Birmingham. The hospital is part of the Anniston Civil Rights and Heritage Trail and is marked with a sign.

TRAILWAYS STATION (1018 Noble St.) At this station, a second group of Freedom Riders stopped before departing for Birmingham. During their brief stop, a group of white men boarded and physically forced

the Freedom Riders to segregate. The segregationists harassed the Freedom Riders throughout the two-hour ride to Birmingham. In Birmingham, the Freedom Riders were attacked by a mob of segregationists. The former Trailways Station also features a mural and educational panels.

FREEDOM RIDERS NATIONAL MONUMENT

is a new national park unit located in Anniston, Alabama. It is a park in progress with limited services. In the coming years services will be added to the park in cooperation with our partners.

DIRECTIONS & TRANSPORTATION

To Former Greyhound Station: From Atlanta and Points East: From I-20, take exit 185 to Alabama State Hwy 21 North. Turn left on East Eighth Street, then right on Gurnee Avenue. Greyhound Station is located at the corner of East Eleventh Street and Gurnee Avenue.

From Birmingham and Points West: From I-20, take exit 179 and turn left onto Alabama State Highway 202. Turn left on Gurnee Avenue. Greyhound Station is located at the intersection of East Eleventh and

Gurnee Avenue.

From Gadsden and Points North: From US 431 South, turn right onto Alabama State Hwy 21 North, then turn right on East Eleventh Street. Greyhound Station is at the corner of East Eleventh and Gurnee Avenue.

BUS BURNING SITE

There is currently no parking provided at the bus burning site along Old Birmingham Highway. In the interest of safety, there should be no unauthorized parking or pedestrian activity within the right-of-way of State Route 202.

THINGS TO DO

The Anniston Civil Rights Heritage Trail project began in 2010. This nine-stop driving tour explores key sites and stories associated with Anniston's civil rights history.

To access a PDF version of the tour route, visit the Anniston Civil Rights Trail page on the City of Anniston website.

Several stops on the Anniston Civil Rights Heritage Trail directly relate to the Freedom Riders story, including the Anniston Greyhound Bus Depot (1031 Gurnee Avenue) the Anniston Trailways Station (901 Noble Street), and the Anniston Memorial Hospital (corner of 10th and Christine). The remaining stops and their historic markers connect the Freedom Riders to the city of Anniston's larger civil rights story. Together, these nine stops create a powerful learning experience for both area residents and Freedom Riders National Monument visitors.

The Anniston Civil Rights Heritage Trail was created in partnership between the City of Anniston, the Spirit of Anniston, the Alabama Department of Tourism, the Anniston Civil Rights Trail Committee, and the Alabama Historical Commission Black Heritage Council.

Ernest “Rip” Patton, Jr. was 21 and a student at Tennessee State University when he joined the Freedom Rider Movement. Photo provided by National Park Service (NPS).

African

Burial Grounds

In 1991, construction began on a 34-story federal office tower positioned on 290 Broadway and overseen by the General Services Administration (GSA). Federally funded construction projects are mandated to comply with Section 106 in the National Historic Preservation

Act of 1966. A “Stage 1A Cultural Resource Survey,” was completed in the area of Republican Alley in 1989 prior to construction. The compliance cultural research study assisted archaeologist to determine any potential archaeological and cultural impacts of construction on 290 Broadway.

Preliminary archaeological research excavation found intact human skeletal remains located 30 feet below the city’s street level on Broadway. During survey work, the largest and most important archeological discovery was made: Unearthing the "Negroes Buriel Ground" – a 6-acre burial ground containing upwards of 15,000 intact skeletal remains of enslaved and free Africans who lived and worked in colonial New York. The Burial Ground’s rediscovery altered the understanding and scholarship surrounding enslavement and its contribution to constructing New York City. The Burial Ground dates from the middle 1630s to 1795. Currently, the Burial Ground is the nation’s earliest and largest African burial ground rediscovered in the United States. Memorialization and research of the enslaved African skeletal remains were negotiated extensively between the General Services Administration, the African – American descendant community, historians, archaeologist, and anthropologist, including city and state political leaders. Civic engagement led to the ancestral remains' reinterment within the original site of rediscovery. An external memorial, an interpretive center, and research library were constructed to commemorate the financial and physical contributions of enslaved Africans in colonial New York and honor their memory. g

A memorial honors Africans who are buried at Higgs Beach in Key West, Florida.

A tourist visits Portsmouth African Burying Ground. Silhouettes are in remembrance for all the graves of black people that were paved over by the city.

As of January 2021, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation that would better protect historic African American cemeteries, this also paves the way for the creation of an African American Burial Grounds Network.

AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND IN HISTORY

New York's Seventeenth-Century African Burial Ground in History by Christopher Moore an author and historian and a descendant of Groot Manuel – one of the first 11 enslaved

Africans in New York City.

New York's African Burial ground is the nation's earliest and largest known African American cemetery. It has been called one of the most important archaeological finds of our time. But it is more than that: though long hidden and much violated it remains the final resting-place of some of New York's earliest African and African American pioneers. And it is an enduring testament to their history.

The first known person of African descent to arrive on Manhattan was (Juan) Rodrigues, who was among the navigators traders, pirates, and fishermen who traversed the Atlantic as free men, before and during the slavery era. Rodrigues, a free black sailor from Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), arrived in 1613, setting up a trading post with the native Lenape people on Manhattan Island.

The first enslaved African arrived in New Amsterdam in 1625, as laborers for the Dutch West India Company (WIC). The WIC, whose profits were chiefly from commerce reliant upon slave labor (and later the slave trade), was then pursuing its interest in the fur trade, which had been cultivated by early traders like Rodrigues. Along with European merchants, traders, sailors, and farms, these enslaved workers helped to establish the early colony. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Africans were an important part of the city's population, reaching a peak of over 20 percent at the middle of the eighteenth century.

During Dutch rule, enslaved Africans were put to work building the fort, mill, and new stone houses. The African laborers, some with previous experience building colonies in South America, did much of the arduous work of building a European-style town in New Amsterdam. They cleared land for farms and shore areas for docks. Former Native American

trails were broadened (Broad Way) to accommodate horse

The Maerschalck map of the City of New York is a historic map made in 1754 that clearly shows the African Burial Ground and its surrounding neighborhood. Photo provided by the Library of Congress.

This aerial photo shows the outdoor memorial at African Burial Ground NM in its entirety. Photo provided by NPS.

drawn wagons. Operating and working in the colony's sawmills, the enslaved laborers provided lumber for shipbuilding and export back to Europe.

By 1640, about 500 people lived in New Amsterdam, which was community of shops a few dozen homes, and several warehouses belonging to the WIC. Enslaved farm workers often oversaw the colony's farms for absentee Dutch owners, planting, harvesting and managing the day-to-day operations. These farming skills would soon win something very valuable for some of New Amsterdam's enslaved population-their freedom. During the worst fighting of the Dutch and Indian War, the first community of free blacks in the colonial United States was formed.

On February 25, 1644, eleven enslaved men were freed and given grants of farmland in the dangerous frontier territory north of New Amsterdam. Their wives were granted freedom also, but their children remained the enslaved property of the WIC. In time, they were able to buy the freedom of their children. The farms owned by the free blacks spanned the "Negro frontier" "land of the blacks," the Central region of Manhattan extending eventually from what would later become Canal Street to 34th Street.

Freedom for these black farmers did not mean an end to

slavery in New Amsterdam. Slave labor continued as a major element of the colony's public works projects. In 1653, upon Governor Peter Stuyvesant's orders, the colony's enslaved workers helped to build New Amsterdam's most famous fortification “The Wall" (Wall Street), which spanned to Manhattan Island from the East River to the Hudson River.

In 1658, the same labor force constructed the region's first major highway, connecting New Amsterdam with the island's second largest and newly founded village in the north frontier (at 110 Street and the East River). The eleven-mile "road to New Haarlem" later became better known and remembered

as the Boston Post Road.

Slavery was a chief concern of Governor Stuyvesant, who cultivated the distribution of slaves into Virginia, Maryland, and New England, but primarily throughout the Caribbean. Under Stuyvesant, the WIC encouraged English and French planters in Barbados St. Christopher, and other islands to g

Westview Community Cemetery at sunset. Historic African American cemetery in Pompano Beach, Florida.

convert from tobacco and cotton to the more lucrative sugar production. Island by island, planters were shown how to consolidate their small island farms into large plantations, change to sugar, and invest in slave labor. The WIC invested heavily in all aspects of the cane production providing credit plant equipment, and enslaved African laborers. By the 1650's, Barbados, the first successful model for the exploitation of slave labor in the Caribbean had revolutionized the demand

for enslaved Africans into the West Indies. Stuyvesant worked diligently, from his base in New Amsterdam to Curacao, to repeat the process in other receptive islands.

In 1664, the English conquered the Dutch colony, and New Amsterdam became New York. Named for James II, the Duke of York, who was the principle investor in the "Company of Royal Adventures Trading to Africa," the English slave trading enterprise. The Duke soon afterward gave port privileges and warehouse priority in the New York colony to ships engaged in the slave trade.

The English imposed strict laws regarding slavery and rescinded many rights for free blacks, including the right to own land on Manhattan Island. During the period, New York's African labor force - primarily skilled and semiskilled and mostly enslaved worked as carpenters, blacksmiths, printers, sailors, dock loaders tailors, seamstresses, bakers, and servants.

In 1711, a marketplace for the sale of slaves opened on a pier located at Wall Street and the East River. By legislative act of the Common Council (City Council) the market, known as the Meal Market, became the city's official slave market where African men, women, and children were sold or rented on a daily or weekly basis. The market operated until 1762, though it was not the only place where slaves were bought and sold

in Lower Manhattan, including the Merchant's Coffee House, the Fly Market, and Proctor's Vendue House. Records from colonial New York indicate the city was a major hub for the slave trade in North America.

Although the city's slave population ranged between 15 to 20 percent, most slaves purchased through the New York market were re-directed to other slave holding territories in the American South. Documents also note that the New

York market sometimes received shipments of African children under the age of thirteen. Until the Civil War, the city's economy, with investments in commodities like sugar, cotton, and tobacco was heavily dependent upon slavery.

Shut out of churchyards within the city a burial ground for Africans developed on a plot of land outside of the city, owned in 1673 by Sara Van Borsum, a Dutch woman with a reputation as an Indian translator and owner of six slaves (five African and one Indian). Though the exact date of the cemetery's founding is unknown, the Van Borsum family continued its tacit approval of its use until its closing in 1794.

As the enslaved population grew in New York so did the burial ground, eventually covering 6.6 acres, or about five city blocks. Evidence from the cemetery indicates that when possible, traditional practices were employed in laying deceased kin and loved ones to rest. However, harsh legal restrictions were applied too, as no more than twelve persons were permitted in funeral processions or at graveside services and interment was not allowed at night, the customary time for many African burial rituals. Enslaved blacks were required to have a written pass in order to travel more than a mile away from home. For many, that was about the distance from their Lower Manhattan homes to the cemetery. g