Negro Burial Grounds in New York (1600’s-1700’s)

NEGRO BURIAL GROUNDS IN NEW YORK CITY

There are several African burial ground in New York.  One in the Bronx at Van Cortland Park and another one is at Drake on Hunts Point Avenue.  Enslaved Africans were also buried near Bedford and DeKalb avenues in Brooklyn.  New York graveyards, in general, were racially segregated by law and custom.  African Americans were banned from the Trinity Church graveyard at Wall Street in 1697.  However in 1773, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Trinity Church established a separate African burial grounds on Church Street between Duane and Worth.  Also, Black burial grounds were at Rossville A.M.E. Zion Church and Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, both on Staten Island.

(c. African-American Burial Ground New York, New York, 2008)