Open House New York Weekend (OHNY) @ HPSBG
3 Days. 5 Boroughs. 300+Destinations—only one HPSBG.
Visit on Saturday (10/18/25) or Sunday (10/19/25) to explore the Hunts Point Enslaved African Burial Ground Project. Get tickets to learn about the site and story here! Open House NewYork Weekend. Enjoy the festival! Learn more at ohny.org/weekend #OHNYwknd
Visit on Saturday (10/18/25) or Sunday (10/19/25) to explore the Hunts Point Enslaved African Burial Ground Project. Get tickets to learn about the site and story here! Open House NewYork Weekend. Enjoy the festival! Learn more at ohny.org/weekend #OHNYwknd
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NYC Citywide African Burial Ground Convening June 17, 2025
6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
"The convening will bring together representatives from African burial grounds in each of New York City’s five boroughs, alongside historical societies, academic institutions, and cultural organizations. The panel will be comprised specifically of representatives from burial grounds located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Panelists will be invited to share insights from their respective sites, discuss the triumphs and challenges they’ve faced in stewarding these histories, and reflect on what it means to honor ancestral legacy within evolving cityscapes and community contexts."
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10037
Directions
"The convening will bring together representatives from African burial grounds in each of New York City’s five boroughs, alongside historical societies, academic institutions, and cultural organizations. The panel will be comprised specifically of representatives from burial grounds located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Panelists will be invited to share insights from their respective sites, discuss the triumphs and challenges they’ve faced in stewarding these histories, and reflect on what it means to honor ancestral legacy within evolving cityscapes and community contexts."
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10037
Directions
Between Wave and Water Performance Walk May 10, 2025
Developed by Alethea Pace, who is a Civic Practice Partnership Artist in Residence at The Met, Between Wave and Water is a performance walk that honors the memory of the ancestors buried in Drake Park.
February 2025
Burial Ground Listed on National Register of Historic Places
Learn more about the New York State and National Registers from the New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation website, including the use of CRIS (Cultural Resource Information System), the state's "online cultural resources data management and GIS tool. CRIS supplies individuals and communities with information and tools to support the preservation and revitalization of New York State’s rich heritage and culture."
January 2025
Burial Ground Listed on State Register of Historic Places
Learn more about the New York State and National Registers from the New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation website, including the use of CRIS (Cultural Resource Information System), the state's "online cultural resources data management and GIS tool. CRIS supplies individuals and communities with information and tools to support the preservation and revitalization of New York State’s rich heritage and culture."
PS 48 Student Gardeners Create Living Memorial Fall 2023
Photo Credit: Yekaterina Gluzberg
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PS 48 gardeners came together with NYC Parks, Partnerships for Parks, Southern Boulevard Business Improvement District, Loving the Bronx and Drew Gardens to help revitalize the park space and continue to create a living memorial for the enslaved people whose graves are unmarked within Drake Park. Click the photo to learn more about this experience! |
REMEMBERING the Forgotten: A Celebration of Life
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On November 17, 2023, the students of Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School and PS 48: The Joseph Rodman Drake School hosted a collaborative day of connecting, learning, and remembering. The goal was to honor our collective ancestors, including those whose final resting place is within the Enslaved People’s Burial Ground.
Learn more about this important day and celebration of life. Here is a video summary created by Alethea Pace. |
NYC LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION CONSIDERED HPSBG SITE
Tuesday, NOVEMBER 14, 2023
Tuesday, November 14, 2023, at 9:30 a.m.
New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission LPC held a public hearing to decide on the preservation status of the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Site. The notice of public hearing states, "The proposed designation of a New York City park, opened in 1910, containing two surviving colonial-era cemeteries for Hunts Point's early European-descended settler families, and for the African and Indigenous people they enslaved." This preservation status will protect the site and ensure that the site's space informs the present and future understanding of the lasting impacts of enslavement.
You can watch the HPSBG LPC hearing presentation here on the LPC YouTube Channel. Additionally, CBS News has reported on this public hearing as well.
New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission LPC held a public hearing to decide on the preservation status of the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Site. The notice of public hearing states, "The proposed designation of a New York City park, opened in 1910, containing two surviving colonial-era cemeteries for Hunts Point's early European-descended settler families, and for the African and Indigenous people they enslaved." This preservation status will protect the site and ensure that the site's space informs the present and future understanding of the lasting impacts of enslavement.
You can watch the HPSBG LPC hearing presentation here on the LPC YouTube Channel. Additionally, CBS News has reported on this public hearing as well.
CBS NEWS: New York City considers landmark status for historic, enslaved persons burial ground in the Bronx
CBS reporter Shosh Bedrosian reports on the potential landmarking of the Hunt Point Slave Burial Ground. This designation would provide preservation status and allow for increased protection for the site, with hopes that the space becomes better maintained and commemorated in a permanent way.
Listening With: Drake Park June 2023 Event
Listening With: Drake Park was an afternoon of dialogue, reflection and connection with local community members. Developed by Alethea Pace, who is a Civic Practice Partnership Artist in Residence at The Met, the event featured performers Maria Bauman, Aleta Brown, Holiday, and Gabriela Silva, plus invited speakers including Rodrick Bell, Phil Panaritis and Justin Czarka of the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Project, a work in progress sharing of movement and text and participatory storytelling. Over a shared meal, we gathered as a community to engage in conversation about our collective responsibility to steward this land, honor its legacy and reimagine our futures. Beverly Emers and the team at Bronx Arts Space graciously provided refuge from the rain and hosted the event in their space.
Moving Towards Permanent REMEMBRANCE
Since inception, the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Project has been a multi-year journey to 'write the forgotten back into history' and engage Hunts Point youth in learning about the history of their neighborhood, their city, and use that lens to take control of current issues and lead to new improved outcomes in the future. Nearly $180,000 in funding has been secured for a permanent memorial. Now it's time to complete the project after all these years. Our motto is to 'Transform Learning About History to Doing Something About History.'
NEW YORK TIMES: HONORING A HIDDEN SLAVE BURIAL GROUND
"Honoring a Hidden Slave Burial Ground" (NY Times, 11/14/2017). Johnnie Butler’s favorite spot to practice trombone is near a small burial ground for slaves.
Credit David Dee Delgado for The New York Times
Archaeology Report released confirmS the Site
"The historical photographic and documentary evidence supports the existence of a slave burial ground historically located on the south side of Old Hunts Point Road across from the family burial ground of the Hunt, Leggett, and Willett families known today as Drake Cemetery." Read the entire archaeology report from the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission on the HPSBG site. Then, join the community Facebook discussion on where do we go from here?
RECENT HPSBG EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING
In Spring 2017, students became archaeologists! During the South Bronx English Intensive Sessions after school program sponsored by PS 48, developed analytical skills and career-readiness, alongside literacy, science, and mathematics understandings as they researched historical artifacts from archaeological digs in New York City. These skills contextually prepare the students for critically investigating the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Project during May and June. The student research culminated in a student-led Drake Park Needs Assessment, where students designed improvements for Drake Park, site of The HPSBG.
HPSBG Vision
The Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground (HPSBG) Project seeks to definitively locate and commemorate the lives of slaves that lived in Hunts Point, Bronx, New York. Though the graves may have been obliterated their lives shall be remembered. The project works with students from PS 48, a New York City public school, alongside local historians, community organizations, museums, and city agencies to investigate the final resting place of the slaves from various historical and prominent New York families. View the HPSBG Project Trailer.
HPSBG Mission
"Few neighborhoods in the Bronx have so many historical connotations as Hunts Point"
John McNamara, April 1, 1971 McNamara's Old Bronx
It is well known in the historical reference that the New York City area's wealthy landowners had slaves, yes, even here locally in the Bronx. Alongside the well to do landowners that are buried in Hunts Point in the Hunt family cemetery was the family slave burial cemetery. In here lies the mystery: where is that cemetery? Local students saved the Hunt family cemetery (now a city park) from obliteration in the 1960s yet the slave burial grounds were leveled and lost to history much earlier.
The clues leading us back to those hallowed grounds revolve around an circa 1910 photo from the MCNY collections and a clue that the slave burial grounds was located "across the street" from the family cemetery. The MCNY photo (ca 1910) has documented the slave burial ground's very existence and geographic location. In concert with various other source materials, today, NYC public school students and their teachers located in the Bronx, alongside local historians, are seeking to uncover the mystery and commemorate the forgotten lives and last resting spots of these individuals. They rest here, somewhere nearby, unknown and unrecognized. They now deserve to now be written back into our history.
John McNamara, April 1, 1971 McNamara's Old Bronx
It is well known in the historical reference that the New York City area's wealthy landowners had slaves, yes, even here locally in the Bronx. Alongside the well to do landowners that are buried in Hunts Point in the Hunt family cemetery was the family slave burial cemetery. In here lies the mystery: where is that cemetery? Local students saved the Hunt family cemetery (now a city park) from obliteration in the 1960s yet the slave burial grounds were leveled and lost to history much earlier.
The clues leading us back to those hallowed grounds revolve around an circa 1910 photo from the MCNY collections and a clue that the slave burial grounds was located "across the street" from the family cemetery. The MCNY photo (ca 1910) has documented the slave burial ground's very existence and geographic location. In concert with various other source materials, today, NYC public school students and their teachers located in the Bronx, alongside local historians, are seeking to uncover the mystery and commemorate the forgotten lives and last resting spots of these individuals. They rest here, somewhere nearby, unknown and unrecognized. They now deserve to now be written back into our history.
THE HPSBG Project and the Periwinkle Initiative
The Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground Project has been included in the Memory and Landmarks: Reports of the Burial Database Project of Enslaved Americans. The burial database has been developed through the efforts of the Periwinkle Initiative, which is "a public humanities and education initiative dedicated to preserving cultural heritage associated with enslaved Americans. The Initiative’s core project is the National Burial Database of Enslaved Americans – which will be the first and only national repository to document individual burials and burial grounds of enslaved Americans." The work of the HPSBG has been recognized in the Periwinkle Initiative's Spotlight on Local Work.
NOTE on THE NAMING of the PROJECT
The project name reflects the original handwritten name on the MCNY photograph’s verso (back side). However, it includes an error. The project uses “Burial” instead of the photograph’s handwritten word “Burying.” Additionally, the use of the term “slave” requires addressing. Those buried within this site should not be defined through a label that reflects the imposed condition that slavery subjected them to. Rather, they should be remembered as the vibrant people they were and the lives they lived; The HPSBG project aims to bring this legacy to light through the generations through preservation, remembrance, and education.
