NYC LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION TO REVIEW HPSBG SITE
Tuesday, NOVEMBER 14, 2023
Tuesday, November 14, 2023, at 9:30 a.m.
New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission LPC has will decide on the preservation 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.
Attend the hearing in person at 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor, Borough of Manhattan (click for directions). Watch the livestream at the LPC YouTube channel.
If you wish to testify remotely or submit written testimony, please visit the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) website: https://www.nyc.gov/site/lpc/hearings/hearings.page
New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission LPC has will decide on the preservation 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.
Attend the hearing in person at 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor, Borough of Manhattan (click for directions). Watch the livestream at the LPC YouTube channel.
If you wish to testify remotely or submit written testimony, please visit the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) website: https://www.nyc.gov/site/lpc/hearings/hearings.page
- Sign up to speak here (closes at 7AM on the day of the hearing) remotely. Oral comments are limited to three minutes.
- Email written comments to "testimony@lpc.nyc.gov" no later than noon on Monday, Nov 13
- Written comments do not need to be complex. It can even be a simple introduction, stating that you are in favor of landmark status, and a reason why is sufficient.
- Example: "My name is (insert). The Joseph Rodman Drake Park and Enslaved African Burial Ground should be protected. It is important to bring awareness of this historical site, and I am in favor of landmark status."
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.
