The African Burial Ground: A Trip Every New Yorker Should Take

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The following was submitted by the Ethical Action Committee (EAC). 

The Ethical Action Committee is one of the three Standing Committees of the Brooklyn Society for EthicalCulture (BSEC). The EAC is the overarching committee to two additional operations, Lucy’s Children and Enhanced Discussion. All are study and information groupings devoted to a keener understanding and knowledge of Black people and their economic, social and political issues particularly in the United States. How and why did this happen? All three groups, EAC, Lucy’s Children(*) and Enhanced Discussion meet regularly for updates and plot out their ongoing courses action. We are proud of the work of these volunteer bodies that are now respectively approaching their second and third year of existence. 

Overwhelmingly an organizational group of non-Blacks, the Brooklyn Society has taken increasingly stronger steps to learn about Black people and to know and face what it did not know. Hence, there are presentations, discussions, reading groups, etc., as we share and learn together this forgotten and often obscured information. For whites, it is a requirement for them to reconcile, ignore and reduce issues of suspicion and ignorance, to gain more fully their humanity. For Blacks, it is to help them gain an increased sense of pride and self-value, to re-affirm and grow in a positive sense of self. Both efforts are for a single plant to grow from two different seeds, if you will.  

This brings us to the tour to the African Burial Ground. Surprisingly or not, a number of people had not gone to see it or had even heard about it. Thus, the EAC scheduled a tour. The African Burial Ground is under the aegis of the Department of the Interior’s National Park Services Administration. It is open 5 days a week; it is closed on Sunday and Monday. EAC conceived of the trip and Muriel Tillinghast, EAC’s Chair, made an application for the group. Subsequently, she also made contact with the general body of BSEC and with local organizations. Twenty-one people signed up, some from as far away as Queens, and on Saturday, August 5th, the group gathered at a local Brooklyn location and then proceeded to the African Burial Ground by subway.  

At the burial ground, the group was first treated to an excellent short movie on the history of burial ground itself. The film was followed by a continuous walking lecture by an outstanding Afrocentric historian, T. Rasul Murray, a volunteer guide at the burial ground and a credentialed professional tour guide.  

We walked throughout the burial ground inside and out. The visuals and lecture re-enforcement was enlightening and an incredibly moving experience. Mr. Murray’s knowledge of Black American and African history is enormous. We walked from the burial ground along a route that took us to Fraunces Tavern, a place where George Washington was known to have eaten and which has a place of its own in the American Revolution. At the Tavern we had a great food after which we proceeded to the National Museum of the American Indian. Because Saturday is a shortened day for museums, we missed the guided tour there. Nevertheless, we took the opportunity to look around and see the well-developed exhibits of the various Indians groups/nations, some of which are completely gone, remembered now only by the words of places like the names of streets and states. We will go back to the National Museum of the American Indian as a future starting point.

The tour was so successful we are considering mounting several others. People who are interested in receiving information on them can write eac.bsec@gmail.com. 

Thank you for your interest and support.

(*) Named for the ancestral primate discovered in 1974 by paleontologist Donald Johanson and his team in the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia.  She has been referred to as the mother of humankind.  She is 3.2 million years old. 

Photo credit: EAC/BSEC via P. Hodge