New York: African Burial Ground National Monument

For a century, from the 1690s to the 1790s, a small plot of land in Lower Manhattan became the final resting place for over 15,000 free and enslaved Africans. The burial ground was then lost under years of urban development and landfill, until workers rediscovered the burial ground in 1991 during an excavation of the land for a Federal Government office building. Excavations at the site revealed the remains of 419 Africans and over 500 individual artifacts. Considered one of the most important archeological finds of the 20th century, the African Burial Ground is of national significance because of what it can tell us about the lives of Africans and African Americans in an urban context.