Yesterday I went on a trip with the honors society from my college. I woke up tired, irritated and not at all inspired to go, but once I arrived my day really turned around. I got the chance to talk to some great people, and experience a few historical places of NYC that I haven’t visited before. In this post I’m going to focus on just one of them.

After a much-needed venti dark roast from Starbucks, and a cozy walk across lower manhattan in the beautiful, sunny weather of our beloved city, we arrived to Duane street and the African Burial Ground National Monument. Our visit started off with a film-viewing and a quick look at the visitor’s center before going to the actual monument outside of the building.

The African Burial Ground reveals a very dark side of american history, which was forgotten for a very long time despite the fact that the African slaves were integral to this city’s development. Most of the Africans buried were slaves, and when visiting the burial you discover that many of them were children under the age of two. However, at that time, if they did survive the age of 2 they were most likely to live to adulthood, which usually ended around the age of 30-40. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993 and a National Monument in 2006, and it preserves a site containing the remains of more than 400 Africans buried during the late 17th and 18thcenturies. By the time of the American Revolutionary War, they constituted nearly a quarter of the population in the city, which had the second largest number of slaves in the nation In 2007 the memorial was dedicated to commemorate the role of the Africans and African Americans in colonial and federal New York City, and in United states history.