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African Slaves’ Burial Grounds: A Monument to Remember
By Melissa Marks
Overview
In a country as diverse as the United States, every individual’s history is important to our mosaic history. Through discussions of the ignorance about slaves’ burial grounds and the outcome in New York for the remnants of a known African slave burial site, students gain a clearer, more honest picture of American history.
Objectives
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
- Describe some of the attributes of the African slaves buried in the New York site.
- Design an appropriate monument to the slaves buried in New York.
- Hypothesize why many Americans believe that slavery only existed in the South and generate ideas on how to correct this mistaken image.
Time Required
Three to four class periods
Materials
Essay, New York City's African Burial Ground
The Lesson
Anticipatory Set
- First, ask students these questions:
- When you die, what would you like on your gravestone (name, dates, a picture, a mammoth monument, a cross)?
- What if it just had your name and dates? What if it just had a name?
- What if there was just a stone?
- What if there was nothing: your body was just thrown into a grave and no one even marked it with a stone and people forgot that you--or any of the other hundreds of people buried in that cemetery area--were ever buried there?
- How would you feel if contractors wanted to build new buildings there, believing that all of your remains would be long gone?
- Then, have students respond to each question, either in written form or orally, or both.
Procedures
Have students read the essay out loud.
- After they have read the article, ask them the following:
- What did we learn from the anthropological study of the site?
- Should the national government have designated it as a National Historic Landmark? Why?
- How many of you knew that New York had so many slaves?
- Why do we have to rethink our idea of slavery in the U.S. with this knowledge about northern slavery? Why is it common knowledge that Charleston, South Carolina, had slaves but not that New York did, too (Civil War, monuments, etc.)?
- You can choose to have students answer in a written format and turn in their responses for a grade and/or respond orally in a discussion-style format.
- Explain, "As we discussed at the beginning of this lesson, many of you wanted a gravestone or some type marker. In pairs/groups, you are going to first answer a few questions and then design a monument/remembrance for them." The questions to answer are:
- Who were the people in the cemetery?
- What should they be remembered for?
- What type of monument/remembrance should be created?
- Have students design the project in pairs or small groups (three-five students). On the back, have them explain why they chose the design they did. They can present them to the class or hang them on a bulletin board.
- Explain the following: In one article (Slave Island: New York's Hidden History), it was written that: "Slaves in the North were not merely forgotten, they had been purposefully ignored in keeping with the fiction that the U.S. black-white race problem with slavery and its legacy was sectional, confined to the South, and not pervasive throughout the nation." Then, ask students to address these issues:
- Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
- If this is the truth, why do you think this was done? What needs to happen now?
- Create a "Decision Tree" to create a consensus about what needs to occur. (link to below)
Assessment
You can assess students in the following ways:
- Informally or formally via responses (orally or written) regarding the jobs and living conditions of New York slaves based on the essay.
- Informally based on their design of a monument and their rationale for the design.
- Informally via responses on the decision tree.
References
It’s Time To Remember: The Slave Meadow--Unmarked Graves on National Park Service Land
http://www.mtnlaurel.com/slaves/slave_meadow.htm
New York: The Revolt of 1712--additional insight into New York slavery
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p285.html
Scouts Clear Years Away From Slave Cemetery
http://genforum.genealogy.com/sc/pickens/messages/570.html
Slave and Free Areas Maps from 1790 and 1860
http://www.cr.nps.gov/delta/underground/rift.htm
Slave Graves In Marion County Stand As Silent Memorials To History
http://www.rootsweb.com/~momarion/slavegrave.htm
Slave Island: New York's Hidden History
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/protest_reform/slave_island_01.shtml
Witch hunt in New York: The 1741 rebellion
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p286.html
This lesson was submitted by Dr. Melissa J. Marks, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Greensburg, PA, a proud former eighth grade American History teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Decision Tree
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