How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

Historian Christopher Moore—a descendent of Groot Manuel (or Big Manuel), who was one of the first eleven enslaved Africans brought to the city of New York—wrote that those burying their loved ones in the cemetery did their best to use traditional practices but were limited by stringent legal restrictions that dictated the lives and movements of Black people at that time. No more than twelve people were allowed to take part in funeral processions or graveside services at a given time. Burials could not take place at night, despite this being a standard element of many African burial practices. Black people who were enslaved needed a written pass to travel more than one mile away from their homes. The distance between their homes and the cemetery was often greater than one mile. The harm done did not end after a person’s funeral but continued after their death. It was not uncommon for local doctors and medical students to illegally exhume bodies from the cemetery to use them for dissections and experiments. In 2003, after time at the lab at Howard University, the remains from the African Burial Ground were returned to New York City in a grand ceremony. Each of the 419 sets of remains was placed in its own hand-carved coffin made in Ghana. The coffins were split between seven crypts. Each crypt—along with nearly eight thousand handwritten letters “from the living to the African ancestors”—was lowered into the ground and marked with seven burial mounds. The site was designate...