The African Burial Ground Monument.

I made it safely to New York! Yesterday, I spent most of the day strolling around the city feeling incredibly jet lagged after a red eye flight. Today I ended up waking up later than I had planned so I had a breakfast of champions, a slice of pizza and a coffee, and then I headed to lower Manhattan to check out the African Burial Ground. In 1991, in the midst of the bustle of lower Manhattan, not far off from Wall street, a construction crew found more than 400 wooden caskets with the remains of enslaved Africans. In honor of our African ancestors the African Burial ground is now marked with a monument and is a designated National Historic landmark. There is also a visitor's center that opened this year, which had a lot of information. It has video footage of the inauguration of the monument that showed the passion that the African/African American/Black community showed in honoring their ancestors. It was extremely powerful! Bellow are some pictures of the monument and visitor's center.

Here is a close up of the monument, next to this there was a symbol of Sankofa which was the overall theme of the monument. Sankofa is from the Akan people of West Africa, it stresses

that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward into the future.

The Circle of the Diaspora and the Ancestral Libation Court. The Circle represents the African diaspora with different symbols from native African, Latin American and Caribbean peoples who were forcibly subjugated during the colonization of the Americas.

I didn't take this picture, but here is an aerial view of the monument

This an opening inside the Ancestral Chamber, it serves as a pathway for the spirits of those who are buried under the monument to rise up to the heavens.

A photograph of the excavated remains, found inside of the visitor's center.

A snap shot that I took of a video in the visitor's center of Maya Angelou speaking at the inauguration.