and responsibility for all of us to tell Our Story to the world…
... and to specifically honor the memories of the ancestral Africans who have passed.
It’s a story and history of both extreme sacrifice and profound contributions that Africans have made to the creation of the United States of America.
The African Burial Ground Memorial serves not only as a memorial to educate the descendant community but also to educate the world community at large.
No longer should one be able to walk past this site or through lower Manhattan and not know, understand, acknowledge and respect the important contributions ancestral Africans have made to this district and the nation.
Our generation has been entrusted with this awesome responsibility. We are honored and we embrace it in honor of the memory of those ancestral Africans who are buried here so that their sacrifices were not in vain.
We embrace it so that all of us today will begin a new phase in the process of educating ourselves and the world about the importance of this site and everything it represents.
We embrace it for our children and all future generations so that they may come to know, understand, acknowledge, respect and be proud of their history.
– Rodney Leon, Designer, African Burial Ground Permanent Memorial