When the Bones were Returned

By Yvette Moore
In October 2003, when the bones of 18th century formerly enslaved Africans were returned to the African Burial Ground site in Lower Manhattan, I was blessed to be on sabbatical from my job and volunteering at my children’s school in Deborah Barber’s fourth-grade class at PS 308 on Quincy Street in Crown Heights.

Ms. Barber and teachers Jeannette MacMillian (now Franklin), and Aquilla Raiford (now Smith) saw an opportunity to make colonial New York history come to life for their students. They decided to take their students to Manhattan to witness the grand procession of the bones’ return to the burial ground after being studied for more than a year of study at Howard University in D.C.

Reflecting on that African Burial Ground experience more than 30 years later, three main impressions emerge for me:
Children may not remember all we try to teach them, but they will remember how they felt about it.

Most public school teachers’ are fiercely determined to educate their students.
The African American struggle for justice and against our erasure from the nation’s story is constant. (We may not get everything we fight for, but we fight for everything we get.)
First, the children. I spoke with P.S. 308 students who went on the trip. They’re in their 30s now, and don’t remember much about it—except for how they felt.

The purpose of the trip was for the students to participate in an historic event for African Americans and the nation. My son was in second grade and my daughter in fifth, but I took them out of their classes that day to go on the fourth-grade classes’ trip to witness the return of the bones to the African Burial Ground. My daughter, Naima Moore-Turner, had been in Ms. Barber’s class for fourth grade and also knew some of the kids in the classes on the trip, so she was happy.

For my son, Zaire Moore-Turner, it was an important day for somebody, not necessarily for him at the time, but important because I took him out of his class to go on the trip. “I knew the day was significant, but I was a kid,” he said. “I knew they’d found bones under some buildings, and that that was messed up, so I was glad those people were getting some recognition. But that’s about it.”

Daeneesha Bowens-Pope was in Ms. MacMillian’s class. She remembers feeling excited. “It was a long train ride,” she said. Ms. Bowens-Pope remembers being told to pay attention because the trip was about our ancestors and feeling drawn to some of the artwork—pictures, murals, wood sculptures—that was part of the procession. “I remember the parade, and it being kind of sacred. I also remember there was a casket that went past. At the time, I didn’t understand what it all meant, but I felt connected. I felt we had purpose. We weren’t just slaves.”

And she really felt the importance of the day’s events when the teachers posted an article in the newspaper about it on the bulletin board in the corridor the next day, she revealed.
Second, the teachers. My sabbatical came at a time when public schools were under assault. The movement to privatize public schools was gaining traction. President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policies were requiring states to offer school choice to all students in schools that had failed to meet standards two years in a row.

Like today, there was lots of media about failing public schools and teachers, and advocates pushed for private alternatives. Once The Daily News posted standardized test scores of local parochial schools along with the public-school scores. They did that once and not again because the parochial school test scores were as bad, if not worse. P.S./Middle School 308 was an excelling magnet public school in a District 16.

Students graduated from the school having already passed several of the required high school Regents exams, were national chess champions, had a steel band and more. 308’s success put to lie the narrative that the way to save public education was to privatize it. Its magnet designation meant it could accept students from outside the district for its special program. Students like my children, who lived in District 17.

So, when I got the chance to take a sabbatical from my job, I wanted to volunteer in my children’s school, something I couldn’t do when working in Manhattan.

I don’t remember what I expected to find while volunteering at the school, but what I found were teachers who were energized, serious about their professional obligations, and personally committed to giving their students a stellar educational experience that prepared them to compete in the world. Volunteering in the school, I saw just how much public-school teachers had been maligned.

What Ms. Barber, Ms. MacMillian, and Ms. Smith did was just one example of how public-school teachers regularly go above and beyond what they’re required to do to educate their students.

Learning New York State’s role in the nation’s history was a part of the state’s social studies curriculum. The teachers incorporated news of the African Burial Ground into that course of study. I remember the timeline in Ms. Barber’s classroom. I’m going to tell the truth and shame the devil: I learned some things from that classroom timeline. Slavery ended in New York July 4, 1827. I never learned that in school.

Matter of fact, I thought of slavery as “a Southern state thing” that caused and ended with The Civil War. On some level, I knew it existed, but I never thought much about slavery in New York. The timeline also included something happening in a Revolutionary war-era pub (perhaps Fraunces Tavern) in Lower Manhattan that was still in business. Ms. Barber wanted to walk by that pub while she had her class in the city, but time didn’t allow.

I loved how the teachers were so intentional about making the social studies lessons have real-life meaning for their students.

Lastly, the struggle. I’m not exactly sure when I first learned the bones of African Americans from the days of slavery had been found during excavation of the site for the new federal office, but I do remember the protests.

To be honest, there were many protests in the 1980s and 1990s: Michael Stewart, 1983; Eleanor Bumpurs, 1984; the Howard Beach incident, 1986; Yusef Hawkins murder, 1989; Amadou Diallo, 1999; Anti-South African Apartheid protests. Seems like we were always in the street protesting at that time.

But the African Burial Ground protests were different in that there was a very prominent spiritual side to them: drumming, libations, all-night vigils, prayers, and a calling on the ancestors — even as the community sought to protect their remains, demand honor for their lives, and place them in the annals of New York City and the nation’s history.

Today, the six-acre Colonial-era burial ground that hold the remains of 10,000-20,000 free and formerly enslaved Africans is memorialized in the African Burial Ground Museum on 290 Broadway side of the of the Ted Weiss Federal Building and a .35-acre monument on the Duane Street side of the building where 419 bodies of children, women and men were reinterned. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993 and named a National Monument in 2006.

The museum is intimate and interactive. It includes life-size sculptures, art, and information about the lives of African Americans in colonial New York. It displays photos of the protest and presents the voices of some of the many African American community leaders who fought to halt construction of the federal building in 1991 until the people buried there were treated with the dignity that they deserved but had not received in life nor death.

It also displays notes from students and photos of the grand procession of the bones’ attended by the PS 308 children.

It is an honorable commemoration. It is also a testament that begs the question of why African Americans always have to fight so hard to get the bare minimum of what’s due us, for what’s simply just and right? It is a testament that we may not get everything we fight for, but we must fight for anything we expect to get.

And so, the struggle continues.
Dr. Kevin Bond was dean of 308’s middle school in October 2003. Today, he is Assistant Principal at Middle School 35/ Magnet School of Leadership, Exploration and the Arts in Crown Heights. In 2020, students there commemorated the life of George Floyd with a march to the Black Lives Matter murals at Restoration Plaza.

Students have gone on a college tour to Georgia in cooperation with the I Will Graduate program. Students leave the school with five Regents exams under their belt: English, a Foreign Language, Algebra, Social Studies, and Biology.

“We are on this never-ending campaign to uplift and help our students feel good about who they are, and how they look, and to be able to compete with anybody, anywhere, anytime,” he said. “Some people say we have to make America great again. But when America was great in their eyes, our people were slaves. So, we have to prepare our students for the world. Just like we did at 308.”

The African Burial Ground National Monument, located at the corners of Duane and Elk Streets in lower Manhattan, is operated by the National Park Service. For information on hours and directions, visit nps.gov/afbg.

About the Author
Yvette Moore is the author of Freedom Songs, a coming of age of story set in Civil Rights era 1963 Brooklyn, its sequel Just Sketching, and The Birth of Christ, a colorful African American telling of the Christmas story. All are available on Amazon.com.
She is also now a grandmother of a 4-year-old set to enter a New York City public school, where she will volunteer.