"[7] The Burial Ground site is New York's earliest known African-American cemetery; studies show an estimated 15,000 African American people were buried here.

[10] Enslaved Africans in chattel bondage were granted certain rights and afforded protections such as the prohibition against arbitrary physical punishment – for example, whipping.

In 1697 Trinity Church gained control of the burial grounds in the city and passed an ordinance excluding blacks from the right to be buried in churchyards.

As in the rest of the Thirteen Colonies, the Crown had offered freedom to enslaved peoples who escaped from their Patriot masters and fled to British lines.

[15] After the end of the war, according to provisions concerning property in the Treaty of Paris, the Americans demanded the return of all former slaves who had escaped to British lines.

[17] The early history of free blacks and slaves in New York City became overshadowed by the waves of mid- to late nineteenth century immigration from Europe, which dramatically expanded the population and added to the ethnic diversity.

In addition, most of the ancestors of today's African-American population in the city arrived from the South in the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth century.

What would become the "Negro's Burial Ground" was located on what was then the outskirts of the developed town, just north of present-day Chambers Street and west of the former Collect Pond (later Five Points).

The revelation that physicians and medical students were illegally digging up bodies for dissection from this burial ground precipitated the 1788 Doctors' Riot.

[22] Some concluded at that time that these were connected to a 1741 incident in which thirteen African Americans were burned at the stake and eighteen were hanged,[21] however others wondered whether the bones were of Dutch or Indian origin.

The agency had done an environmental impact statement (EIS) prior to purchase of the site, but the archaeological survey had predicted that human remains would not be found because of the long history of urban development in that area.

Within the year, its teams removed the remains of 419[28] persons from the site, but it had become clear that the extent of the burial ground was too large to be fully excavated.

"The 'invisibility' of Black history in New York City partially accounts for the importance of the Foley Square site"; activists hoped to find a means there to redress "the injustice and the imbalance of the historic record, and to give voice to the silenced ones".

[12] In the early stages of the project, national GSA officials and related Congressional committees directed that excavation and construction proceed.

Control of the burial site was transferred from an archaeological firm in the city to the physical anthropologist Michael Blakey and his team at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., for study at the Montague Cobb Biological Anthropology Laboratory.

[12] In large part due to activism by the African-American community, the United States Congress passed, and on October 6, 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed, HR 5488 "The Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government Appropriations Act" (which became Public Law 102-393) which ordered the GSA to immediately cease construction, archeological excavation & skeletal exhumation on the pavilion portion of the Ted Weiss Federal Building (where the remains had been found) and to appropriate $3 million to modify the pavilion foundation, prevent further deterioration of the burial ground & memorialize the site.

The southern portion of the building, slated to be built on the parcel by Duane and Elk Streets, was eliminated to provide adequate room for a memorial.

Given its importance, GSA proposed partial mitigation of the adverse effects to the burial ground of the construction of 290 Broadway, by undertaking programs of data analysis, curation, and education.

The discovery and long controversy received national media attention, raising interest and awareness in public archaeology projects.

"[12] The findings at the burial ground already had highlighted some of the losses of slavery, as African Americans had not been recently recognized as a major part of early New York history until then.

"[10] In total, the intact remains of 419 men, women and children of African descent were found at the site, where they had been buried individually in wooden boxes.

"[7] These remains stand for the estimated tens of thousands of persons at the burial ground and historically in New York, representing Africans' "critical" role in "the formation and development of this city and, by extension, the Nation.

"[31][32][33] As a result of public engagement, the Howard University team identified four questions which the community hoped to have answered from studies of the remains: Before the erection of the monument, the burial ground had endured an immense amount of abuse.

Howard University did forensic studies, assessing the remains for nutrition, diseases and indicators of general living conditions for African slaves and free blacks.

[36] The "commemorative ceremony was inclusive and international in scope, and was organized by GSA and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture" of the New York Public Library.

The Circle of the Diaspora features a map of the Atlantic area in reference to the Middle Passage,[40] by which slaves were transported from Africa to North America.

[46] On February 27, 2010, a visitor center for the African Burial Ground National Monument opened in the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway, which was built over part of the archaeological site.

Other parts of the exhibit explore the work-life of Africans in early New York and connection to national history, as well as the late 20th-century community success in preserving the burial ground.

[10] In addition to earning several historic-landmark designations for the site, the discoveries of the African Burial Ground have changed thinking about early African-American history in New York and the nation.

When the visitor center at the burial ground opened in 2010, Edward Rothstein wrote, A revision in popular understanding has taken place about slavery's history in New York City, evident in several recent books and an impressive series of shows at the New-York Historical Society.