MENANDS, N.Y. (NEWS10) — On Saturday afternoon, St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands observed the 10th anniversary of the burial of 14 enslaved people whose remains sat in unmarked graves for roughly 200 years.
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“We feel that ten years allows for a whole generation to pass, and this ground needs to be remembered,” explained Kelly Grimaldi, Historian at St. Agnes Cemetery. She described the African Burial Ground, saying, “We donated a space high up on Founders Hill. It’s a beautiful view. We thought it would be appropriate for them to be treated better in death than they were in life.”
Evelyn King Tanksley, Project Manager for the African Burial Ground at St. Agnes Cemetery, helped to organize over 20 nonprofits to give them a proper burial. “My mission is to let people know throughout the community that the African burial ground is here,”
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According to the Albany County Historical Association, colonial New York had the second-highest population of enslaved people in British North America, and the highest in the north.
“There’s not a lot of recognition of the fact that slavery was so prominent in New York and in the Northeast in general. So this is an excellent example of that. These are real people who were enslaved by one of the most prominent families in Albany,” explained Lisa Anderson, Curator of Bioarchaeology at the New York State Museum…