New York Attorney General Letitia James today moved to protect a historic burial ground for formerly enslaved people in Elmhurst, Queens from further disturbance as the property heads toward a court-ordered foreclosure sale. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed a motion to intervene in a pending foreclosure action concerning the property at 47-11 90th Street, seeking a court order that would require any prospective buyer to be notified of the human remains at the site and their legal obligations to protect them before they can take ownership.
“Every New Yorker deserves to rest in peace, and that includes the people buried on this land generations ago,” said Attorney General James. “My office will not allow a foreclosure sale to become yet another disrespectful event in this burial ground’s unjustly troubled history. We are going to court to make sure whoever buys this property knows exactly who is buried there and is aware of their legal obligation to protect them.”
The burial ground dates back to 1818, nine years before New York state completed its gradual abolition of slavery. As more enslaved New Yorkers gained their freedom, communities of Black New Yorkers began to grow throughout the city and state. One such enclave was called Newtown, located in what is now Elmhurst, Queens. In 1828, one year after slavery was fully abolished, a group of freed slaves formed the United African Society of Newtown, building a church and formalizing a local burial ground that had been informally used for the previous decade. That group later became St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, which owned the property until it was sold when the church moved to Jackson Heights in the 1930s. More than 300 New Yorkers were believed to have been buried on the site, many of whom were formerly enslaved. The burial ground was eventually forgotten until at least 2006, when the City of New York placed restrictive declarations on the site to protect those buried there…