Landscape Afterlives: A Geospatial Approach to the History of African Burial Grounds in New York City and the Hudson Valley

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, slavery was a central element of life in colonial and early national New York. The places where the enslaved buried their dead, referred to today as African Burial Grounds, remain important sites of reflection and remembrance for many New Yorkers. However, little literature exists discussing New York’s African Burial Ground sites from a broad, comparative perspective. This study examines seven African Burial Grounds in New York City and the Hudson Valley, two historically significant regions of New York State. GIS data from all seven sites, considered alongside GIS data from nearby coeval white Christian cemeteries, reveal that while the individuals interred in New York’s African Burial Grounds represent a variety of lived experiences, certain unifying patterns nonetheless emerge in the spatial dialectics of their final resting places. The findings have implications for the preservation of Black cultural heritage throughout southeastern New York State.