By KRIS VENEZIA
STAFF WRITER
Fordham University is starting a project to set up a catalog that lists the burial grounds of enslaved African Americans in the United States.
The idea came from Sandra Arnold, senior secretary of the initiative. She said she was doing independent research about unmarked slave burial sites and realized that a database of these areas could connect people with their ancestors.
“I learned that burial sites can provide a lot of genealogical information for people,” Arnold said. “So I went to the African American studies department here [at Fordham University] and told them my idea.”
In February 2012, the Army Corps of Engineers discovered the remnants of 300 former slaves buried about 20 miles west of New Orleans. That is a small percentage of the roughly six million slaves who lived in the United States from the Colonial era to the Civil War, according to USA Today.
The article reports that there are few records of where enslaved Americans were laid to rest.
Fordham University is working with other schools in the United States on the project, including representatives from Emory, Yale, the College of William and Mary and Sweet Briar College. According to Arnold, the biggest challenge will be getting people to give information.
“Our project relies on public participation, so I think it’s important that the project is promoted and people know about it,” she said. “The challenge is just making sure that people know we’re here.”
Marina Rumore, FCRH ’13, is majoring in anthropology. She said she did not know Fordham University was working on this project.
“I had no idea, but it sounds really cool,” Rumore said.
As an anthropology student, Rumore explained that the initiative would be right up her alley.
“I actually became an anthro[pology] major because I wanted to get involved and find out more about different cultures,” she said.
The database will be available to everyone, allowing families to use the catalog as a way to find ancestors and professionals to utilize it for research.
“We really want this to be a great tool for historians and scholars to continue to piece together this part of American history,” Arnold said.
Arnold said it is difficult to determine how long the database will take to be completed because there are many slavery burial grounds in America.
“We’ve been discussing and trying to figure out how many of these sites are out there and we don’t know,” she said. “People are finding them all the time, from developers and other people just digging.”
In February of 2010, New York City opened a visitor center for a slave burial site in lower Manhattan.
According to The New York Times, over 400 bodies were discovered in the area, and somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 could still be underground in the city.
The article discusses how the burial site was discovered back in 1991. During construction of a General Services building, graves were found more than 20 feet underground. Using a New York City map from the mid-18th century, archeologists determined the bodies were buried in 1755.
Arnold said she cannot wait for this project to come together so the group can establish a comprehensive catalog.
“We really want people to know about the project so we can get the database completed,” she said. “We really believe this is going to be a great service to the public.”
There is no exact timetable yet as to when the catalog will be complete, but a website will be up and running in about a week. The site will be titled vanishinghistory.org.
