Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!
African Burial Ground
In New York City, May of 1991,
construction on a federal building had begun.
As excavators started removing stones,
they dug up a graveyard full of human bones.
Archaeologists were brought in to exhume the graves,
and discovered these were the remains of African slaves.
Slaves that cleared shorelines, and built New York's first roads,
incurring premature deaths from carrying crushing workloads.
The information gathered from this discovery,
will help us to secure our place in New York's history.
Listen to the ringing of the old church bell,
as we bid our forefathers, a proper farewell.
African Americans dance in the streets,
to the thunderous sound of pounding drumbeats.
Lifting our voices in a mighty chorus,
we pay tribute to our ancestors before us.
Individual coffins carved by hand,
were fittingly commissioned from the homeland.
Their bones were reburied, their souls finally free,
on the fourth of October 2003.
Written by Linda Hayes
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