Bus depot to stir up burial ground

Residents in Harlem are trying to save a 350-year-old African burial ground that lies right underneath the 126th Street bus depot.

The MTA plans to tear down the depot and rehab it; the cemetery is also threatened by current work on the Willis Avenue Bridge say advocates, who see the graves as a link to New York City’s forgotten history of slavery.

“The early foundation of New Amsterdam survived because of the enslaved Africans,” said Eric Tait, part of a group trying to protect the site. “Africans built the roads, the bridges, the infrastructure. They helped the colony prosper, and their legacy is not marked anywhere.”

Freed and enslaved Africans in the village of Nieuw Haarlem used the burial ground starting in the 1660s. Shells at the site may mean Lenape Indians used the area as a sacred spot, said Christopher Paul Moore at the Schomburg Center for Black Culture.

An MTA spokesperson said they are open to talking residents who want to protect the graveyard. From Chambers Street to Central Park, New York City is built on the graves of thousands of early residents, said Tait.

“All of the 13 colonies buried their dead where they lived and worked,” said Tait. “From Maine to Georgia, if you dig deep enough near any old structure, you’re liable to run across human bones.”