House push for museum at lower Manhattan’s African Burial Ground

Rep. Dan Goldman said Monday that he plans to reintroduce long-stalled legislation to build a museum at the Colonial-era African Burial Ground near Foley Square in lower Manhattan, a site that is believed to hold the remains of more than 15,000 free and enslaved Africans.

The African Burial Ground hosts a decade-old visitors’ center and received National Historic Landmark status in 1993, two years after excavators discovered the 7-acre burial ground during work on a planned federal government office tower.

Goldman, a Tribeca Democrat, described the burial ground as a “stark and sobering reminder of the fact that New York and America was built by Black Americans and, to a great extent, on the back of Black Americans.”

The legislation will be introduced in the House on Tuesday, according to Goldman’s office. The bill calls for the appropriation of $15 million in 2024 for the creation of the museum.

Similar legislation to create the museum has languished in Washington for years.

“We just have to keep working at it,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, an Upper West Side Democrat who represented the site before his district was redrawn last year.

Nadler first introduced legislation aimed at creating the museum in 2005, according to his office.

At a news conference with Nadler, Goldman pledged to work hard to find GOP co-sponsors for the bill, saying that he believes “a lot” of Republicans agree that Americans need to face shameful elements of the nation’s history.

“It’s more clear than ever that we must not just protect but celebrate Black history,” Goldman said on the penultimate day of Black History Month.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is set to sponsor the bill in the Senate but did not attend the news conference.

In a statement, she described the burial ground as “an important part of New York City’s history, serving as a permanent tribute to the enslaved and free African men and women who lived in and helped build the foundations of New York.”

It was not clear what building would house the museum.