Memorializing America in Manhattan
From the monumental to the mundane, I saw another side to American nation building as I moved on in my tour to New York. In downtown Manhattan I saw two particularly moving heritage sites, which throw light on the everyday lives that ran alongside Washington and Lincoln's.
The African Burial Ground is a grave site, memorial and visitor centre on the site of what was once a much larger area outside the city walls, used by transported Africans in the 17th and 18th century. It was discovered during work to build a new office block near City Hall in 1991 and the cause of much controversy around the excavation, use and eventual memorialisation of the site. A group of graves were excavated and studied, and then returned with much solemnity to mounds that now form part of a national park. Alongside, a black-paved circular area re-orientates the world map, surrounded by symbols from the African diaspora, while an imposing pyramid structure, open to the elements, evokes the hull of the ships that transported enslaved Africans in such cramped conditions.
But it's the visitor centre which really struck me. The opening film and associated displays consciously tell a story of American history. This is a story of labour, of the work that built Manhattan, New York and America. The story of early African slavery is the story of colony building, we are told. This is, to some extent, all our story, is the clear implication. It's also striking what a collaborative team brought the Burial Ground into being, bringing together the descendant community and scientific researchers in new ways that tell the ongoing story of building an American story.
The Tenement Museum, just a mile away, dwells on similar themes. This fragile survival from the poor, cramped lives of this majority immigrant neighbourhood of Manhattan is now surrounded by highly gentrified bars, restaurants and shops. Over the years 1863 to 1935 it housed nearly 7,000 people from 20 different countries, waves of migrant workers seeking a better life in America: German, Irish, Italian, Eastern European, South American, Chinese. Various themed tours introduce you to different floors and narratives of the building, each including a number of apartments reconstructed to a particular time period and family, and one apartment left in the dejected and mouldering state in which the building was taken over in 1988. You learn about the immense will-power, creativity and hard work that maintained immigrant families in this busy building.
Again this is a story of ordinary lives, of labour, and of what made America. The introductory film emphasises how these migrant communities were the backbone of the industry that created Wall Street wealth and turned New York City into the vibrant cultural melting pot that it is today. Further tours investigate the neighbourhood and the ongoing histories that still surround the tenements. Strong bonds clearly tie the museum into the broader diaspora of communities that formed the area's history, from personal to culinary.
Together the African Burial Ground and Tenement Museum tell an equally fragile American story to Mount Vernon, but one that is self-consciously extraordinary in its ordinariness. It is the story of the millions of ordinary people who's hard work, in often difficult and emotionally draining conditions, built a country that still struggles with its attitude to immigration.