Staten Island's Forgotten African-American Cemetery

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I used to live on Staten Island.

This is a piece of information which can elicit different types of responses – apathy, confusion, respect, derision, grunting.

Rarely is one of those responses wonder.

My last apartment on the island, over a decade ago, was in a North Shore neighborhood that wouldn’t stick out to a passing outsider. It doesn’t really stick out to insiders either. In truth, the neighborhood is so nondescript that an extraterrestrial making first contact at one of its nondescript intersections would be hard-pressed for a lasting impression that’s in any way descript. There’s a Stop-n-Shop, a couple of gas stations, some giant laundromat, a few dozen other chain and small businesses doing their very unspectacular thing, a handful of fire hydrants and squirrels. Nothing to grab one’s attention. Nothing meant for posterity.

However, a straight-shot down the block from that old apartment of mine, on the corner of Forest and Livermore Avenues, there stands what seems to be yet another monument to nondescriptery. It’s a strip mall, not big, with a 7-11 and a Sherwin Williams. Cars and buses drive by on a regular basis. Pedestrians and dogs amble past. And why wouldn’t they? Nobody, not a one, thinks twice about what’s actually there.

Like, actually there. In the earth.

If they did, they’d look at it in wonder.

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Difficult History 

Turns out the place I used to buy my six-packs and emergency toilet paper was standing on something quite profound. And no, I’m not proud of it. Although pride I guess doesn’t enter into a beer-and-TP run, anyway.

The land under this innocuous strip mall contains the interred remains of up to a thousand African-Americans, both enslaved and free, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Generations of people, each with an extraordinary history and existence unimaginable to most of us. Benjamin Prine – the last man known to be born into slavery on Staten Island, is one of the buried. He lived to be ninety-nine. I think about the incredible life story captured in his bones. I also cringe thinking about how many Toyota RAV4s have mindlessly parked over those bones; how many Slurpees have spilled and Uggs have clomped.

The original plot emerged in the 1850s as the 2nd Asbury African Methodist Episcopal Church and its accompanying cemetery. Stewardship of the grounds passed through the hands of different African Methodist churches before Staten Island itself took possession in 1950, thanks to thousands in owed back taxes. The flipping of the land to a Bronx company three years later set off decades of suburban development that gradually resigned the burial grounds to forgotten history – despite efforts over the years by some to preserve the consecrated soil.

It’s no surprise who won this battle between commerce and important Black history. Especially since commerce is undefeated against – lemme look it up real quick –  everything ever. Commerce is the Harlem Globetrotters, literally everything else in the world is the Washington Generals.

On top of that, New York City doesn’t officially recognize a cemetery ever being there – which is apparently the basis for something existing or not. This is despite substantial evidence proving otherwise. But you know, bureaucracy.

I’m not really one to cherish monuments, even to the deceased, generally. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great and all, but I often ascribe to the George Carlin philosophy that burials take up too much good earth. “Here’s another place we can put low-cost housing,” the late, great comedian suggests, “cemeteries!” Hard to argue with the logic, especially if you’re a godless heathen like me.

Yet, despite my irreverent, unforgivable attitude to the sacred, learning about this forgotten place struck me, along with the crass, soulless sub-urbanization drudged over it. I thought about the unrelenting messed-up-ness of history – especially New York City history. Oh, sure, it’s a breathless, riveting, bombastic tale, The Big Apple’s. But it’s also a shameful one. Every bit as shameful as everywhere else (because every place has ugly in their backstory.) Central Park, for example: an enduring gem and public works masterpiece that was deliberately built over Seneca Village, the largest collection of Black landowners in antebellum New York. But hey, Strawberry Fields, man!

You just can’t have good history without bad history, it seems. There’s always one for the other. Civilization’s progress is usually intertwined with human horror – a fact of life that hopefully stops happening some glittery, far-off day.

Until then, there’s at least some decent news about the cemetery. Interest in its cause has renewed. A documentary is being put together by local filmmakers to create awareness of the cemetery’s story (you can donate to their production here, if interested). Media outlets both local and national have also focused on this omitted grave site, stuck under the likes of MetroPCS in perpetuity.

Here’s hoping that proper recognition is finally given, a wrong is made a little less wrong, and some dignity is returned to the deceased. What that looks like in this situation, I’m not sure. There are plenty of folks more qualified than me who can figure that out. But an attempt to make some good NYC history, at the very least, will be a nice change of pace.

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