The New York African Burial Ground Archives Project: A Report for the General Services Administration, Northeast and Caribbean Region, New York, New York

In 2003, the GSA, Northeast and Caribbean Region, sought assistance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District’s Mandatory Center of Expertise for the Curation and Management of Archaeological Collections (MCX) to assist with the archival processing of the associated records generated from investigations conducted at the New York African Burial Ground (ABG) in Manhattan, New York City.
During the preliminary phases for the construction of a new building in 1991, archaeologists discovered a large historic cemetery used by African and African American slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This site is of both national and international significance and has been the subject of much debate and controversy. The project resulted in the recovery of over four hundred individual burials of human remains and associated burial artifacts as well as other material remains unassociated with the historic cemetery (i.e., stratigraphically located above the cemetery levels).
The MCX began the transferring materials to St. Louis for archival processing in 2004. Record groups were transferred as their creators completed their research on the African Burial Ground. In all, 13 record groups were transferred to St. Louis between 2004 and 2009.
When the archival processing of these materials was completed, the collection was delivered to the New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where the collection was legally transferred from GSA to the Schomburg Center on 30 September 2009.