MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-10-03 |
| FROM | Ruben I Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] FYI
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October 4, 2003
Going Home With Honor to a Place of Rest
By MICHAEL LUO
There were speeches, music and celebration yesterday as coffins bearing the remains of free and enslaved African-Americans unearthed 12 years ago were carried up Broadway in Lower Manhattan to be laid to rest for a second time. But like the syncopated rhythm of African percussion that filled the air, there was also the drumbeat of a word, one freighted with centuries of anger and controversy.
Reparations.
It was mentioned in the opening prayer. It was repeated during the official ceremony. And it was chanted by the black crowd as the coffins were placed one by one into crypts that will be lowered into the ground today, capping five days of ceremonies in six cities.
For some black New Yorkers, the discovery of the 18th-century remains, the revelations of what their ancestors endured and the 12 years of efforts to rebury them have revived an issue that has taken on new life nationwide in recent years: government compensation for slavery.
Officially, the ceremony yesterday marked the return of 419 sets of remains, discovered in 1991 during excavation for a federal office building. The pageantry would have been unimaginable during the lifetimes of the anonymous dead.
The observances began at 10:30 a.m. at South Street Seaport. A New Jersey State Police motorboat delivered the coffins of a man, woman, boy and girl that had been taken from city to city for commemorative events associated with the reburial. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was one of more than a dozen people accompanying one of the mahogany coffins, hand-carved in Ghana with African village scenes and tribal symbols. But the rest were borne exclusively by black leaders and others who have taken part in the battle since 1991 to have them reburied and memorialized.
The coffins varied in size, but were all much smaller than usual. The three rectangular ones appeared barely three feet long; the fourth was a cube not much larger.
The Rev. Herbert D. Daughtry, one of three clergymen who delivered opening prayers, was the first to mention the word. There would be no New York, no skyscrapers, if it were not for the toil of enslaved Africans, he said from the stage.
"They owe us," he said, his voice rising as a cheer went up from the crowd. "It's time to pay up."
Later, Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, who has criticized the General Services Administration's handling of the African Burial Ground project, took the stage and raised the subject again.
"We'll find out who's serious after today in the 'hood," he said, urging more financing for schools, housing and job creation.
Then this: "You want to honor us? Pay us our reparations."
Eventually, the solemn procession up Broadway began, with the African percussion team playing a tattoo. Five horse-drawn carriages carried the four coffins and more than a hundred others selected to make the journey to the reburial site, in the shadow of the federal building that was later completed over part of the burial ground.
Employees of the General Services Administration, who continued to hear heated criticism yesterday, hoped the moment would bring some credit for what they called a renewed effort to complete the project when a new administrator took over in 2001.
"Our apology is shown through the demonstration of effort" in the last two years, said Karl H. Reichelt, the agency's regional administrator.
But as people clad in traditional African clothing reverently placed the coffins in their crypts, a chant was heard from the crowd outside the gates. "What do we want?" someone shouted.
The roar back: "Reparations!"
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