Cherry Lane Cemetery saga: Campaigners demand immediate action by New York Governor, Kathy Hochul

A major campaign will commence in earnest, Friday, November 2, 2023, to ensure that justice is done to the memory and the remains of black Americans that were buried at Cherry Lane Cemetery in Staten Island, New York, United States of America (USA) in the early 1900s and even before.

The historic campaign will be flagged off at the Canvas Institute in Staten Island, founded by culture activist, Bobby Digi, with many campaigners, including students filing out to endorse a petition directed at getting Governor Kathy Hochul of New York to remedy the injustice done to those buried in the first African-American burial ground on Staten Island, New York.

The long standing struggle is being documented by Heather Quinlan, whose film, Staten Island Graveyard, chronicles the sad saga of the Cemetery that was originally part of the Second Asbury African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

Though the Cemetery has been severally desecrated over time, has passed through different hands and been put to different uses, those campaigning for the right thing to be done are insisting that to start with, the Governor should order or allow for a ground-penetrating radar survey to take place on the site, so that the remains of those buried there can be located and possibly relocated to another cemetery.

They also want Gov. Hochul to claim eminent domain, offer the current owner of the property, Mr. George Butsikaris at Sigma Realty, a fair price for it and turn the place into a Museum of African-American History on Staten Island, an African-American Genealogical Center or a park to be called Cherry Lane Memorial Park with state and city funding. They argue that “if the city can take the property, the city can give it back.”

Governor Hochul, they insist, should also “fund beautification for the site, which currently has dumpsters out in the open that people use as trash and toilets.”

They note that “Santander Bank, a property on the site, has paid for a cherry tree to be planted at the strip mall, and for a landscape architect to design a memorial garden around the bank property,” but stress that “government officials and/or other businesses on the site should get involved as well.”

The recommendations of these campaigners, whose ranks are growing daily, are considered critical. This is because of the revelation that what is today seen as a mere parking lot was once a cemetery, and that this truth is coming at a crucial time in US history when much of the country is taking another look at itself, especially its legacy of enslavement in the North.

Long held views that the South was where enslavement occurred and that “the North took in huddled masses at Ellis Island” are beginning to change with new revelations that “in the late 1700s, New York City was second only to Charleston, SC for the number of homes with enslaved people” and that “New Jersey didn’t outlaw slavery until 1866 – three years after emancipation.”

The campaigners, who are now involving activists, archeologists, other professionals and students, insist that there is need to use the Cherry Lane Cemetery saga as a start off point to make the case “that racism should not exist in life nor the afterlife.”

According to them, when the envisaged change occurs in Staten Island, when the history that was “paved over” is fully exhumed, “all the other Cherry Lane Cemeteries can have a second chance. This would be the first time that a revolution of this kind will take place,” they stress.

The brains behind this new move quoted Architect Peggy King Jorde, who helped design the African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan, and who is a consultant on the film, Staten Island Graveyard, as pointing out that: “Archaeologists say that what defines us as human is how we bury our dead.

“So imagine a community that was deemed inhuman. Then when a mother or a father of African descent is burying their dead, they’re reclaiming the humanity of an individual in a society that says you’re not human. They are engaging in a revolutionary act. And so that is what makes this ground sacred.”

The campaigners are, therefore calling on all Staten Islanders, New Yorkers, and even those from beyond the shores of the state to begin writing to the “Honorable Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York State, NYS State Capitol Building, Albany, NY 12224” to demand immediate action on the Cherry Lane Cemetery saga.