"In addition to being a space for African spirituality and ritual, the African Burial Ground was also a space for slave resistance on a number of levels. ...it was the principal location for the execution of slaves involved in the 1712 and 1741 disturbances. Furthermore, Burial #25 excavated on October 16, 1991, provides some insight into the end result of rebellious activities in eighteenth-century New York City. The twenty-two-year-old woman interred in this grave was found with a musket ball in her rib cage, significant blunt force trauma to her lower skull and a diagonal fracture along her right forearm. Based on a forensic examination of her skeletal remains, it appears that she was shot in the back, severely beaten, and then restrained by someone who twisted her arm-thus causing the fracture. Since the fractures on her lower skull and arm had not healed, she likely suffered these injuries in the last hours or minutes of her life. Whether she was one of the slaves killed during the 1712 revolt will probably never be known. It is plausible, however, that she died during some act of resistance to white authority. Physical anthropologists studying the remains at the site have found distinct signs indicating that in at least two cases individuals were burned to death-a capital punishment associated with enslaved Africans found guilty of arson, rebellion, or murder."
~Walter C. Rucker, Fires of Discontent, Echoes of Africa: Slave Resistance in Colonial. New York City
Mo nyinaa mma yenkaw kwan no
(you all should allow us to go on the path)
Mo nyinaa mma yenkaw kwan no
(you all should allow us to go on the path)
Nnipa dodo a yekawee,
yemmae
(the multitude of people that went, they did not come)
Mo nyinaa mma yenkaw kwan no
(you all should allow us to go on the path)
~Akan drum text, Kwasi Konadu, The Akan Diaspora in the Americas
