The nonprofit group ASNEAA (Africa throughout the global community, South America, North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia) honored the ancestors with an early Juneteenth celebration at Green-Wood Cemetery on June 15.
For this, its third yearly remembrance of history-making Black New Yorkers, ASNEAA offered a day of activities including family drawing and legacy bracelet-making activities, opportunities to participate in Black history quizzes and pick up free books about Black people, and a trolley tour through Brooklyn’s historic, 478-acre Green-Wood Cemetery.
The trolley tour made scheduled stops at the gravesites of impactful Black New Yorkers. Peter and Rosanna Disery Van Dyke, successful mid-19th century caterers, have a prominent 12-foot obelisk to mark their family graves. Not far from the Van Dykes is a new headstone to mark the resting place of the mathematician and linguist Charles Reason, the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children. Reason was the first Black college professor in the U.S.
The United States Colored Troops 35th infantry quartermaster John Munroe is buried in the cemetery’s “Freedom Lots” section. The educator and suffragist Sarah Smith Tompkins Garnet and her sister Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward, New York state’s first Black female medical doctor, are both interred at Green-Wood; as are civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson; her husband, James Weldon Johnson, the first Black president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (who wrote the lyrics to the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”); and the 1980s neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The Juneteenth trolley ride was needed for those who wanted to see all of these gravesites because they are spread across the rolling hills of Green-Wood Cemetery. Records for the cemetery, founded in 1838, did not always note the race of those interred, so often African Americans, Asians, whites, and Latinos are buried within steps of each other. There are some sections where you can find groups of Black people buried in one area, but this is usually associated with their being part of a Black-oriented school or institution.
That’s one reason ASNEAA holds this Juneteenth event at Green-Wood, explained Shari Jones, the organization’s founder. Though it’s not often spoken about, it’s important for everyone to understand that most of the historic sites in New York City—like Green-Wood Cemetery, Fort Greene Park’s Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument, and sections of Central Park––have connections to the city’s Black history. “[W]e do this work of educating folks on the history that’s been erased,” Jones told the AmNews. “We do this event to honor our ancestors and that’s why we’re having it at the cemetery, which may seem a little weird, but the goal is to normalize this. Paying your respects to our ancestors but then also honoring their humanity.”