Dr. Andrea Frohne recounts the processes involved in community recognition and public commemoration of the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan. The cemetery covered six city blocks for 15,000 enslaved and freed Africans and African Americans who buried between 1712 and 1795. A federal office building was erected on a portion of the sacred ground from 1991 to 1994.

Andrea Frohne is an art historian of Africa at Ohio University. She is Director of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, Interim Director of the School of Art + Design, and an affiliate of African Studies. She published The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space (Syracuse University Press, 2015) and has a book forthcoming titled Contemporary Artists from the Horn of Africa: Encounters Beyond Borders through Conflict, Colonialism, and Modernity (Africa World Press, 2022).

Dr. Camara will moderate the conversation. He is an Assistant Professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts with a concentration in Black literatures and popular cultures.

This talk is sponsored by the UNC-Chapel Hill African Studies Center and is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies’ Colloquium Series.