Can’t Escape The Asphalt: Staten Island’s Forgotten African-American Slave Cemetery Paved Over With Remains Underneath – Heather Quinlan Interview
Documentary in production about Cherry Hill Cemetery, on what is now Forest Avenue and Livermore Avenue, which is now paved-over and beneath asphalt, with no indication whatsoever of its past.
Did you know that there was an African-American burial ground where the Santander Bank now stands on Forest Avenue and Livermore? See Part 2 of this interview here.
The bodies were also never moved, as if they didn’t matter. Most of those buried there were former slaves, whose lives have in large part been forgotten. Documentary filmmaker Heather Quinlan found out about this unremembered graveyard, and has been working on a documentary about the site. She has interviewed family members of some of the people buried on this site.
In this interview, we discuss the Cherry Lane Cemetery, where many African-American Staten Islanders are buried, some of whom are former slaves. The only indication we have of this paved-over graveyard is a street co-naming in honor of one of the former slaves who is buried there, Benjamin Prine Way.
If you have lived on Staten Island a long time, you may be familiar with this story. Back in the 1800s, and into approximately the year 1910, African-Americans were buried at this cemetery on what is now Forest Avenue.
While some of them were formerly enslaved people, many of them were not, and were residents of this area. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many African-Americans learned about Staten Island, especially from African-American oyster fisherman at the more famous African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church located on Sandy Ground. When former slaves were seeking a new place to live, ready to start their lives anew, some of them were told about Staten Island.
While most Islanders are familiar with the much more famous Sandy Ground, there are likely few who know that this other church, the Cherry Lane African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, which was loaned their pastor by the Sandy Ground congregation. Heather Quinlan, along with other historians, believes that this may have led to the downfall of the church.
It isn’t that the church itself did anything wrong. However, due to the pastor being loaned there, and then some people following this pastor instead of the new pastor, who returned to the Sandy Ground Church, the donations to this church dwindled.
The Cherry Lane church property was deeded to the congregation by a community member, after which donations were raised and the church was built. This portion of its history will be discussed in greater detail in Part 2 of this interview.
As is very often the case, the church also devoted part of their land for use as a cemetery. Over the years, many members of this congregation, along with non-religious community members whose families were seeking a place of internment, would use the cemetery at Cherry Lane. There are at least a number of death certificates on which Cherry Lane Cemetery was listed. However, this was not the only indication that there was a cemetery on the property.
In addition, on land and survey maps, the property was identified as a cemetery. In the time that this cemetery was active, there was still segregation. Segregation rules applied in death as much as in life, meaning that African-Americans, whether former slaves or freeborn, could not be buried in the “white” cemeteries.
As a consequence, there are today many African-American cemeteries that have suffered a similar fate to this one.
One other example provided by Ms. Quinlan is of the cemetery in lower Manhattan, where the IRS building now stands. Unlike Cherry Lane, though, things were done properly in that case.
It was during the tenure of Mayor Dinkins who, as an African-American himself, had a personal stake in seeing that the cemetery was honored properly. In that case, the bodies were moved, there was a ceremony marking their new internment, and the IRS building was still built. There is also a plaque on that property commemorating its history.
Unfortunately, the same was not true on Cherry Lane. As we will discuss in part two of this interview, things turned out very differently on Staten Island, where a family of powerful real estate attorneys made sure that the property was not identified as a cemetery, and built the Shell station on it. The Shell station lasted into the 1960s, after which it was torn down and replaced by the shopping plaza that stands there now.
The laws regarding cemeteries in the United States are very patchy, and things start to get sketchy when dealing with them. There are usually local laws, city and state laws, then federal laws. In most cases, cemeteries that have been located on maps for decades, such as Cherry Lane, are supposed to be protected. The remains are supposed to be moved. That did not happen for this cemetery, as the author discusses.
We also talk about how she came to learn about this particular cemetery, and why she became passionate about telling its story. Some of the descendants of people who are buried there are still alive today, and they have gotten together with other community groups to try to get this cemetery remembered and properly honored in some way.
The ideal goal of the documentary, and of Ms. Quinlan, is to get the landlord to agree to ground-penetrating radar. This will define what is still there, and the next steps will all be determined by the answers provided by this technology.
There is also a legal discussion going on between Santander Bank and the landlord to create a memorial garden on the bank’s property. The garden is to be installed by another local company, Wiesner Bros. Nursery. And finally, the other goal is to have the NYC DOT install signage on Livermore (which is their jurisdiction and not private property) to commemorate the people who are buried in this cemetery, and to remember what it used to be.
One of the good things about this cemetery is that, unlike another graveyard she mentioned, in this instance, the remains are unknown but the documentation is there. In other cases, the remains are present and found, but they are unknown. There is no documentation. Join us next week when we publish Part II of this interview, where we discuss the breakdown of exactly how this happened, and the full details of the legal battle that caused the graveyard to be nearly lost to history.
Banner Image: Video Cover. Image Credit – Staten Islander News
Staten Islander News Service Staff Writer
This byline indicates that this article was penned by a member/members of the Staten Islander News Organization office team. Our staff writers are the backbone of our newspaper, performing all sorts of important tasks like conducting interviews, investigating leads, besides writing the news stories you see.
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