“Black Cherry Lane: Presence” Exhibit At Empire Outlets: Black American Graveyard Paved Over Now A Parking Lot – Film Updates

Editor’s note: Our audience may remember our previous two-part interview with Heather Quinlan about this documentary, which has come quite a long way since then.  Here is the first article and here is the second.  We also covered the African Burial Ground celebration in lower Manhattan, “Triumph of the Human Spirit Day.” 

See below for a series of slides that were discussed at the meeting, which was not audio/video recorded.  Stay tuned for updates on the progress of the documentary and the exhibit, detailed below:

The exhibition is scheduled for February at Empire Outlets. It’s called “Black Cherry Lane: Presence.” The curator is Lazarus Nazario

A cemetery was paved over. Its story wasn’t.

In 1954, real estate developers seized Cherry Lane Cemetery, the final resting place of African-Americans from New York to the Carolinas. Among those buried there was Benjamin Prine, a formerly enslaved Staten Islander and 1812 war veteran. The cemetery was paved over in the 1960s for a Shell station and later a shopping plaza, but its story lives on with the documentary American Graveyard, genealogical research, and the reunion of descendant families.

I’ll be talking with historian Debbie-Ann Paige and Historic Richmond Town’s curator Gabriella Leone in exploring Cherry Lane’s history, the making of American Graveyard, and how to begin uncovering your own family history through records, censuses, church documents, and archival materials. I’ll also show never-before-seen clips of the film. See you there!

The exhibition is scheduled for June at Empire Outlets. It’s called “Black Cherry Lane: Presence.”

Photos by  Dr Janet Leslie 

Banner Image: Cherry lane cemetery speaking panel. Image Credit – Heather Quinlan