Thousands of New Yorkers marched to the tattoo of drums and the clip-clop beat of a horse-drawn hearse to the final resting place in lower Manhattan where 419 colonial-era slaves were reinterred yesterday, just blocks from the waterfront where they were sold more than 200 years ago.
Poet Maya Angelou and actors Cicely Tyson, Phylicia Rashad and Delroy Lindo were among the celebrities speaking to a cheering crowd before the caskets were lowered into the ground.
Yesterday, a Yoruba priest blessed the seven oversized wooden crypts containing the remains as they were lowered into the African Burial Ground at Duane and Elk streets, where 12 years ago excavation workers stumbled onto the 1700s graveyard.
The remains had been studied at Howard University in Washington until they returned here on Friday.