Remains unearth beneath the former
Broadway School in 2008
NEWBURGH – It was in 2008 when a black cemetery was unearthed as the former Broadway School in Newburgh was being converted to the city courthouse.
A total of 122 remains were recovered at the site and are stored in New
Paltz following extensive forensic authentication.
There is currently an effort underway to bring those early residents back home. Community leader Dr. Benilda Jones is among those championing the effort. She was onsite when some of the remains were unearthed those nine years ago, and that left an indelible mark on her.
“When you see sewage pipes going through a mother and a child on her chest and the conditions in which we found those remains, I have never been the same,” she said.
Dr. Jones, other community leaders and the city council want to give those people a proper final resting place.
“A civilization that does not respect their dead is lost,” Jones said. We have to make some sacrifices in some way, whatever our spirituality is in terms of religious, they must come home.”
The proposed site is the location of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. bust on Water Street where there is discussion of creating a memorial park and eventually, a historical museum.
