NEWBURGH – Several years ago when the former Broadway School in Newburgh was being converted to the city courthouse, a cemetery containing the remains of former black slaves was unearthed near Broadway and Route 9W.
Roughly 100 partial sets of remains were taken to SUNY New Paltz for study and analysis and are still there to this day.
The Newburgh City Council is presently mulling over how and where to give them a proper burial back in that city, said Mayor Torrance Harvey.
“The city planning department on a budget, figuring out an estimated budget on how much it would cost to transport these remains from SUNY New Paltz in a very strategic and a very careful way and reinter them in Downing Park,” he said.
The mayor said some members of the Downing Park Planning Committee are not sold on placing the memorial in the park, but he noted the final decision will be up- to the city council.
