Black History Month: Legacy of Enslaved Africans in Van Cortlandt Park

Join Van Cortlandt Park Alliance and Van Cortlandt House Museum for a special Black History Month program exploring the legacy of enslaved Africans in Van Cortlandt Park.

The program will feature two guided tours:

• Pathways to the Past Walking Tour, led by Ashley Hart Adams, VCPA’s Arts Integration Specialist, focusing on the Enslaved African Burial Ground and the broader landscape of memory, history, and labor within the park.
• Van Cortlandt House Museum Tour, led by Nick Dembowski, VCHM’s Site Historian, highlighting the site’s 18th-century history and its connections to enslavement.

Together, these tours invite participants to reflect on the lives of enslaved Africans whose labor shaped the park and to consider how history is remembered and honored today.  

The entire guided experience will be approximately 2 hours long with stops throughout to talk.

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Black History Month events are part of Van Cortlandt Park Alliance’s Reimagining initiative. In partnership with the Design Trust for Public Space and Immanuel Oni, Liminal Sp, VCPA invites the community to reimagine the park’s Enslaved African Burial Ground site as a memorial space that fosters long-term healing and restoration. This project is supported by the Mellon Foundation.

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.