A historic cemetery for enslaved people in the New York city of Kingston is being reclaimed as the Pine Street African Burial Ground.

A sign marks the location of a recently rediscovered African burial ground in Kingston, New York, Aug. 5, 2024. The cemetery was largely forgotten, with parts of it covered by a lumberyard by 1880.

Joesph Diamond, associate professor of anthropology at New Paltz, talks to some of his students as they work at the site of an African burial ground in Kingston, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 5, 2024.

Students from the State University of New York at New Paltz recently finished a third summer of supervised backyard excavations in this city 80 miles (129 kilometers) upriver from Manhattan.