Closing a key chapter in one of the most controversial police shootings in recent memory, New York City agreed on Tuesday to pay more than $7 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by the family and two friends of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old black man who was fatally shot by the police in 2006 on what would have been his wedding day.
The decision by the city came after two days of intense negotiations in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The children whom Mr. Bell had with his fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, will receive $3.25 million, and two friends of Mr. Bell’s who were injured in the episode will also receive payments, with Joseph Guzman getting $3 million, and Trent Benefield $900,000.
The lawsuit, filed in 2007, accused the police of wrongful death, negligence, assault and civil rights violations. But it had repeatedly stalled as the state and federal governments and city police officials investigated the shooting.
The case, whose settlement ranks among the biggest in recent years involving the city’s police, set off a raw debate over the use of deadly force and prompted the city to change some of its policing procedures. Those include alcohol testing for officers in any shooting in which someone is injured, as well as improved firearms training.
On Nov. 25, 2006, five police officers — three of whom were black and two white — fired 50 shots into the Nissan Altima that Mr. Bell was driving outside a strip club in Queens. The car struck a detective in the leg and hit a police van just before the officers began firing.
None of the three men in the car had guns, although the officers apparently believed at least one did.
Three of the officers were acquitted of manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges in State Supreme Court in Queens in 2008. The other two officers who opened fire did not face criminal charges.
Federal prosecutors declined in February to file civil rights charges against the officers, citing insufficient evidence.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said the department could now proceed with its administrative case against the eight officers with some involvement in the episode. Mr. Browne had no comment on the settlement.
At the federal courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn, Ms. Bell, 26, emerged from a courtroom looking weary after two days of negotiations, arm in arm with Mr. Bell’s mother, Valerie. Ms. Bell said the settlement was fair but not a victory. “No amount of money can provide closure, no amount of money can make up for the pain,” she said. “We’ll just try to learn how to live with it and move on.”
The money will go to her two children with Mr. Bell, Jada, 7, and Jordyn, 4; she will not receive a share because she was not married to Mr. Bell (she took his name legally after his death). Ms. Bell promised to keep pushing for the passage of police reforms intended to prevent a similar episode.
Standing beside her, Mr. Guzman, 34, said he was sure that something similar would happen again. “I don’t think a black or Hispanic man’s life means much in this city,” he said.
Mr. Guzman had walked out of the courtroom with a noticeable limp. “My injuries are my injuries,” he said. “I’ve got a metal rod in my leg. I’ve got four bullets still in me. I’ve got one pushing out my back right now.”
Mr. Benefield, 26, was not present, but he is expected to join Ms. Bell and Mr. Guzman at a news conference Wednesday at the Brooklyn offices of one of their lawyers, Sanford A. Rubenstein. “It’s a fair and reasonable settlement,” Mr. Rubenstein said.
Michael A. Cardozo, the city’s corporation counsel, said: “The Sean Bell shooting highlighted the complexities our dedicated officers must face each day. The city regrets the loss of life in this tragic case, and we share our deepest condolences with the Bell family. The city is also settling claims with Mr. Guzman and Mr. Benefield. We hope that all parties can find some measure of closure by this settlement.”
But Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association, criticized the settlement as “laughable.”
Albert W. O’Leary, a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, declined to comment on the settlement. The five officers who fired the shots and were named in the lawsuit will not have to contribute to the settlement.
The five officers who opened fire — Detectives Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver, Marc Cooper and Paul Headley and Officer Michael Carey — were part of a unit investigating the strip club. All are on modified assignment, with no gun and no shield, Mr. Browne said. Officer Headley is on military leave.
Lt. Gary Napoli, the supervising officer that night, is also on modified assignment, Mr. Browne said, facing internal charges of failing to supervise the operation. Two other officers, Detective Robert Knapp and Sgt. Hugh McNeil of the Crime Scene Unit, were also internally charged, the detective with failing to thoroughly process the crime scene, and the sergeant with failing to ensure that thorough processing was done, Mr. Browne said.
The settlement was among the largest in recent years involving the police. In 2004, the family of Amadou Diallo agreed to a $3 million settlement after Mr. Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from West Africa, died in a hail of 41 police bullets in the Bronx. In 2001, Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was tortured with a broken broomstick in a Brooklyn police station in 1997, was awarded a total of $8.75 million in a settlement with the city and the police union.
Source: NY Times
================
New York City will pay over $7 million to settle a civil suit levied by the family of Sean Bell.
Bell was slain the night before his wedding in 2006 by New York City police. A judge finalized the settlement yesterday in Brooklyn Federal Court, which also outlined the terms of the deal.
Sean Bell's estate will receive $3.25 million. Also, Joseph Guzman, a friend of Bell that was wounded too, will get $3 million. Trent Benefield, another friend wounded in the hail of police bullets will get $900,000.
Police shot more than 50 bullets at Bell and his friends when the men were out celebrating after his bachelor party. The police were both plainclothes and uniformed.
"The Sean Bell shooting highlighted the complexities our dedicated officers must face each day." Michael Cardozo, the city’s corporation counsel. "The city regrets the loss of life in this tragic case, and we share our deepest condolences with the Bell family."
"We hope that all the parties can find some measure of closure by this settlement," he concluded.
AFROCENTRIC NEWS PORTAL
Until the Lion tells His Own story, the tale of the Hunt will Always Glorify the Hunter.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
N. Iowa Billboard Unfairly Links OBAMA to Hitler
An Iowa Tea Party group recently caused an uproar by creating a billboard that compares President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. What is even more interesting is that other members of the Tea Party are condemning the ad as well.
The ad shows pictures of Obama, Hitler and Lenin with the label, "Democrat Socialism," "National Socialism," and "Marxist Socialism." Below the pictures are the words, "Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive."
The group's co-founder says that the billboard is simply meant to be a message against socialism, but some of the members of the Tea Party openly disagreed with the tone and nature of the message:
The North Iowa Tea Party began displaying the billboard in downtown Mason City last week. The sign shows large photographs of Obama, Nazi leader Hitler and communist leader Lenin beneath the labels "Democrat Socialism," "National Socialism," and "Marxist Socialism."
===================================================
Let's be "Perfectly Clear" the billboard comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler is wrong. Linking Obama to Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany who oversaw the killing of 6 million Jews and whose invasions of neighboring countries led to World War II. is madness! While Obama simply changed the health care system. Can we really compare the two?
===================================================
The ugly head of racism is such a subtle social disease, that we are not usually aware when it impacts our choices.
The outrage that America has shown toward its first "Black President" is no different from the anger that an angry white mob showed toward the "uppity negro" who said, "Hello," to a white woman 70 years ago.
===================================================
Even in those situations, people went out of their way to distinguish the "good blacks" from the bad ones. Being "good" effectively meant that you knew your place,
Has America forgotten that President Obama inherited this mess of an economy, and the problems of this nation? It will take more time then he has been given to ATTEMPT to solve this Nations issues.
Although, the Tea Party commited this childish act, at least a few members disagreed with this tactic of sending a message of hate.
That's just a waste of money, time, resources and it's not going to further our cause," said Shelby Blakely, a leaders of the Tea Party Patriots, a national group. "It's not going to help our cause. It's going to make people think that the tea party is full of a bunch of right-wing fringe people, and that's not true."
Seem like Bush would have been a better candidate for the poster than Obama hands down, but we all know it's the racist game of politcal gain taking place.
The N. Iowa Tea Party members who participated in this foul plot, should suffer some ramifications for their actions, because it's basically slanderous,"
Bottom line..............
Sankofa*
The ad shows pictures of Obama, Hitler and Lenin with the label, "Democrat Socialism," "National Socialism," and "Marxist Socialism." Below the pictures are the words, "Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive."
The group's co-founder says that the billboard is simply meant to be a message against socialism, but some of the members of the Tea Party openly disagreed with the tone and nature of the message:
The North Iowa Tea Party began displaying the billboard in downtown Mason City last week. The sign shows large photographs of Obama, Nazi leader Hitler and communist leader Lenin beneath the labels "Democrat Socialism," "National Socialism," and "Marxist Socialism."
===================================================
Let's be "Perfectly Clear" the billboard comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler is wrong. Linking Obama to Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany who oversaw the killing of 6 million Jews and whose invasions of neighboring countries led to World War II. is madness! While Obama simply changed the health care system. Can we really compare the two?
===================================================
The ugly head of racism is such a subtle social disease, that we are not usually aware when it impacts our choices.
The outrage that America has shown toward its first "Black President" is no different from the anger that an angry white mob showed toward the "uppity negro" who said, "Hello," to a white woman 70 years ago.
===================================================
Even in those situations, people went out of their way to distinguish the "good blacks" from the bad ones. Being "good" effectively meant that you knew your place,
Has America forgotten that President Obama inherited this mess of an economy, and the problems of this nation? It will take more time then he has been given to ATTEMPT to solve this Nations issues.
Although, the Tea Party commited this childish act, at least a few members disagreed with this tactic of sending a message of hate.
That's just a waste of money, time, resources and it's not going to further our cause," said Shelby Blakely, a leaders of the Tea Party Patriots, a national group. "It's not going to help our cause. It's going to make people think that the tea party is full of a bunch of right-wing fringe people, and that's not true."
Seem like Bush would have been a better candidate for the poster than Obama hands down, but we all know it's the racist game of politcal gain taking place.
The N. Iowa Tea Party members who participated in this foul plot, should suffer some ramifications for their actions, because it's basically slanderous,"
Bottom line..............
Sankofa*
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Black Leaders to Move Against Conservative Attempt to Distort King Dream
National Correspondent
NEW YORK - Black Civil Rights leaders are furious that they will not be able to organize a march to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's famed “I Have A Dream” speech at the location where it happened this year because infamous right wing Fox News personality and radio host Glenn Beck already booked the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28th to hold his own rally.
“We're going to get together because we are not going to let Glenn Beck own the symbolism of Aug. 28th, 2010,”
National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial said during a National Newspaper Publishers Association breakfast at NNPA’s 70th Anniversary Celebration at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers on Friday. “Someone said to me, ‘Maybe we shouldn't challenge him. Maybe we should just let him have it.
“I was like,’ Brother, where have you been? Where is your courage? Where is your sense of outrage?” We need to collaborate and bring together all people of good will, not just Black people, on Aug. 28 to send a message that Glenn Beck's vision of America is not our vision of America.
As both a solution and response to what the leaders perceive as an attack on the legacy of King, NAACP President Ben Jealous announced at the conference that a national march for jobs and justice will be held on October 2 instead.
“A group of White males wealthier than their peers called the Tea Party has risen up in the land,'' said Jealous. ''They say that they want to take the country back. And take it back they surely will. They will take it back to 1963 if we let them.”
Last week, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, the country's largest federation of labor unions, announced that they were going to endorse a march for jobs that Jealous will be co-leading in Washington on Oct. 2. Other national civil rights leaders and organizations are also endorsing the Oct. jobs march as a follow up to an Aug. 28 protest of Beck.
''We will be fighting Glenn Beck on Aug. 28th and we will be using that to leverage the second march,” Jealous said. “That march has to happen. Our people are dying right now, literally, from lack of access to jobs.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, who also spoke at the NNPA Convention, said Beck will distort King’s Legacy and his message.
“On the anniversary of the March on Washington, Glenn Beck is going to talk about the dream of Martin Luther King and how he was with them – not us. So, we’ve been traveling all over this country because there is no way in the world that I am going to allow him to have more people there than us. I hope every Black person in the country will help us to challenge this. Everybody’s got to be in Washington. We can’t let them high jack Dr. King’s dream.”
Morial called Beck's right wing conservative vision “intolerant”.
“His vision is of an America of the past,” Morial said. “Our vision is of an America that understands its past but is of the future. Too many times we have become spectators. Some people thought that since Mr. Obama became president that they could go back to their couch to sit down and watch. Look at what have we witnessed - the resurgent voice of extremism. The 14th amendment has been incorrectly interpreted. They are talking in code talking about that we have to save our country. This is our country too.”
Morial added, ''One of the things that is so curious to me is the way that groups on the right have been very, very observant and have begun to utilize the tactics of the civil rights movement- marching, organizing in churches, things that we're the backbone of civil rights advocacy in the 1950s and 1960s. Others have begun to use those techniques and use those tactics. It would be a mistake if we would treat it and didn't recognize that the people in our communities and people across the nation who believe as we do that the future of this nation has to be inclusive in a multi-racial fashion so that African-Americans are involved in the major things that take place in this country.''
Upon the 70th anniversary of NNPA and the upcoming 100th anniversary of the NUL, Morial also spoke about the need to craft a new Black agenda in a “time of great contradictions”, referencing the 2000 presidential election that was decided by a 5-4 Supreme Court vote in favor of George W. Bush, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recent economic recession that was one of the worst in U.S. history and very recently, the unprecedented oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But he then countered with the historicity of this decade with the ascension of Black men as the president of the United States, as the head of the Department of Justice, and as Black chief executives of some the country's most powerful corporations such as Merrill Lynch, Xerox and American Express.
''Along the continuum of history, no one would have suggested or predicted that any of the above would occur in just a ten year period,'' Morial said. ''These are times when the history books are being written and re-
written. In 1999, Black America had a 7.2 percent unemployment rate, the lowest rate in the 50 years since kind of data have been recorded. And now, ten years plus later, our unemployment rate is twice as high and the real rate is even higher. Against this backdrop of difficult and tough times, that we have also witnessed, African-Americans achieve the highest places in American life. These are the times that you and I, as community and civic leaders, are bound to address the challenges.''
He rallied for a new period of Black activism. He coined it “intelligent activism”, which he described as changing the conversation by “not raising hollow, holy” hell but, rather, making a pointed case with common sense facts and arguments.
“We have to be driven by our objective,” Morial said. “Dr. King, Thurmond Marshall and all of the great leaders of the 1960s had an objective, which was to end segregation in American life. And they achieved that objective as a matter of law. Our objective needs to be to end disparities in American life to achieve economic parity in the 21st century.”
Morial said that African-Americans, because of their size, are a force to be reckoned with. There are an estimated 40 million Black people that account for $800 billion dollars in spending in the U.S, according to Morial. There are also ten thousand Black elected officials in various local, state and national offices.
“We are a community that has assets and power as much as we want to organize it and use it,” Morial said. “I want us to think of ourselves as a community of assets that brings something to the economic table of America, not as a community of deficits and problems, so that we are not coming looking with a handout. We are looking as an investor in the American dream.”
NEW YORK - Black Civil Rights leaders are furious that they will not be able to organize a march to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's famed “I Have A Dream” speech at the location where it happened this year because infamous right wing Fox News personality and radio host Glenn Beck already booked the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28th to hold his own rally.
“We're going to get together because we are not going to let Glenn Beck own the symbolism of Aug. 28th, 2010,”
National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial said during a National Newspaper Publishers Association breakfast at NNPA’s 70th Anniversary Celebration at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers on Friday. “Someone said to me, ‘Maybe we shouldn't challenge him. Maybe we should just let him have it.
“I was like,’ Brother, where have you been? Where is your courage? Where is your sense of outrage?” We need to collaborate and bring together all people of good will, not just Black people, on Aug. 28 to send a message that Glenn Beck's vision of America is not our vision of America.
As both a solution and response to what the leaders perceive as an attack on the legacy of King, NAACP President Ben Jealous announced at the conference that a national march for jobs and justice will be held on October 2 instead.
“A group of White males wealthier than their peers called the Tea Party has risen up in the land,'' said Jealous. ''They say that they want to take the country back. And take it back they surely will. They will take it back to 1963 if we let them.”
Last week, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, the country's largest federation of labor unions, announced that they were going to endorse a march for jobs that Jealous will be co-leading in Washington on Oct. 2. Other national civil rights leaders and organizations are also endorsing the Oct. jobs march as a follow up to an Aug. 28 protest of Beck.
''We will be fighting Glenn Beck on Aug. 28th and we will be using that to leverage the second march,” Jealous said. “That march has to happen. Our people are dying right now, literally, from lack of access to jobs.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, who also spoke at the NNPA Convention, said Beck will distort King’s Legacy and his message.
“On the anniversary of the March on Washington, Glenn Beck is going to talk about the dream of Martin Luther King and how he was with them – not us. So, we’ve been traveling all over this country because there is no way in the world that I am going to allow him to have more people there than us. I hope every Black person in the country will help us to challenge this. Everybody’s got to be in Washington. We can’t let them high jack Dr. King’s dream.”
Morial called Beck's right wing conservative vision “intolerant”.
“His vision is of an America of the past,” Morial said. “Our vision is of an America that understands its past but is of the future. Too many times we have become spectators. Some people thought that since Mr. Obama became president that they could go back to their couch to sit down and watch. Look at what have we witnessed - the resurgent voice of extremism. The 14th amendment has been incorrectly interpreted. They are talking in code talking about that we have to save our country. This is our country too.”
Morial added, ''One of the things that is so curious to me is the way that groups on the right have been very, very observant and have begun to utilize the tactics of the civil rights movement- marching, organizing in churches, things that we're the backbone of civil rights advocacy in the 1950s and 1960s. Others have begun to use those techniques and use those tactics. It would be a mistake if we would treat it and didn't recognize that the people in our communities and people across the nation who believe as we do that the future of this nation has to be inclusive in a multi-racial fashion so that African-Americans are involved in the major things that take place in this country.''
Upon the 70th anniversary of NNPA and the upcoming 100th anniversary of the NUL, Morial also spoke about the need to craft a new Black agenda in a “time of great contradictions”, referencing the 2000 presidential election that was decided by a 5-4 Supreme Court vote in favor of George W. Bush, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recent economic recession that was one of the worst in U.S. history and very recently, the unprecedented oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But he then countered with the historicity of this decade with the ascension of Black men as the president of the United States, as the head of the Department of Justice, and as Black chief executives of some the country's most powerful corporations such as Merrill Lynch, Xerox and American Express.
''Along the continuum of history, no one would have suggested or predicted that any of the above would occur in just a ten year period,'' Morial said. ''These are times when the history books are being written and re-
written. In 1999, Black America had a 7.2 percent unemployment rate, the lowest rate in the 50 years since kind of data have been recorded. And now, ten years plus later, our unemployment rate is twice as high and the real rate is even higher. Against this backdrop of difficult and tough times, that we have also witnessed, African-Americans achieve the highest places in American life. These are the times that you and I, as community and civic leaders, are bound to address the challenges.''
He rallied for a new period of Black activism. He coined it “intelligent activism”, which he described as changing the conversation by “not raising hollow, holy” hell but, rather, making a pointed case with common sense facts and arguments.
“We have to be driven by our objective,” Morial said. “Dr. King, Thurmond Marshall and all of the great leaders of the 1960s had an objective, which was to end segregation in American life. And they achieved that objective as a matter of law. Our objective needs to be to end disparities in American life to achieve economic parity in the 21st century.”
Morial said that African-Americans, because of their size, are a force to be reckoned with. There are an estimated 40 million Black people that account for $800 billion dollars in spending in the U.S, according to Morial. There are also ten thousand Black elected officials in various local, state and national offices.
“We are a community that has assets and power as much as we want to organize it and use it,” Morial said. “I want us to think of ourselves as a community of assets that brings something to the economic table of America, not as a community of deficits and problems, so that we are not coming looking with a handout. We are looking as an investor in the American dream.”
Blacks Still Support Obama: Jobs Is High Concern
Black voters, like those who lined up in the District to cast ballots for Obama in 2008, may be less enthusiastic about midterm elections. Many are concerned about persistently high unemployment.
(Marvin Joseph/the Washington Post)
======================================================
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 11, 2010
KANSAS CITY, MO. -- Curtis Adams, who owns Curtis A's barbershop here and who is also the establishment's senior political analyst, is a close observer of President Obama. This is something of a full-time job itself at Curtis A's, a gathering place in a black neighborhood five miles from downtown. All day every day, men (and occasionally women) come for a trim and wind up lingering to argue about jobs and the oil spill and the war in Iraq.
But mostly jobs. "If Obama was in this chair right here, I would tell him to give me a job. That's what I would ask for," said customer E.J. Jones one recent afternoon. Jones has worked off and on since he was let go from an Army ammunition plant in 2008.
The recession was especially rough on Kansas City's black community, where unemployment is 15 percent, nearly three times the rate for whites. Adams pointed to the empty chairs in his shop. He's down 75 customers a week. Of Obama, he said: "That man has a hell of a workload, and Bush left a hell of a mess. I like what he's doing. But I can't feel it."
Despite his frustration with the slow pace of the recovery, Adams, who has portraits of the first family on the walls of his shop, doesn't think Obama bears the blame for his troubles. And neither do most black Americans. Just the opposite:
===================================================
Polls show that 90 percent of African Americans believe Obama is doing a good job, far higher than the president's overall 46 percent approval rating. Obama's popularity has dropped among nearly every segment of the population -- old, young, Republican, Democrat, white, Latino.
Yet blacks still overwhelmingly support him, even though they are among those who have lost the most since he was elected.
===================================================
"We understand the difficulty of being a black man in his position, because of our close proximity to race and how it affects our lives, so we are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,"
===================================================
SOURCE: WASHINGTON POST
18th-Century Ship Found at WTC Site
Sankofa*
Could this ship be a slave ship?
==========================================
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Archaeologists examined the remains of a wooden ship found at the World Trade Center site.
In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.
On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)
“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.
By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.
The area under excavation, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, had not been dug out for the original trade center. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years.
News of the find spread quickly. Archaeologists and officials hurried to the site, not only because of the magnitude of the discovery but because construction work could not be interrupted and because the timber, no longer safe in its cocoon of ooze, began deteriorating as soon as it was exposed to air.
For that reason, Doug Mackey, the chief regional archaeologist for the New York State Historic Preservation Office, was grateful for the rainfall. “If the sun had been out,” he said, “the wood would already have started to fall apart.”
As other archaeologists scrambled with tape measures over what appeared to be the floor planks of the ship’s lowermost deck, Mr. Mackey said, “We’re trying to record it as quickly as possible and do the analysis later.” All around the skeletal hull, excavation for the security center proceeded, changing the muddy terrain every few minutes.
Romantics may conjure the picture of an elegant schooner passing in sight of the spire of Trinity Church. Professional archaeologists are much more reserved.
They were even careful not to say for certain whether they were looking at the prow or the stern of the vessel, though the fanlike array of beams seemed to suggest that the aft (rear) portion of the ship was exposed. Mr. Pappalardo said the whole vessel may have been two or three times longer than the portion found.
Perhaps the most puzzling and intriguing find was a semicircular metal collar, several feet across, apparently supported on a brick base, built into the hull. Perhaps it was some sort of an oven or steam contraption.
About the farthest Mr. Mackey and Mr. Pappalardo would go in conjecture was to say that the sawed-off beams seemed to indicate that the hull had deliberately been truncated, most likely to be used as landfill material.
A 1797 map shows that the excavation site is close to where Lindsey’s Wharf and Lake’s Wharf once projected into the Hudson. So, no matter how many mysteries now surround the vessel, it may turn out that the ghost even has a name.
Source:
NYTIMES CITY ROOM
Could this ship be a slave ship?
==========================================
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Archaeologists examined the remains of a wooden ship found at the World Trade Center site.
In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.
On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)
“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.
By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.
The area under excavation, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, had not been dug out for the original trade center. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years.
News of the find spread quickly. Archaeologists and officials hurried to the site, not only because of the magnitude of the discovery but because construction work could not be interrupted and because the timber, no longer safe in its cocoon of ooze, began deteriorating as soon as it was exposed to air.
For that reason, Doug Mackey, the chief regional archaeologist for the New York State Historic Preservation Office, was grateful for the rainfall. “If the sun had been out,” he said, “the wood would already have started to fall apart.”
As other archaeologists scrambled with tape measures over what appeared to be the floor planks of the ship’s lowermost deck, Mr. Mackey said, “We’re trying to record it as quickly as possible and do the analysis later.” All around the skeletal hull, excavation for the security center proceeded, changing the muddy terrain every few minutes.
Romantics may conjure the picture of an elegant schooner passing in sight of the spire of Trinity Church. Professional archaeologists are much more reserved.
They were even careful not to say for certain whether they were looking at the prow or the stern of the vessel, though the fanlike array of beams seemed to suggest that the aft (rear) portion of the ship was exposed. Mr. Pappalardo said the whole vessel may have been two or three times longer than the portion found.
Perhaps the most puzzling and intriguing find was a semicircular metal collar, several feet across, apparently supported on a brick base, built into the hull. Perhaps it was some sort of an oven or steam contraption.
About the farthest Mr. Mackey and Mr. Pappalardo would go in conjecture was to say that the sawed-off beams seemed to indicate that the hull had deliberately been truncated, most likely to be used as landfill material.
A 1797 map shows that the excavation site is close to where Lindsey’s Wharf and Lake’s Wharf once projected into the Hudson. So, no matter how many mysteries now surround the vessel, it may turn out that the ghost even has a name.
Source:
NYTIMES CITY ROOM
Sunday, July 4, 2010
African American Historical Site Excavated in New Jersey
African American historical site excavated in New Jersey
By Stephan Salisbury
Inquirer Culture Writer
Near the terminus of a dead-end road, on a bulb like hill in the midst of a grassy meadow, a group of Temple University archaeology students and volunteers is excavating what may be one of the most important African American historical sites in New Jersey.
It's called Timbuctoo - a once-thriving enclave probably founded by free African Americans and escaped slaves in the 1820s, now abandoned, if not forgotten, for more than half a century.
An entire village lies beneath the grassy hill near Rancocas Creek in Westampton Township outside Mount Holly - at least 18 houses, remains of a church, two roadways, an alley, a number of privies and wells, possibly schools, and large parts of a cemetery, where 13 graves of African American troops from the Civil War are marked by headstones - but where six times as many may lie in unmarked graves.
No African American site of this magnitude has been excavated in the region, and very few have been uncovered nationwide, according to archaeologists.
"This is the first time we're seeing such a site being excavated," said David Orr, the Temple professor and historical archaeologist overseeing the project. "The unique quality of this is that it's very large. It has no problems, perfect preservation of its core - that's also impressive. As an archaeological site, in my experience, I have never seen anything like this - only because nobody has excavated one."
The site of the Timbuctoo project covers four or five acres. Westampton Township has acquired much of it from private owners, allowing the dig to proceed unimpeded. Work started at the beginning of June and ends Saturday, but will resume next year.
Standing near the crest of the open field, next to the red brick foundation of the first house unearthed, Orr held up a corroded cast-iron buffalo that had been pulled from the ground. Christopher Barton, a doctoral student who serves as site manager, displayed a small, heavily corroded toy gun and a wheel - all early 20th-century relics. He held up a small brown Vicks VapoRub bottle, a blue Vaseline jar, a clear Listerine bottle - all dating from the first half of the last century.
Barton said that some visitors have questioned the relevance of 20th-century artifacts to an archaeological dig. "They say, 'Oh, that's not old enough,' " he said.
"That's not the point. What we're trying to do is recreate the life, recreate the stories of what these people had. This is true not only with the pre-Civil War context but also with the Jim Crow period. We're trying to discover what these people were doing and how they were living."
In fact, the presence of 20th-century life on the site increases its importance, said Orr.
"We have the opportunity here to see a total African American community over time," he said. "How it was like here in the 1830s. How it was like here in the 1870s. How it was like at the turn of the century and during Jim Crow. How it was like in the '20s and '30s, all the way to World War II. This is very exciting stuff."
Beyond that, he pointed out, descendants of Timbuctoo families are still in the area.
Mary Weston, 74, lives down the road on a piece of land that has been in her family since 1829, when her great-great-great-grandfather purchased the lot for $35.
Weston has volunteered to help at the site throughout the dig, washing, cleaning, bagging the countless artifacts drawn from the ground - ceramic shards, leather shoes, buckles, metal wheels, bottles, glassware - all the detritus of everyday life.
She was born in the area, but her family moved to Philadelphia with everyone else, she said, when city industry revved up at the onset of World War II. She returned as an adult and is deeply moved by the excavation.
"It brings a sense of connection that nothing else could bring," Weston said this week. "These wonderful artifacts being unearthed prove we did exist here very, very early. We did live here. Just the connection with the ancestors from the early 1800s brings a rush of joy."
In addition to the extensive excavation yet to come, much traditional historical work is also necessary. The origins of Timbuctoo are somewhat obscure. There is an oral tradition, for instance, that suggests the town was buttressed by the area's thriving Quaker community at the turn of the 18th century. A Quaker brickworks once stood nearby, which could have been an important source of work and building materials, said Orr.
Burton said the town stood directly on an Underground Railroad route, and there is no question that escaped slaves lived in Timbuctoo. Slave catchers worked the area too, and in 1860, residents took up arms to defend Harry Simmons, a runaway sought by southern bounty hunters. In what was known locally as the Battle of Pine Swamp, residents protected Simmons and drove off the slave catchers.
The prospect of such an attack was no doubt a source of anxiety, said Burton, and may have been one reason the village was laid out in an almost circular fashion, with small houses surrounding a large open area.
Such a layout would enable residents of each house to see what was happening around every other house.
"The point is, we don't know what these houses looked like until we dig a hole and look at them," said Orr. "We don't know who built them and how. Was this [settlement] predesigned? Did it come from African Americans? Quakers? We don't know. There are no images. None. That's why archaeology is so important with African American communities."
Weston looked up from wiping dirt off a bone button.
"It's awesome for me," she said. "I went to school in Philadelphia and the school did tell us something of ourselves as a people, but not very much. So for this to happen and for all these things to be unraveled and explored makes me have a greater sense of connection with who I am."
The Philadelphia Inquirer.
By Stephan Salisbury
Inquirer Culture Writer
Near the terminus of a dead-end road, on a bulb like hill in the midst of a grassy meadow, a group of Temple University archaeology students and volunteers is excavating what may be one of the most important African American historical sites in New Jersey.
It's called Timbuctoo - a once-thriving enclave probably founded by free African Americans and escaped slaves in the 1820s, now abandoned, if not forgotten, for more than half a century.
An entire village lies beneath the grassy hill near Rancocas Creek in Westampton Township outside Mount Holly - at least 18 houses, remains of a church, two roadways, an alley, a number of privies and wells, possibly schools, and large parts of a cemetery, where 13 graves of African American troops from the Civil War are marked by headstones - but where six times as many may lie in unmarked graves.
No African American site of this magnitude has been excavated in the region, and very few have been uncovered nationwide, according to archaeologists.
"This is the first time we're seeing such a site being excavated," said David Orr, the Temple professor and historical archaeologist overseeing the project. "The unique quality of this is that it's very large. It has no problems, perfect preservation of its core - that's also impressive. As an archaeological site, in my experience, I have never seen anything like this - only because nobody has excavated one."
The site of the Timbuctoo project covers four or five acres. Westampton Township has acquired much of it from private owners, allowing the dig to proceed unimpeded. Work started at the beginning of June and ends Saturday, but will resume next year.
Standing near the crest of the open field, next to the red brick foundation of the first house unearthed, Orr held up a corroded cast-iron buffalo that had been pulled from the ground. Christopher Barton, a doctoral student who serves as site manager, displayed a small, heavily corroded toy gun and a wheel - all early 20th-century relics. He held up a small brown Vicks VapoRub bottle, a blue Vaseline jar, a clear Listerine bottle - all dating from the first half of the last century.
Barton said that some visitors have questioned the relevance of 20th-century artifacts to an archaeological dig. "They say, 'Oh, that's not old enough,' " he said.
"That's not the point. What we're trying to do is recreate the life, recreate the stories of what these people had. This is true not only with the pre-Civil War context but also with the Jim Crow period. We're trying to discover what these people were doing and how they were living."
In fact, the presence of 20th-century life on the site increases its importance, said Orr.
"We have the opportunity here to see a total African American community over time," he said. "How it was like here in the 1830s. How it was like here in the 1870s. How it was like at the turn of the century and during Jim Crow. How it was like in the '20s and '30s, all the way to World War II. This is very exciting stuff."
Beyond that, he pointed out, descendants of Timbuctoo families are still in the area.
Mary Weston, 74, lives down the road on a piece of land that has been in her family since 1829, when her great-great-great-grandfather purchased the lot for $35.
Weston has volunteered to help at the site throughout the dig, washing, cleaning, bagging the countless artifacts drawn from the ground - ceramic shards, leather shoes, buckles, metal wheels, bottles, glassware - all the detritus of everyday life.
She was born in the area, but her family moved to Philadelphia with everyone else, she said, when city industry revved up at the onset of World War II. She returned as an adult and is deeply moved by the excavation.
"It brings a sense of connection that nothing else could bring," Weston said this week. "These wonderful artifacts being unearthed prove we did exist here very, very early. We did live here. Just the connection with the ancestors from the early 1800s brings a rush of joy."
In addition to the extensive excavation yet to come, much traditional historical work is also necessary. The origins of Timbuctoo are somewhat obscure. There is an oral tradition, for instance, that suggests the town was buttressed by the area's thriving Quaker community at the turn of the 18th century. A Quaker brickworks once stood nearby, which could have been an important source of work and building materials, said Orr.
Burton said the town stood directly on an Underground Railroad route, and there is no question that escaped slaves lived in Timbuctoo. Slave catchers worked the area too, and in 1860, residents took up arms to defend Harry Simmons, a runaway sought by southern bounty hunters. In what was known locally as the Battle of Pine Swamp, residents protected Simmons and drove off the slave catchers.
The prospect of such an attack was no doubt a source of anxiety, said Burton, and may have been one reason the village was laid out in an almost circular fashion, with small houses surrounding a large open area.
Such a layout would enable residents of each house to see what was happening around every other house.
"The point is, we don't know what these houses looked like until we dig a hole and look at them," said Orr. "We don't know who built them and how. Was this [settlement] predesigned? Did it come from African Americans? Quakers? We don't know. There are no images. None. That's why archaeology is so important with African American communities."
Weston looked up from wiping dirt off a bone button.
"It's awesome for me," she said. "I went to school in Philadelphia and the school did tell us something of ourselves as a people, but not very much. So for this to happen and for all these things to be unraveled and explored makes me have a greater sense of connection with who I am."
The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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