Activists Wage Campaign to Save Burial Ground : Black cemetery: Religious and political leaders fight office tower on lower Manhattan site, citing ‘the religious and cultural history of some of our citizenry, and much more, the social legacy of all of us.’

Religious and political leaders who have championed saving a colonial-era cemetery, widely regarded as one of the nation’s most significant archeological sites for blacks, say the most compelling reason to preserve it is religious.

Activists seeking to halt construction of a 34-story office tower at the 18th-Century site in lower Manhattan want the cemetery to be designated as both a city and a national landmark. They say the 400 burials and 1 million artifacts excavated so far are providing valuable information about African-American history, which had its beginnings in the church.

The cemetery, known as the “Negro Burial Ground,” contains “the religious and cultural history of some of our citizenry, and much more, the social legacy of all of us,” said Manhattan Borough President Ruth W. Messinger at a recent meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. “Beyond its historical, cultural and political significance, we should recognize that the African-American burial ground is sacred ground.”

The cemetery received the remains of freed blacks, slaves and poor whites from the early 1700s to 1790, when the cemetery was closed. Bodies of paupers, Revolutionary War prisoners and victims of contagious diseases were among those relegated to the “potter’s field.”

The $276-million office tower, to be constructed on a portion of the cemetery, is a project of the federal General Services Administration and has been hailed as the largest civilian project ever undertaken by the U.S. government.

Construction was halted in August on a pavilion portion of the building until a plan of action is submitted to the U.S. House and Senate appropriation committees. While construction on the tower itself will continue, the exhumation of skeletal remains and artifacts has ceased.

Some black pastors say a controversy would not exist if the burial ground contained the remains of other ethnic groups.

“I would have hoped that the authorities would reconsider and find somewhere else to put the entire building,” said Bishop Norman N. Quick, president of the New York Council of Churches. “I can’t help but think that if it were another ethnic group, the treatment would not have been so shabby.”