When new construction projects break ground across the United States, they regularly encounter archaeological materials. Those materials can represent the last surviving trace of the lives lived by the people who made them; and all too often, those materials turn out to be from cemeteries and burial grounds used by segregated and enslaved African American communities. These cemeteries typically went undocumented on local and state government maps and graves were often only marked ephemerally, thus making these spaces all but invisible in the present day.
In just the past year, construction projects and archaeological surveys have encountered numerous examples of undocumented African American burial grounds across the country.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidanderson/2019/02/13/new-legislation-seeks-to-protect-lost-african-american-burial-grounds/#1a73f7d15dd8
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