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March Madness for Book Geeks Rolls On

College basketball fans may have to wait until Tuesday for their yearly N.C.A.A. tournament fix, but March Madness for lit geeks is already well under way thanks to The Morning News’s Tournament of Books.

The online contest, first held in 2005, pits 16 novels published the previous year against one another in a series of critical cage matches decided by a panel of judges, with match analysis provided by the novelists Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner.

So far in this year’s opening round, Gillian Flynn’s monster best seller, “Gone Girl,” has stomped Miles Klee’s small-press underdog, “Ivyland”; Adam Johnson’s North Korean nightmare, “The Orphan Master’s Son,” has slipped past Maria Semple’s Seattle satire, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” and Hilary Mantel’s Tudor-themed historical novel “Bring Up the Bodies” has beaten out Laurent Binet’s Nazi-themed historical novel, “HHhH,” among other bloody (and wordy) encounters. Next up, on Monday: Lauren Groff’s “Arcadia” versus Sheila Heti’s “How Should a Person Be”

Ms. Mantel, with two Man Booker Prizes under her belt (not to mention a split-decision in her recent dustup with the former Kate Middleton), would seem to be a heavy favorite to reach this year’s final, to be held on March 29. (The parting message from a judge in the contest, Jack Hitt, to M! s. Mantel, whom he compares to Mae West: “Marry me.”) But the tournament has a history of upsets, thanks to a Zombie Round, which (sadly) does not feature actual novels about zombies but rather two books chosen from among the eliminated, which are given a shot at bumping off the survivors before the championship match.

Last year Patrick DeWitt’s novel “The Sisters Brothers” rose from the dead to smite Teju Cole’s “Open City,” the very book that had knocked it out in the semifinals. “One Shining Moment,” anyone



Annie Baker Wins Blackburn Prize and Horton Foote Honor

Annie BakerSara Krulwich/The New York Times Annie Baker

Annie Baker has been awarded the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an international award given annually since 1978 to women who have written works of outstanding quality. The prize, which Ms. Baker won for “The Flick,” her three-hour incisively nuanced exploration of love and friendship, includes a cash award of $25,000 and a signed, numbered print by the artist Willem de Kooning.

Cynthia Nixon, one of six judges on this year’s panel, presented the prize to Ms. Baker at a private ceremony on Sunday at the lley Theater in Houston. Ms. Baker was also chosen as the second recipient of the Horton Foote Legacy Project, which includes a four-week writing residency, starting in May, at Foote’s preserved home in Wharton, Tex.

Reviewing Ms. Baker’s “Flick,” which is in its premiere run at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan, Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times that “Ms. Baker, one of the freshest and most talented dramatists to emerge Off Broadway in the past decade, writes with tenderness and keen insight about the way people make messes of their lives â€" and the lives of people they care about â€" and then sink into benumbed impotence, hard pressed to see any way of cleaning things up.”

More than 100 plays were considered for the 2013 pr! ize. Besides Ms. Baker’s award, nine finalists received $2,500 prizes. They are Karen Ardiff (“The Godess of Liberty”), Jean Betts (“Genesis Falls”), Deborah Bruce (“The Distance”), Katherine Chandler (“Before It Rains”), Amy Herzog (“ Belleville”), Dawn King (“Foxfinder”), Laura Marks (“Bethany”), Jenny Schwartz (“Somewhere Fun”) and Francine Volpe (“The Good Mother”).



March Madness for Book Geeks Rolls On

College basketball fans may have to wait until Tuesday for their yearly N.C.A.A. tournament fix, but March Madness for lit geeks is already well under way thanks to The Morning News’s Tournament of Books.

The online contest, first held in 2005, pits 16 novels published the previous year against one another in a series of critical cage matches decided by a panel of judges, with match analysis provided by the novelists Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner.

So far in this year’s opening round, Gillian Flynn’s monster best seller, “Gone Girl,” has stomped Miles Klee’s small-press underdog, “Ivyland”; Adam Johnson’s North Korean nightmare, “The Orphan Master’s Son,” has slipped past Maria Semple’s Seattle satire, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” and Hilary Mantel’s Tudor-themed historical novel “Bring Up the Bodies” has beaten out Laurent Binet’s Nazi-themed historical novel, “HHhH,” among other bloody (and wordy) encounters. Next up, on Monday: Lauren Groff’s “Arcadia” versus Sheila Heti’s “How Should a Person Be”

Ms. Mantel, with two Man Booker Prizes under her belt (not to mention a split-decision in her recent dustup with the former Kate Middleton), would seem to be a heavy favorite to reach this year’s final, to be held on March 29. (The parting message from a judge in the contest, Jack Hitt, to M! s. Mantel, whom he compares to Mae West: “Marry me.”) But the tournament has a history of upsets, thanks to a Zombie Round, which (sadly) does not feature actual novels about zombies but rather two books chosen from among the eliminated, which are given a shot at bumping off the survivors before the championship match.

Last year Patrick DeWitt’s novel “The Sisters Brothers” rose from the dead to smite Teju Cole’s “Open City,” the very book that had knocked it out in the semifinals. “One Shining Moment,” anyone



Annie Baker Wins Blackburn Prize and Horton Foote Honor

Annie BakerSara Krulwich/The New York Times Annie Baker

Annie Baker has been awarded the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an international award given annually since 1978 to women who have written works of outstanding quality. The prize, which Ms. Baker won for “The Flick,” her three-hour incisively nuanced exploration of love and friendship, includes a cash award of $25,000 and a signed, numbered print by the artist Willem de Kooning.

Cynthia Nixon, one of six judges on this year’s panel, presented the prize to Ms. Baker at a private ceremony on Sunday at the lley Theater in Houston. Ms. Baker was also chosen as the second recipient of the Horton Foote Legacy Project, which includes a four-week writing residency, starting in May, at Foote’s preserved home in Wharton, Tex.

Reviewing Ms. Baker’s “Flick,” which is in its premiere run at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan, Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times that “Ms. Baker, one of the freshest and most talented dramatists to emerge Off Broadway in the past decade, writes with tenderness and keen insight about the way people make messes of their lives â€" and the lives of people they care about â€" and then sink into benumbed impotence, hard pressed to see any way of cleaning things up.”

More than 100 plays were considered for the 2013 pr! ize. Besides Ms. Baker’s award, nine finalists received $2,500 prizes. They are Karen Ardiff (“The Godess of Liberty”), Jean Betts (“Genesis Falls”), Deborah Bruce (“The Distance”), Katherine Chandler (“Before It Rains”), Amy Herzog (“ Belleville”), Dawn King (“Foxfinder”), Laura Marks (“Bethany”), Jenny Schwartz (“Somewhere Fun”) and Francine Volpe (“The Good Mother”).



Dee Dee Bridgewater to Play Billie Holiday Off Broadway

Dee Dee Bridgewater performed with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2012.Ruby Washington/The New York Times Dee Dee Bridgewater performed with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2012.

“Lady Day,” Stephen Stahl’s musical about the jazz singer Billie Holiday, will have its New York premiere at the Little Shubert Theater in September. The production will star the vocalist and actress Dee Dee Bridgewater, who performed the role in Paris and London to acclaim in the 1980s.

Ms. Bridgewater won a Tony Award as Glinda in the original Broadway production of “The Wiz.” As a singer, she revisited the Holiday repertory recently in “Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee,” which won the Grammy Award for best jazz vocal in 2011. (Eleanora Fagan was Holiday’s original name.)

Mr. Stahl, who has revised “Lady Day,” will also direct the New York production, which tells Holiday’s story, focusing on preparations for her final concerts.

“It’s a lifelong dream to bring this show to New York,” he said in a statement.

The show, scheduled to open on Sept. 26, includes 25 of the songs for which Holiday is best known - and which had particular resonance in her personal life - including “Strange Fruit,” “God Bless the Child,” “My Man” and “Mean to Me.”



Dee Dee Bridgewater to Play Billie Holiday Off Broadway

Dee Dee Bridgewater performed with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2012.Ruby Washington/The New York Times Dee Dee Bridgewater performed with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2012.

“Lady Day,” Stephen Stahl’s musical about the jazz singer Billie Holiday, will have its New York premiere at the Little Shubert Theater in September. The production will star the vocalist and actress Dee Dee Bridgewater, who performed the role in Paris and London to acclaim in the 1980s.

Ms. Bridgewater won a Tony Award as Glinda in the original Broadway production of “The Wiz.” As a singer, she revisited the Holiday repertory recently in “Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee,” which won the Grammy Award for best jazz vocal in 2011. (Eleanora Fagan was Holiday’s original name.)

Mr. Stahl, who has revised “Lady Day,” will also direct the New York production, which tells Holiday’s story, focusing on preparations for her final concerts.

“It’s a lifelong dream to bring this show to New York,” he said in a statement.

The show, scheduled to open on Sept. 26, includes 25 of the songs for which Holiday is best known - and which had particular resonance in her personal life - including “Strange Fruit,” “God Bless the Child,” “My Man” and “Mean to Me.”



Madonna, Dressed for Camping, Weighs In on Boy Scouts’ Gay Ban

Wearing a Cub Scout summer uniform, a Scoutmaster’s brimmed hat and hiking boots, Madonna took the occasion of an appearance at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s 24th annual Media Awards ceremony to advise the Boy Scouts of America that the organization should “change their stupid rules,” specifically its ban on gay members.

Her admonishment follows a similar entreaty by Bill Gates, who in the first installment of “Playbook Cocktails,” Politico’s new interview series, said that the Boy Scouts should end the ban “because it’s 2013.”

Madonna, who was on hand Saturday evening to present the Vito Russo Award to the CNN journalist Anderson Cooper, also used her 12-minute speech to speak more broadly - and with a combination of humor nd outrage - about discrimination and violence.

“When I think about young kids today in America who are being bullied and tortured, who are taking their own lives because they feel alone and judged, outcast and misunderstood, I want to sit down and cry a river of tears,” Madonna said. “I have teenagers of my own now, and the idea of them, or any young person, experiencing that kind of pain is unfathomable to me. It’s an atrocity to me. I don’t accept it.”

The Vito Russo Award, which Madonna presented to Mr. Anderson, is given annually to an openly gay media professional who has made a significant contribution to promoting equality. Mr. Anderson first spoke publicly about his sexuality in July 2012.



Landmark Status Sought for Public Library’s Rose Reading Room

Community Board 5, which represents Manhattan’s central business district, has requested that the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designate as an interior landmark the main Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library’s flagship branch.

The proposal comes at a time when the library is fending off criticism for its plan to renovate the Fifth Avenue building.

In a unanimous vote Thursday approving the resolution, the board described the reading room as “one of the great library spaces in the world, comparable to other distinguished spaces such as Bibliotheque St. Genevieve in Paris, Wren’s Trnity Library in Cambridge, England and the Austrian National Library in Vienna.”

The library’s renovation, designed by the British architect Norman Foster, is planned for the area now occupied by stacks so would not affect the Rose Reading Room. Mr. Foster has proposed only minor changes the library’s exterior, which is landmarked, and Board 5 and the landmarks panel has approved them.

Asked to comment on the resolution, the library said through a spokesman: “We’re aware of it.”

The Landmarks Commission said it is “actively reviewing” the proposal, which if approved would require the library to seek the panel’s approval before any significant changes could be made to the reading room.



Bancroft Prize Awarded to Two Historians

The Bancroft Prize, one of the most prestigious annual honors for historians, has been awarded to two scholars for books published last year.

John Fabian Witt’s “Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History” (Free Press) was cited as “a persuasively argued history of the idea that conflict among nations can be regulated by law.” W. Jeffrey Bolster’s study “The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail” (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press) was praised as “a gripping and eloquent history ofthe human impact on the ocean.”

The prize, established in 1948 by the trustees of Columbia University with a bequest from the historian Frederic Bancroft, includes an award of $10,000.



Heart Puts Some Led in Its Summer Tour

It is hardly unheard of for rock stars to pay tribute to their colleagues and forbears, but Heart is taking professional hat-tipping to a new level.

The group, which will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 18, and is best known for its hits “Barracuda,” “Crazy on You” and “What About Love,” will tour this summer with Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Experience, the band led by the son of John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer. The two bands will collaborate on a 35-minute tribute to Led Zeppelin at the end of each concert on the 11-week tour, which begins in West Palm Beach, Fla., on June 17.

When the elder Mr. Bonham died in 1980, Led Zeppelin announced that it would not perform again. The surviving players relented in December 2007, when they reunited for one show at the 02 Arena in London. For the occasion, Jason Bonham played his father’s drum parts. The concert was recently released on CDand DVD as “Celebration Day” (Atlantic).

Heart and Mr. Bonham collaborated on a performance of “Stairway to Heaven” in December when Led Zeppelin received a Kennedy Center Honor. The performance was televised and later released by iTunes and other downloading services.



Madonna, Dressed for Camping, Weighs In on Boy Scouts’ Gay Ban

Wearing a Cub Scout summer uniform, a Scoutmaster’s brimmed hat and hiking boots, Madonna took the occasion of an appearance at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s 24th annual Media Awards ceremony to advise the Boy Scouts of America that the organization should “change their stupid rules,” specifically its ban on gay members.

Her admonishment follows a similar entreaty by Bill Gates, who in the first installment of “Playbook Cocktails,” Politico’s new interview series, said that the Boy Scouts should end the ban “because it’s 2013.”

Madonna, who was on hand Saturday evening to present the Vito Russo Award to the CNN journalist Anderson Cooper, also used her 12-minute speech to speak more broadly - and with a combination of humor nd outrage - about discrimination and violence.

“When I think about young kids today in America who are being bullied and tortured, who are taking their own lives because they feel alone and judged, outcast and misunderstood, I want to sit down and cry a river of tears,” Madonna said. “I have teenagers of my own now, and the idea of them, or any young person, experiencing that kind of pain is unfathomable to me. It’s an atrocity to me. I don’t accept it.”

The Vito Russo Award, which Madonna presented to Mr. Anderson, is given annually to an openly gay media professional who has made a significant contribution to promoting equality. Mr. Anderson first spoke publicly about his sexuality in July 2012.



Landmark Status Sought for Public Library’s Rose Reading Room

Community Board 5, which represents Manhattan’s central business district, has requested that the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designate as an interior landmark the main Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library’s flagship branch.

The proposal comes at a time when the library is fending off criticism for its plan to renovate the Fifth Avenue building.

In a unanimous vote Thursday approving the resolution, the board described the reading room as “one of the great library spaces in the world, comparable to other distinguished spaces such as Bibliotheque St. Genevieve in Paris, Wren’s Trnity Library in Cambridge, England and the Austrian National Library in Vienna.”

The library’s renovation, designed by the British architect Norman Foster, is planned for the area now occupied by stacks so would not affect the Rose Reading Room. Mr. Foster has proposed only minor changes the library’s exterior, which is landmarked, and Board 5 and the landmarks panel has approved them.

Asked to comment on the resolution, the library said through a spokesman: “We’re aware of it.”

The Landmarks Commission said it is “actively reviewing” the proposal, which if approved would require the library to seek the panel’s approval before any significant changes could be made to the reading room.



Live Streaming: TimesTalks With Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein

9:01 p.m. | Updated Tonight ArtsBeat live streamed a conversation with two members of the creative team behind the new Broadway musical “Kinky Boots”: Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book, and Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the songs. Click on the image above to watch the event, which was moderated by Patrick Healy.



Heart Puts Some Led in Its Summer Tour

It is hardly unheard of for rock stars to pay tribute to their colleagues and forbears, but Heart is taking professional hat-tipping to a new level.

The group, which will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 18, and is best known for its hits “Barracuda,” “Crazy on You” and “What About Love,” will tour this summer with Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Experience, the band led by the son of John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer. The two bands will collaborate on a 35-minute tribute to Led Zeppelin at the end of each concert on the 11-week tour, which begins in West Palm Beach, Fla., on June 17.

When the elder Mr. Bonham died in 1980, Led Zeppelin announced that it would not perform again. The surviving players relented in December 2007, when they reunited for one show at the 02 Arena in London. For the occasion, Jason Bonham played his father’s drum parts. The concert was recently released on CDand DVD as “Celebration Day” (Atlantic).

Heart and Mr. Bonham collaborated on a performance of “Stairway to Heaven” in December when Led Zeppelin received a Kennedy Center Honor. The performance was televised and later released by iTunes and other downloading services.



Bancroft Prize Awarded to Two Historians

The Bancroft Prize, one of the most prestigious annual honors for historians, has been awarded to two scholars for books published last year.

John Fabian Witt’s “Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History” (Free Press) was cited as “a persuasively argued history of the idea that conflict among nations can be regulated by law.” W. Jeffrey Bolster’s study “The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail” (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press) was praised as “a gripping and eloquent history ofthe human impact on the ocean.”

The prize, established in 1948 by the trustees of Columbia University with a bequest from the historian Frederic Bancroft, includes an award of $10,000.



Live Streaming: TimesTalks With Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein

9:01 p.m. | Updated Tonight ArtsBeat live streamed a conversation with two members of the creative team behind the new Broadway musical “Kinky Boots”: Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book, and Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the songs. Click on the image above to watch the event, which was moderated by Patrick Healy.



Queens Central Library Opens Wider

It’s a mystery at first. The youngsters on the computers in the children’s center adjoining the Queens Central Library appear to be squatting on floor cushions, but their legs are nowhere to be seen. In a moment, it grows clear. They’re seated at shallow wells scooped into the floor so there’s no danger of falling off their chairs.

Children's Library Discovery Center.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Children’s Library Discovery Center.

It’s one of many signs that the 47-year-old Queens Central Library in Jamaica is being transformed into a more appealing space that tries to accommodate the many waysin which patrons, including the smallest ones, now use libraries.

In 2011, the adjoining Children’s Library Discovery Center opened at Merrick Boulevard and 90th Avenue. This is a new building by Juergen Riehm of 1100 Architect and the Lee H. Skolnick Architecture and Design Partnership.

Today, the transformation is occurring at the two-story central building itself. In January, the mayoral Design Commission approved the latest phase, which includes eliminating the dark recessed entryway by building a new glass wall almost flush to the building line. Designed by the architecture firm Gensler, this change will increase floor space in the front lobby, which is to get a new customer service desk. The library is also to get a new cafe, a gift shop and a teenage center. The comp! uter center has grown to about 100 stations, 70 for the general public and 30 for training and instructional use. There are new job information and consumer health reference areas; an expanded media center, where DVDs and other playable media can be found; and a quiet room. (It’s come to this.)

From right to left: a novel by Habib Selmi of Tunisia, translations of novels by Kathy Reichs and short stories by Fawzia Rashid of Bahrain.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times From right to left: a novel by Habib Selmi of Tunisia, translations of novels by Kathy Reichs and short stories by Fawzia Rashid of Bahrain.

“A public library based in the community has a wonderful opportunity in the future,” said Tomas W. Galante, president and chief executive of the 62-library Queens system, which is independent of the Brooklyn Public Library and the New York Public Library. By that, he meant a library that also supported development of the work force, fostered adult literacy, offered help for immigrants seeking citizenship, increased the public’s access to Web-based resources and provided a safe haven for teenagers.

“We’re a social place, too,” Mr. Galante said. “It’s a place where people are learning from each other.”

What of the physical books They’re still present, about 1.34 million of them. But there are far fewer in the open stacks on the first floor, down to 165,000 volumes from 300,000. The others were moved to the two stack levels below ground and are available on 20 minutes’ notice. Mr. Galante said this transfer opened “more people places” on the first floor.

The $9.8 million renovation project at the Central Library is part of an overall 10-year, $290 milli! on system! wide expansion and modernization, financed chiefly by $98 million from the office of the borough president, Helen Marshall; $83.5 million from the Queens members of the City Council; and $45.3 million from the office of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

The current Central Library is a product of its era. In the mid-1960s, instead of renovating the existing library at 89-14 Parsons Boulevard, officials chose to build an entirely new structure at 89-11 Merrick Boulevard, six blocks east. The older building was recycled as a courthouse. Its facade has since been incorporated into an apartment building called the Moda.

A mid-1960s rendering of the new Queens Central Library on Merrick Boulevard.Kiff, Colean, Voss & Souder, Architecs-The Office of York & Sawyer A mid-1960s rendering of the new Queens Central Library on Merrick Boulevard.

The new library modeled itself â€" proudly â€" on a supermarket. Everything was on one sprawling floor, with high-demand items toward the back, to lure patrons through as many aisles as possible. Books were shelved by broad topics, rather than strictly by Dewey Decimal Classification, and they moved through the building on conveyor belts. “This is the most modern example of functional library building,” Harold W. Tucker, the chief librarian, happily told The New York Times in 1966.

Design credit went to a hybrid practice known as Kiff, Colean, Voss & Souder, Architects-The Office of York & Sawyer. While perpetuating great names of early 20th century architecture, York & Sawyer, the firm worked in the spartan, stripped-down vocabulary of the time. Let’s just sa! y that th! e Queens Central Library did not simply function like a supermarket.

Among the few animating touches were two wall-mounted reliefs by the sculptor Milton Hebald, whose other works included the enormous “Zodiac Screen” at the Pan American World Airways terminal at Kennedy International Airport (now removed); and bronze figures based on “The Tempest” and “Romeo and Juliet,” outside the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. He also created a seated figure of a pensive James Joyce for Joyce’s grave in Zurich.

Mr. Hebald’s sculptures will remain, as will most all of the features of the 1960s design, although a door will be added into a vestibule where patrons can drop off books, DVDs and other borrowed material around the clock, in another bow to the new age.

One of two wall-mounted sculptures, flanking the library entrance, by Milton Hebald.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times One of two wall-mounted sculptures, flanking the library entrance, by Milton Hebald.




Queens Central Library Opens in 1966 (PDF)

Queens Central Library Opens in 1966 (Text)



The View of New York Under an Umbrella

Victor Kerlow

Dear Diary:

This New England winter, I found photos from a weekend trip to New York several years ago when I traveled there to see a show.

Before the show, I went for a long walk, even though it had begun to rain. I quickly learned that you meet more people in the rain. Carrying a massive golf umbrella, I discovered many new friends at every street corner. No one spoke at first; they simply converged.

I spied a young gentleman coming out of church uptown (in a downpour, at this point) who had gotten caught in the rain in his Sunday best. He could do nothing, and simply stopped and started laughing. But when our eyes met, he suddenly straightened up, brushed off the water as best he could, and dashed for cover.I crossed the street and followed a crowd of a dozen or so well-armed umbrella folk, all marching in the same direction - except for a mom and her half-pint coming the other way. Half-Pint carried her own umbrella, and cleared a path through the dozen simply by holding firm and letting her umbrella make the way. I heard many “oohs” and “ouches” before she came into view. Perhaps because I was last and had time to step away, I found myself simply standing there, laughing.

The show I’d gone to see was a comedy, but I have to say that New York provides enough comic moments just by being itself.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter u! sing the hashtag #MetDiary.



A Mission to Find, and Preserve, Forgotten Slave Graveyards

The African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan was established after bones were discovered under a site where a federal office building was under construction. A new database hopes to better track slave cemeteries. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times The African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan was established after bones were discovered under a site where a federal office building was under construction. A new database hopes to better track slave cemeteries.

They’ve been bulldozed over by shopping centers, crept over by weeds and forgotten by time. Across the country, from Lower Manhattan to the Deep South, are unmarked slave burial sites, often discovered only by chance or by ignominious circumstance like when constructio crews accidentally exhume bodies when building a shopping mall.

Compounding the problem of preserving and locating slave graveyards, is that there is no comprehensive list of where they are and who lies within them. The situation troubled Sandra Arnold, 50, a history student at Fordham University’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies, who traces her ancestry to slaves in Tennessee.

“The fact that they lie in these unmarked abandoned sites,” Ms. Arnold said, “it’s almost like that they are kind of vanishing from the American consciousness.”

Last month, Fordham introduced Ms. Arnold’s proposed solution, the Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans, a Web portal that invites visitors to input information about the whereabouts and residents of slave graveyards across the country. The goal is to create a user-generated database of these sites all over the United Sta! tes.

Though there are other similar projects, most are conducted on a regional level, or do not focus specifically on places slaves were buried. Find a Grave, a database used by many tombstone hobbyists and amateur genealogists, lists hundreds of thousands of plots, including those belonging to slaves. In 2001, in an effort to avoid disturbing burial grounds during a property boom, Prince William County in Virginia began collecting locations, joining private initiatives in Maryland, to catalog all of the estimated 6,000 to 9,000 slave burial sites in the state.

But still slave graveyards risk being trampled by time and construction. One of the most notable examples was in Lower Manhattan, where construction of a federal office building was halted in 1991 after the discovery of bones 24 feet below the surface. Just 419 bodies were discovered, though estimates of how many free and enslaved blacks were buried there range from 10,000 to 20,000. The African Buial Ground, as it was named, is now a national historic landmark.

Just last year, construction was held up for a new Walmart in Florence, Ala., after local residents protested that it would overlap with hidden burial sites.

“There is certainly a very important national need, it’s more than just an academic exercise,” said Lynn Rainville, a research professor at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, and an adviser to the database.

For Ms. Arnold it is also personal. The idea was born two years ago after visiting a Tennessee cemetery where her great-grandfather, who was born a slave, is buried. It was adrift in the middle of a field, she said, hardly the hallowed space that cemeteries typically are. “The fact that enslaved African Americans don’t have that sort of dignity,” she said, “it bothered me.”

The project’s ambition - to be a comprehensive database for the country - is hampered in par! t both by! the fact that slaves were often perfunctorily buried and by historical quirk: headstones were a luxury in many Southern areas and both enslaved and free people were often buried with plain stone markers or none at all.

“A huge number of old cemeteries, even from the 19th century, are simply lost in the landscape,” Eric G. Grundset, the director of the Library of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, who has traveled the country researching the legacy of blacks in the war said in an e-mail. “Memory is usually the primary source for locating such spots, so this project will rely very heavily on that for results.”

The database is still in its infancy, with just over a dozen entries uploaded since it began about a month ago. Irma Watkins-Owens, an associate professor of history and African-American studies at Fordham, is a co-director, along with advisers from Yale and Emory universities and the College of William and Mary.

Ms. Arnold, who also works as a secreary for the African studies department at Fordham, said it was entirely dependent upon word of mouth for contributions. Researchers with reams of information may find the system somewhat unwieldy since it requires data to be inputted piece by piece.

Still, the news of the database excited preservationists like Lisa Martin Sanders for its potential. Two years ago, Ms. Sanders rediscovered and began to rehabilitate a rundown cemetery where her ancestors and an estimated 1,500 other slaves were buried in Sanford, N.C., now called the Black Heritage Community Cemetery. She’s working on her next.

“I thought it was awfully sad that people can get thrown away,” she said. “If we have somewhere we can go and actually look and research this information, we can better understand who we are,” she added. “If we lose that, where are we”