Portsmouth’s African Burying Ground honors people of African ancestry who were enslaved, separated from loved ones, and buried there, connecting their experience to West Africa and to the city’s collective history. The memorial’s entry figures symbolize the first enslaved Africans brought to Portsmouth, Mother Africa, forced separation, uncertainty, and perseverance, while a petition line recalls the 1779 plea by twenty men taken from West Africa as children who sought freedom and an end to slavery in New Hampshire. Sankofa and Nsoromma symbols link the site to West African meanings of learning from the past and guardianship, and a burial vault holds remains exhumed in 2003 and re-interred in 2015. Community figures and student-made tiles express remembrance across generations. The history behind the site reaches back to 1645, when the first known enslaved African arrived in Portsmouth from Guinea; during the colonial era, the port had the largest number of enslaved people in New Hampshire, reaching up to 4 percent of the population in 1767. Though references to the “Negro Burying Yard” survived in records, the ground itself, which may contain more than 200 burials, was built over and nearly forgotten until coffins and human remains were uncovered on October 7, 2003. Forensic archaeology and DNA analysis identified the exhumed individuals as African, leading Portsmouth to restore the area as sacred ground and to acknowledge the humanity and histories of those long forgotten.