One of the first things we did Monday was walk over to the intersection of Elk and Duane Streets in lower Manhattan to visit the newly opened African Burial Ground National Monument. The site, the newest addition to New York’s historic and cultural monuments, was dedicated Friday with a ceremony and remarks by dignitaries, including Mayor Bloomberg and Congressman Rangel. We were eager to see how it would seem on a more normal day.

About 100 visitors of various backgrounds, and including 30 or so children, were gathered in the spiral center of what is known as the libation chamber or were leaning on the railing around it. They were all giving their rapt attention to a ranger of the National Park Service, Douglas Massenburg, who — sometimes raising his voice, sometimes dropping it to almost a whisper, sometimes gesturing high, other times kneeling to the ground — was delivering an eloquent account of the discovery of the burial ground and the individuals interred there. At the end of his remarks, he taught the audience the word, àse (pronounced “ah-sheh”), with a meaning similar to amen.

The burial ground was uncovered during what a brochure of the National Park Service calls the preconstruction phase of 290 Broadway. The brochure says that less than an acre of the 6.6 acre historical cemetery was excavated between 1991 and 1992, and 419 human remains were removed from the site. “The efforts of concerned citizens, politicians, anthropologists, scientists and historians, which included a 24-hour vigil and petitions, eventually led Congress to stop this excavation,” the Park Service recounts.

Eventually, the ancestral remains were moved to Cobb Laboratory of Howard University, for further study. Then, in October of 2003, the 419 ancestral remains were re-interred, this time in coffins made of hand-carved mahogany and lined with kente cloth. The journey to re-interment began at Howard with a ceremony attended by thousands. It made its way through Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Camden, Newark, and, finally, to the site on which the memorial sits.

The memorial, designed by architect Rodney Leon, features a 25-foot-tall tent-shaped structure, known as the “ancestral chamber,” flanked by two reflecting pools that open onto a circular court, which is engraved with a map of Africa and the Americas on the floor. At its heart is an Ancestral Libation Chamber with, at its center, a cosmogram that the Park Service Brochure calls the “crossroads of birth, life, death, and re-birth in Congo cosmology.”

The memorial is built from both African and American stone, mostly of black and gray. Adjacent to it, covered with neatly kept grass, are mounds where the 419 ancestral remains were re-interred. The burial ground encompasses the remains of an estimated 20,000 Africans and African Americans. An inscription on the north side of the chamber reads: “For all those who were lost. For all those who were stolen. For all those who were left behind. For all those who are not forgotten.”

Senator Clinton, in a statement, called the opening of the Burial Ground “an important moment in recognizing the extraordinary contribution African Americans have made to New York and our country.” In the adjacent building, at 290 Broadway, is a visitors’ center. Mrs. Clinton and Congressmen Nadler, among others, are pressing for legislation to establish what would be an expanded African Burial Ground International Memorial Museum and Educational Center. It would be a valuable addition to the resources of the city and country.

The African Burial Ground National Monument happens to be sited only paces from Foley Square and the federal courthouse named for Justice Thurgood Marshall. The juxtaposition represents a symbolism that is, at once, bitter and inspiring. Historians are only now, little more than a century and a half after emancipation, starting to come to grips with the facts of slavery in New York. It is a moving thing to see this site start to rivet and inspire visitors with a story that cannot be told too often or in too much detail or for too many generations.