Among first lady Laura Bush’s guests at the State of the Union address yesterday was the superintendent of the African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan, Tara Morrison, who helped shepherd the project to completion.

Before serving as the site’s superintendent, Ms. Morrison was appointed in 2004 to handle relations among the National Park Service, the General Services Administration, which owned the land, and community groups. The finished monument opened in October 2007 with a ceremony featuring Mayor Bloomberg and poet Maya Angelou.

Ms. Morrison began her National Park Service career as an intern while completing a graduate program in museum management at the University of South Carolina. Afterward she worked on a National Underground Railroad program and served as an educational specialist at the Boston African American National Historic Site.

“I am very excited,” Ms. Morrison said in a telephone interview before President Bush’s speech yesterday evening. “It’s an honor to have been invited, and I’m also proud to represent the National Park Service.”

The African burial site was discovered in 1991 during the digging of a foundation for the federal office building at 290 Broadway; it contains the remains of between 15,000 and 20,000 Africans and African-Americans buried in the 17th and 18th centuries. The find shed new light on the history of slavery in New York City and prompted a movement both to study the remains carefully and to memorialize the dead.

“My interests have always been in African-American history, archaeology, and museum management,” Ms. Morrison said. “So this position I’m in now is really a perfect fit.”