The Confederate monument debate rages on, with some suggesting that statues to black heroes be erected in the place of those CSA monuments that have been torn down.

While it is hard to argue with building new monuments to black Americans of the past, it is important to remember and maintain the black monuments that already exist.

According to DNA Info, summer interns from the High School for Architecture and Design and the Mather Building Arts and Preservation High School (both in New York City) have banded together to refurbish the graves of 19th century free African Americans resting in New York's Green-Wood Cemetery.

Photo: Ethan Boote

The free blacks were buried in a section of the cemetery known as "The Colored Lots" starting around 1858.

Now, as is often was the case, the black citizens of the city didn't have access to choice lots at the cemetery. They were forced to bury their dead on certain plots, which were cheaper and of poorer quality than those in which whites buried their dearly departed.

Because of this, the black graves often did not have the needed foundation to support heavy headstones. This led to the graves disappearing, the headstones sinking into the ground.

Until now, if you were to pay a visit to this graveyard to pay your respects to the African Americans who were buried here, you wouldn't have been able to find them.

But not anymore.

"It was like solving a mystery," Antonio Rojas, a 11th grader at the High School for Architecture and Design said. "We knew something was there but we had to piece it together."

Over the course of six weeks, Rojas and his fellow interns exhumed sunken headstones, and learned how to repair them. After cleaning the marble and granite slabs, the interns worked to shore up the graves' foundations before replacing the headstones.

Photo: Ethan Boote

"This is important because the souls buried here were forgotten," said Khalilah Clark, a twelfth grader at the Mather School. "These people had historic significance and they deserve to be noticed."

The students have even taken their mission a step further by researching those whose names are carved on these plots on Ancestry.com.

One of the dead was a Civil War veteran, Andrew Schofield, who fought in the 125th New York Infantry.

"It's important because it's telling a story of how black people were treated back then," said Arnell Skinner, another twelfth grader at the Mather School. "It was a little emotional seeing some of these headstones broken into 80 pieces and knowing no one cared what happened, so I'm glad I had the chance to make sure they're remembered."

Green-Wood's manager of restoration and preservation, Neela Wickremesinghe, also made a statement regarding the students' efforts to give back.

"Their work is even more vital with the racism and bigotry we're seeing," Wickremesinghe said. "It's important that they understand that the world doesn't operate in a vacuum and we can find and highlight the connections to the past."

Mather Building Arts and Preservation High School in Hell's Kitchen

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