An African cemetery was rediscovered during construction for a federal building in downtown Manhattan. Now known as the site of the rediscovered African Burial Ground, the final resting place for as many as 20,000 Africans

In 1993, Dr. Lorenzo Pace was selected from more than 400 artists and commissioned by the City of New York's Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Parks to create a sculpture dedicated to all the unknown enslaved Africans brought to this country. Nine years after Dr. Pace started this project, Triumph of the Human Spirit, weighing 300 tons, soars 60 feet high above the Plaza in Foley Square in lower Manhattan. It is the largest outdoor sculpture devoted to the African and African American community.

Triumph of the Spirit is styled after an antelope-inspired African headdress worn by the people of Mali, West Africa. The sculpture was built in fifteen 22-ton pieces in a Canadian factory and then reassembled on site. The base of the sculpture contains a replica of the iron lock that shackled Dr. Pace's great great grandfather when he was brought to America from Africa.