STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A powerful exhibition titled “Black Cherry Lane: Presence” will reimagine the erased history of Staten Island’s Cherry Lane AME Cemetery through the eyes of artists.

The project is an extension of the forthcoming documentary “American Graveyard, " which is a documentary film about Port Richmond’s historic Cherry Lane Cemetery.

The cemetery, once the final resting place for free and formerly enslaved Black New Yorkers and their descendants, was destroyed in the 1950s. Among those buried there was Benjamin Prine, believed to be the last person born into slavery on Staten Island .

Today, the site is occupied by a 7-11, Sherwin-Williams, and a Santander Bank branch.

“This was a working-class cemetery filled with families of the formerly enslaved,” filmmaker Heath

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