About a mile off of the coast of the Bronx in New York City is a narrow, one-mile-long piece of land called Hart Island. This small piece of land holds a lot of history; mass burials on the island began in 1872. It is home to the largest public cemetery in the United States, where over one million people are buried in trenches dug by prisoners from the Rikers Island jail. The island became a place to bury unclaimed bodies, especially at the height of the AIDs crisis in the 1980s. Since then, over 75,000 people have been buried on Hart Island. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of the unclaimed bodies were from low-income neighborhoods and overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and front-line workers who do not have access to healthcare. Despite its proximity to New York City and its designation as “public”, it has never been easy to access.

Currently, visitation to the island is strictly for those with close personal ties to a decedent by appointment only. After a few phone calls, invasive forms, and an interview process, I was granted access to visit the island. Under strict supervision, six of us signed a waiver, were escorted onto a shuttle, which boarded a ferry, and sailed toward the island. While the rain fell hard overhead, we were briefed by Park Enforcement officers who reiterated the rules and guidelines we must maintain while on the island. Before stopping at the sight of her late father, Denise, who has the word “love” tattooed on her left hand, was briefed by one of the Parks Enforcement officers. She was told that in each mass grave, between two grave markers, lay a row of fifty bodies in individual pine caskets. Each row of caskets is piled on top of two more layers of the same. This ordering of bodies is repeated a staggering two more times within the mass grave. Denise’s father is buried somewhere amongst the pile of four-hundred-and-fifty bodies. Though the Officers do not know the exact location of his body, they point her in the general direction of the plot where he may be. I stepped off the shuttle accompanied under the watchful eye of two Park Enforcement officers, the other six visitors were also closely surveilled and had less than ten minutes to pay their respects. 

Hart Island is a microcosm of the issues plaguing American society—police brutality, prison reform, healthcare access, LGBTQ+ discrimination—all concentrated in this remote, isolating, confusing, controlling, secret, heavily surveilled, and exclusionary place. It raises profound questions about the value society places on certain lives and serves as a stark representation of the neglect endured by those who do not meet specific criteria. In its obscurity, Hart Island serves as a haunting reminder of the complexities and inequalities that define America, hidden away in plain sight on a mile-long island, where countless stories lay beneath its soil.