A group of more than 60 high school students chanted, "Time to tell the truth, our local history, New York was a land of slavery!" and "Resist! Resist! Resist! Time to be free! Resist! Resist! Resist! No more slavery!" as they marched around New York City's financial district. At each of 11 stops they hung up posters detailing New York City's complicity with slavery and stories of heroic resistance and they handed out hundreds of fliers to tourists, workers, and students on school trips.

According to Shiyanne Moore, a senior at Law, Government and Community Service Magnet High School in Cambria Heights, Queens, and a trip organizer, "I learned the truth about our city's past from this project. I also learned the more noise you make the more things can change. Permanent historical markers about slavery could inspire people to fight for change. I am proud that I was involved in helping to create the African-American Slavery Trail."

Shouting was especially spirited at the downtown offices of Citibank, because one of the bank's founders helped finance the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade from 1830 to 1860. Kerry-Ann Rowe, another high school senior, told assembled students, "New York City's role in the African slave trade has been erased from history. This trip gives us a chance to write it back in."

Evidently the students had an impact. A reporter from Newsday, one of New York's major daily newspapers, accompanied them on the walk and wrote a feature story on the project that included photographs of their posters.

They also had an impact in other ways. The director of public safety for the Downtown Alliance, a nonprofit group that advocates for businesses in the New York financial district, sent one of the tour guides an email that read, "It is not legal to place these posters on traffic poles, light poles, or pedestrian poles. We, the Alliance, are removing the posters and have them at the office of public safety located at 104 Washington Street, NYC."