A Tale of Two Cities: Part Two

New York is a thousand cities within a city.  Turn the corner, walk 10 blocks, take a train and a whole New World awaits you.  None was so evident than my trip from the African Burial Ground in the financial district of lower Manhattan to residential Brooklyn to visit the Weeksville Heritage Center.  Tucked in between neighborhood houses and apartment buildings on Bergen Street, lies the remnants of one of Brooklyn’s first free African American communities. 2 houses built from the 1840’s and 2 from the 1880’s still stand along with a newly built Visitor’s Center, set to open in 2014.  The village of Weeksville, named after one of its primary founders and inhabitants, James Weeks, was established in 1838 by a group of freed Black men who bought land to create an independent community for African Americans and gain their right to vote.  An 1821 law restricted African American men from voting by increasing property requirements to $250.00. By pooling their resources and buying the approximate 6.6 acres of land, they fulfilled the requirement.

Weeksville flourished and became a vibrant, multi-class community. At its height in the 1850’s, over 500 inhabitants populated the village and almost a third of its men owned land. It was self-sustaining with its own school, newspaper, The Freedman’s Torchlight, churches, an orphanage, a senior home and a cemetery.  Notable residents included Susan Smith McKinney Steward the first black female to earn a medical degree in the state of New York and only the third in the country and Patrolman Moses P. Cobb, the first African American New York City Police Officer.

The neighborhood’s existence spanned from 1838 until the 1930’s with the last residents, the multi-generational Williams family occupying a home until 1968.  Weeksville eventually became a part of the surrounding Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant communities.

In 2005, after a major multi-million dollar restoration, the 4 houses were opened to the public as the Weeksville Heritage Center.  Each house recreates how a family would have lived in a particular era: the 1840s, 1860s, 1900s and 1930s, through furnishings, everyday objects, photographs, clothing and music.  Antiques, replicas, and original artifacts weave a vibrant tapestry of historical interpretation that make the visitor feel right at home, as if the inhabitants are just out to Sunday church services or in the garden picking vegetables.

Guided tours are conducted Tuesdays-Saturdays by LaShaya Howie, the welcoming and engaging Education Programs Curator for the Center.  I visited on a steamy August afternoon after running through a rainstorm, and was greeted with napkins to wipe off and an ice cold cup of water.  LaShaya and I entered each home by unlatching a gate, walking to the front steps and opening the doors with a key.  We were accompanied by a friendly neighborhood cat, who never left our side and was clearly as interested in local Black History as I was.  I was full of questions as I viewed living rooms, bedrooms, parlors, pantries, children’s games, newspapers, toiletries and clothing from each era.  LaShaya carried an iPad with photographs of Weeksville buildings and inhabitants and an iPod of music from the eras played in the 1900’s and 1930’s houses.

My overwhelming excitement was consumed by my overwhelming joy that I stood in a place that was ours, newly freed from the scars of slavery to remain centuries later as a testament to our heritage as self-sustaining, productive citizens of this community and of this country.  It’s worth the trip.