the Weeksville Heritage Center<\/a> in Brooklyn by Mayor Mamdani\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cWeeksville reminds us that Black New Yorkers built this city \u2014 not just its neighborhoods, but its spirit. This piece honors the generations who fought to preserve that history,\u201d Mamdani told theGrio. \u201cAnd it challenges us to do our part today: to build a future where the people who made this city what it is can afford to call it home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Founded in 1838, a full 11 years after the abolition of slavery in New York State, Weeksville is a blueprint of Black self-determination. Free Black men and women purchased land, sold it to one another, and built an entire community from the ground up, complete with churches, schools, its own newspaper, and even its own baseball team. At its height in the 1850s, Weeksville had grown to more than 500 residents, becoming both a beacon of Black possibility and a sanctuary from the very real dangers of the era.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Fugitive Slave Act is put into place in 1850,\u201d President and CEO of the Weeksville Heritage\u00a0Center Dr. Raymond Codrington explained. \u201cIt allowed private citizens to become deputized to round up people that had escaped slavery and return them. So, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for people to be abducted and returned to either a place they knew or a place they didn\u2019t know. That\u2019s a terrifying reality for many Black people that are living at the time, so where do they come? Where is their sanctuary? It was Weeksville.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The community also served as a safe haven during the 1863 Draft Riots in Manhattan, when racist violence sent Black New Yorkers desperately searching for safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new documentary brings that history to vivid life through archival footage, photographs, and interviews with historians and site stewards, including Tour Coordinator Regina Robbins, Collections Assistant Amanda Henderson, and curator-in-residence Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Beyond the history that lives within the houses, the Weeksville Center\u2019s Hunterfly Road Houses are particularly special as they are the only African American historic site in the Northeast still located on its original land.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat exists in our historic places \u2014 but especially in places where Black life has thrived and persisted \u2014 are traits of lives lived and time passed,\u201d Rhodes-Pitts says in the film. \u201cWhen we visit those houses, the feeling I always get is that it\u2019s a place we can touch that reminds us to be as ambitious as the people who had the vision to build them to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n
The restoration, funded by the NYC Mayor\u2019s Office, the Brooklyn Borough President, and the New York City Council, included work on the houses\u2019 fa\u00e7ades, siding, windows, doors, and front-entry porches. Practical but crucial upgrades were also made, including a climate-controlled storage room for historical preservation, new plumbing, upgraded fire alarms with smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, exterior lighting, and a new CCTV system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, the Weeksville Heritage Center carries forth the community-driven legacy of the historic neighborhood, hosting everything from yoga classes, workshops, and film screenings to arts programming and intergenerational events.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a time when many marginalized communities move through their daily lives with uncertainty, when some fear detention, targeting, or separation from their families, Weeksville stands as a reminder that sanctuary is part of our history. It is also part of our responsibility,\u201d Dr. Raymond Codrington concluded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And as Mayor Mamdani shares in the film, \u201cmay the memory of Weeksville light our way\u201d forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before there was a \u201cBlack Wall Street,\u201d there was Brooklyn, New York\u2019s Weeksville. The original for us, by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[35603,68,232,9,24,55,54,56,82],"class_list":["post-154063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-black-history","tag-exclusive","tag-lifestyle","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}