When we look at what it takes to
be an American I think you find
no better
example than right here in New
York for this own free black
communities in which
they defined what it meant to be
an American even when the law
and the
government did not see them as
such. One of the first free
black communities in
New York is Seneca village.
it's founded in 1825 and that of
course is pre-emancipation when
we're talking about New York
specifically. Slavery ends New
York in 1827. So a group of
African Americans who were
affiliated
with the African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church, they were
the first to buy
property in this area that
became known as Seneca Village.
Daily life in Seneca
Village would have been impacted
by racial violence on a daily
basis. they
lived in an integrated community
so while it was a free black
community they
had among them Irish neighbors
and some German neighbors too.
And they
intentionally placed themselves
there. Seneca Village comprised
approximately
70 buildings. There was three
churches the first church to be
created was the
African Union Church. This
church also did have a school
and it was one of the
few schools that was available
for African American students so
it helps us
understand Seneca Village as a
place where community and church
and education
was very important. I would say
one of the more famous residents
if you will
was Albro Lyons. He actually
lived in lower Manhattan during
the draft riots.
And his daughter Maritcha who
was a teenager at the time,
she's the one who left her
memoirs and really explained the
horror that happened in
Manhattan streets
during the summer of 1863 when
African Americans were basically
being tortured
and murdered by their fellow New
Yorkers. in 1855 when the city
starts thinking
about a public space that will
be called Central Park they
decide that Seneca
Village has no value and said
we would have more value
if we became a public space and
we will call that public space
Central Park. Of
course it really had nothing to
do with that community or
upholding what that
community stood for. You know it
was about 800 acres of land and
while it was
not the first example of the use
of eminent domain it was
certainly a
prominent example. But it is
certain that you know the
creation of the park did
really disrupt the development
of what was one of the city's
most important
African American communities.
Within 30 years, Seneca Village
is basically established,
thrives, and it evaporates
completely. So there are not a
lot of physical traces
of Seneca village in the
landscape. Since about 1997 a
group of historians and
archaeologists have been
studying Seneca village
You know we found more portraits
and illustrations and we were
finding --we
found a map that actually had
the names of individuals so we
didn't know it was
in our collection that helped us
to understand though this is why
these
people are there and then from
there those names on the map we
could connect
to the census records then we
could find out for sure that
these were actually
black folk and white folk and
they actually owned their
property they
weren't squatters and so it was
just telling a different kind of
story.
They found such magical things
that I think tell a story of a
really dignified
thriving African American
community. It's through their
efforts that we know so
much more about Seneca Village.
We collected these things and we
try to
interpret them to see if they
dated to the period of Seneca
Village, and so they
did and you look at the
newspapers, you look at the
maps, you look at the title
deeds, you'll get family papers
and you just kind of piece that
together like
okay so this is telling an
interesting story how about how
can we bolster this
story? How can we humanize
it a little bit more?
There's no descendants that have
been found from Seneca village
and it's not
from lack of trying. My
suspicion is to do with the
amount of time that Seneca
village existed for. It existed
through to 1855-57 --for
whatever reason like so
many things in history we lose
them to the archives but not for
lack of trying.
we are in a search, we're on a
hunt to try to find direct
descendants who are
connected to the story because
again it's just one of those
things that will
humanize and you know put a nice
punctuation mark --an
exclamation at the
the story. If you look at the
history and the rediscovery of
Seneca Village there
is a pattern here and the
pattern is this: the city always
erases history
that's what it does. It does so
in the name of New York, in the
name of progress
but I think it's really
important that ordinary people
ordinary New Yorkers
ordinary Americans understand
that it's always being other
ordinary Americans
who have preserved their own
communities even if it means
forgetting about that
community and then rediscovering
them again decades later.
