‘The fullness of life’: preserving a historic Black neighborhood in Brooklyn

Conservationists are energized by rightwing attacks on African American studies to preserve once prosperous Weeksville

Conservationists in New York are ramping up research and preservation efforts of a historic Black community that had all but disappeared, illuminating what some experts say is an antidote" to ongoing rightwing efforts to keep African American studies out of classrooms.

Weeksville, New York, located in present-day Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, had been a center of Black excellence since its founding by a dock worker named James Weeks in 1827. A copy of the New York Times from 1855 advertised beautiful building lots at Weeksville" for between $130 and $200 cash under the heading For Sale To Colored People." It was a thriving community of free Black people who escaped slavery in the south.