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.