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Black History Month: The destruction of Seneca Village

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M

Malyse

Member
We've talked about the white guy in the iconic 1968 photo of two black USA Olympians w/ raised fists and the history behind the destruction of Black Wall Street, so now we have to talk about Seneca Village.

Seneca Village was a small village in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, founded by freed black people. Seneca Village existed from 1825 through 1857, when it was torn down for the construction of Central Park.

The village was the first significant community of African American property owners on Manhattan, and also came to be inhabited by several other minorities, including Irish and German immigrants. The village was located on about 5 acres (20,000 m2) between where 82nd and 89th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues would now intersect, an area now covered by Central Park. A stone outcropping near the 85th Street entrance to Central Park is believed to be part of a foundation of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

As a community of free black property owners, Seneca Village was unique in its day. It was located in the hilly, rock-strewn woods between 82nd and 89th Streets and 7th and 8th Avenues. At that time it was a long walk to the crowded city. The village grew steadily from 1825, when Andrew Williams first bought three lots for $125. By 1832, about 25 more lots were sold to African Americans. And by the early 1850s, the village boasted three churches, a school, and a population of some 300 people. Over the years, German and Irish immigrants joined the community. This diverse community lived in peace, attending the All Angel’s Church together and sharing the services of one midwife.

But as the city pushed north, the media began to paint a different picture of the little village, calling it a “shantytown” and calling the property owners “squatters” who were “wretched and debased.” Many people in the city, including Mayor Fernando Wood, wanted the land for a great new park. In 1855, the mayor used the power of eminent domain to claim the land. Then he sent the police to clear it. For two years the residents resisted the police as they petitioned the courts to save their homes, churches, and schools. In 1857, they were finally removed. As one newspaper put it, the raid upon Seneca Village would “not be forgotten…[as] many a brilliant and stirring fight was had during the campaign. But the supremacy of the law was upheld by the policeman’s bludgeons.
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http://maap.columbia.edu/place/32.html

Sadly, the newspapers got it wrong, as the memory of Seneca Village disappeared for well over a century. It wasn't until the 1990's that it would finally be remembered once more.

Anthropology professors Diana Wall of The City College of New York and Nan Rothschild of Columbia University, and adjunct instructor Cynthia Copeland of New York University, are founding members of the Seneca Village Project, which spearheads the study of the village in an educational context and its commemoration. The project's website offers an interactive map and photos from the site.

Cynthia explains how a number of events in the 1990s colluded to bring the history of Seneca Village to light. In 1991, a 17th and 18th century site of thousands of African burials was uncovered in Lower Manhattan. Now the African Burial Ground National Monument, the discovery at the time spurred people to think about early African presence in New York City's history.

She also credits Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, authors of a 1992 publication, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, for including Seneca Village in their section on pre-park history. The authors used material they found in the New York Historical Society repository, where Cynthia was a curator. In 1997, the historical society mounted an exhibition, "Before Central Park: The Life and Death of Seneca Village," which was called a "piercingly emotional show" by The New York Times.

In 2004, the historians began digging to see what they could find. They continued excavations when funding and time allowed. One focal point was the home of William Godfrey Wilson — a church sexton in the village — complete with vestigial signs of domestic life: pots and pans, a tea kettle and, particularly poignant in the imagining of the past, a child's shoe.
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http://www.npr.org/sections/theprot...6/309727058/the-lost-village-in-new-york-city

Since the rediscovery, archaeologists have been doing excavations to learn as much as possible about Seneca Village and historians have been trying to find any living descendants. So far, they have found none.

Then there’s the question of what might have been. At the end of the Central Park plaque, there’s an apparently innocuous line, noting: “The residents and institutions of Seneca village did not re-establish their long-standing community in another location”.

For Wall, this is key to the tragedy of Seneca Village. In an article on African-American communities in New York, she explains that, in the years after the 1827 slave emancipation, the safest way to live as an African American was in a separate, “enclave” community. As the village was destroyed, so was this safe haven for what she believes based on census records was a “black middle class”. She tells me now:

Many of the residents stayed relatively local to New York [after the village was demolished], but what they did not do was stay together. And that’s what’s so tragic: it was a community, and then the community was gone.

Another key part of the Seneca Village Project is an attempt to trace the genealogies of those who lived there, and find any living descendents. So far, unfortunately, this has been unsuccessful.

The continuance of a community made up of African-American landowners, bang in the middle of Manhattan, could have made for a very different New York – or even a very different United States – today. It’s a reminder that seemingly small decisions, like uprooting a certain community, or bulldozing a council estate, can change a city for good. You have to wonder whether all the mingling and promenading was worth it.
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http://www.citymetric.com/skylines/...n-american-landowners-create-central-park-893

seneca-village_650.jpg


Further Reading
 
L

LucidMomentum

Member
Thank you for these excellent threads. It's gonna take me some time to read through it, but I've known about Seneca for a while and it's always interesting to think how NY would've been different had Central Park not been placed on top of it.
 
K

Kid Kamikaze10

Member
I'm so happy you posted this. I feel like this should be required knowledge in history classes, especially for New Yorkers.

But man, it always hurts reading about this, and seeing history repeat itself in smaller ways.
 
P

ProtomanNeo

Member
Thanks Op this is a great idea. Quick question would you prefer this thread be responses only to the specific topic or could it be a one stop shop for some little known facts. For example the "Red Summer"?
 
D

double jump

you haven't lived until a random little kid ask you "how do you make love".
ProtomanNeo said:
Thanks Op this is a great idea. Quick question would you prefer this thread be responses only to the specific topic or could it be a one stop shop for some little known facts. For example the "Red Summer"?
Click to expand...

not the op but you should prob make new threads to spread the knowledge.

great thread btw I need to check the others.
 
F

Forearm Star

Member
Keep doing what you doing man.



Edit:

I posted before actually reading, but again would like to think you for this post. I've learned more about black history in 23hrs than in 31 years.
 
S

Slayven

Member
Interesting how they ran a campaign to shit on the black people, and it worked. Shows you what is old is new.
 
M

Malyse

Member
ProtomanNeo said:
Thanks Op this is a great idea. Quick question would you prefer this thread be responses only to the specific topic or could it be a one stop shop for some little known facts. For example the "Red Summer"?
Click to expand...

We have a one stop BHM thread

Kid Kamikaze10 said:
I'm so happy you posted this. I feel like this should be required knowledge in history classes, especially for New Yorkers.

But man, it always hurts reading about this, and seeing history repeat itself in smaller ways.
Click to expand...

I started writing this around 9AM. The reason it took almost an hour was because I pretty much stayed on the verge of tears the entire time.
 
D

Dai101

Banned
I certainly didn't know about this. I'm out of words, just........

Shit, shit shit ... But hey, bootstraps and all that, right?

FUCk.
 
P

Panthalassic

Member
I remember reading about this last year and feeling really angry about having wanted to visit Central Park. I didn't know. I do now.

You're doing great work.
 
H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
This thread is really good.

Probably going to be impossible to find anybody with explicit ties to this community at this point, unfortunately.
 
M

Maddness

Member
Great thread. Not only is this just depressing as shit, but knowing that it was just forgotten so easily for so long is just telling.
 
G

Gattsu25

Banned
I literally had no idea about any of this.

I always assumed that central park was undeveloped land that was kept moderately untouched as the city grew around it.

This is honestly really upsetting and shocking. How in the hell did this slip from NYC memory so damned quickly?
 
M

Malyse

Member
Gattsu25 said:
I literally had no idea about any of this.

I always assumed that central park was undeveloped land that was kept moderately untouched as the city grew around it.

This is honestly really upsetting and shocking. How in the hell did this slip from NYC memory so damned quickly?
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Because the world rarely cares about atrocities committed against black people.

Look at how many black people are killed every year.
 
J

jetpacks was yes

Member
Damn, that is crazy. I really love the park, but can't believe that such a big part of it came at that cost. I can't imagine how much richer the area would be had they put a greater priority on lives and community.
 
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