An intentional Black community founded by abolitionist James Weeks in 1838, Weeksville bestowed the right to vote (then limited to land owners) upon a free African-American community that came to number 500 households.
In 1968, Weeksville's few remaining homes were, like so many other historic structures in Brooklyn, nearly destroyed by development. But the "re-discovery" of Weeksville by a Pratt Institute team, and a grassroots preservation effort led by artist and activist Joan Maynard, succeeded in saving the "Hunterfly Road Houses", and the memory of the Weeksville community.
Over the past year, four African-American artists: Xenobia Bailey, Simone Leigh, Otabenga Jones, and Bradford Young, dialoguing about Black self-determination in the 21st century with four exemplary local African-American community organizations: Boys and Girls High School, Bethel Tabernacle AME Church, Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium, and Stuyvesant Mansion, have produced four art installations that place contemporary Black cultural, medical, educational, and spiritual institutions within Weeksville's historical and cultural context.
Black Radical Brooklyn will continue with "Conversations on Self-Determination", a free talk series at Weeksville produced in partnership with the New York Public Library's Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture:
- Black Radical Brooklyn: Past, Present and Future from 3:30-5:30 PM on Saturday, September 27
- Funk and Jazz from 3:30 -5:30 PM on Saturday, October 4,
- God and Medicine from 3:30-5:30 PM on Saturday, October 11.
For more information, visit the website.
Exhibit sponsor Creative Time, an innovative, New York-based not-for-profit, has presented more than 335 public art installations since 1974.
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