TNJ - February 2002 - Feature Story - Celebrating Black History Month: By Akinshiju C. Ola

February 2002

Celebrating Black History Month:
Preserving the History of the Weeksville Community
By Akinshiju C. Ola

(left) Joan Maynard, executive director of the Weeksville Society is seen here in the backdrop of the humble peak-roofed dwellings, all that is left of Weeksville, a settlement of freed slaves that flourished 150 years ago, complete with its own churches and schools. AP Photo/Paul Hurschmann. (right), The unidentified proper Victorian woman in this undated photograph is used by the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville to symbolize the residents who once lived there. AP Photo/Weeksville Society.

In the early 1800’s, when slavery was outlawed in New York, free blacks and runaway slaves were attracted to the area. Then in 1863, many of them—after the draft riots against Union conscription—sought refuge in Brooklyn where a solid community existed. The area was bounded on the north by Fulton Street, East New York Avenue on the south, Ralph Avenue on the east and Troy Avenue. It was known as Weeksville, and it is believed to have been one of the stops on the Underground Railroad.

A black longshoreman from Virginia, named James Weeks, bought the land from the Lefferts family in 1838. It is believed that he was a former slave. Four cottages are all that remain from the Weeksville community. For the past 33 years, Joan Maynard, 73, has taken care of the Hunterfly Road Historic Houses. Her dream is to cultivate them as a museum to attract people so that they may understand the little-known history of the community and what it represents.

“The Weeksville Houses were a source of hope for the people who once lived here and there can be hope for the people who live in this community now,” Maynard said.
Only one building is now open to the public. It is called “an interpretive center,” where people can view some of the early 19th-century artifacts: donated and discovered by Maynard’s restoration project. Most of the historical materials are in boxes; others such as an old butter churn, a stone ax sharpener and a pair of slave shackles are in need of restoration.

“Everyone should know what happened here,” said Maynard, executive emeritus of the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville. “These houses can’t speak for themselves. Their story deserves to be told in a major educational setting,” she said.

Almost $10 million in grants, mostly from the Brooklyn borough president’s office and such companies as Goldman Sachs, puts the houses on the road to being fully restored into a museum and education center. The Society plans to build an education center so that children in the community will be able to learn and understand the history of Weeksville through the lens of media, art, dance and computer technology.

“This is a big moment for us,” said Pam Green, the executive director of the Weeksville Preservation Project. “We finally have the money we need to expand, but given what’s happened to the city, it’s no longer clear that we’ll have the necessary funding to create a level of stable programming.” She added that something like $5 million more is needed. She would like to hire a full-time museum director for a two- or three-year tenure, and open an after-school program to train students in computer technology, art and dance classes. And she wants to upgrade the Weeksville Web site and have the houses as a nationwide market attraction.

In September, the Society received a $400,000 grant from Save America’s Treasures, the federal organization that helped preserve the homes of Harriet Tubman in upstate New York and writer Edith Wharton in Massachusetts. The city owns the land that is designated for the new educational center, and the state has promised to contribute thousands of dollars to the project. But both the city and state officials has left it in limbo, saying that it is difficult to determine what contributions the project will make to arts programs.

The houses gained attention in 1968 when an historian and a pilot were doing an aerial survey of the area when they spotted some old wooden cottages on a half-hidden road. When they investigated the grass-covered site, they found the remains of the old Weeksville community. It was just an old road with its own history. It had once been a trade route used by Native Americans. Two years later, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Hunterfly Road Houses a landmark, and in 1972 the houses were added to the National Register of Historic Places. Maynard has continued the struggle to renovate the houses.

The Society has secured gifts from corporations, along with city and neighborhood contributions, and renovations have included new roofs for the four houses. In the 1980’s, one house was destroyed by fire, and had to be completely rebuilt and a security system was installed.

“After everything we’ve gone through, we don’t want to just restore the houses and then have no one come here,” Green said. “It’s not the first part of Brooklyn people think to visit. Weeksville has to be made relevant for the 13-year-old across the street and the person visiting New York from across the country.”

Pam Green and Joan Maynard see time as the essence; they may not have another 30 years to put it all together. The dream has to be realized.

Send a Network Journal Greeting Card With Music to a loved one or friend. In preparing to celebrate Black History Month (February) here in America, the theme of our greeting cards for the next two months will feature famous people of color from the last century.

The music to accompany the cards are Motown and Reggae songs.