How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

I walked up to a three-sided kiosk, which told me I was standing at what was once the center of Seneca Village, an independent Black community that existed from 1825 to 1857. By 1855, the village had around 225 residents, two-thirds of whom were Black; about a third were Irish immigrants, and a small group was of German descent. Evidence based on church records suggests the community lived together peacefully, with Black and white families attending baptisms together, being buried alongside one another in the same cemetery, and intermarrying. The historical significance of Seneca Village was not simply that the Black people living there were free, or even that the community eventually became peacefully integrated; it was also that many of the Black residents owned property. Owning property gave them stability, some measure of economic security, and, as per the law passed at the 1821 Constitutional Convention, the right to vote. The village was built after a white couple, John and Elizabeth Whitehead, who owned a significant portion of land in the area, divided their estate into smaller pieces of land and sold them as two hundred separate lots. Black New Yorkers, eager to escape the density of the city and the racism that undergirded their daily lives, jumped at the opportunity to purchase small parcels of land and build a community. The Whiteheads’ first sale was to a twenty-five-year-old Black shoe shiner named Andrew Williams, who purchased three plots of land for $125. ...