Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

by Andrea Elliott

“You know what this is?” she says, waving a hand at the park. “This used to be an old war zone.” Chanel’s mother, Joanie, had told her the story. Fort Greene, as the name suggests, was once a fort in the Revolutionary War. This was hallowed ground—the site of America’s first major battle, in 1776, after declaring independence from the British crown. There is nothing to announce this in Fort Greene’s topography, aside from an aging plaque under a 149-foot tower. History fades quickly, with only the most obvious facts, like the tip of that tower, standing out. Singular narratives take hold, casting the North as the symbol of abolition and freedom and the South as the land of the enslaved. It is a less-known fact that Brooklyn was built on the backs of slaves, brought here by the Dutch in 1626 to clear land, build roads, and work the tobacco plantations. When the British took the colony nearly four decades later, renaming it for the Duke of York, the importation of slaves began in earnest. The colony’s enslaved population swelled to 13,500, making it the largest slaveholding territory in the North. And nowhere in New York was the concentration of slaves higher than in Brooklyn—one-third of the population. Thousands of enslaved Blacks took up arms in the Revolutionary War—some for the British, who promised them freedom, and some for the rebels (after George Washington reluctantly allowed them to fight). The biggest battle unfolded in Brooklyn, when the British took control of ...