Mapping the African American Past (MAAP)

132 West 138th Street
Known for its charismatic leadership and community outreach, the Abyssinian Baptist Church was formed in 1808 by a group of African Americans and Ethiopians who refused to accept the segregated seating in the First Baptist Church of New York City.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, on the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Robert O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Columbia University, on the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

290 Broadway
The African Burial Ground is a federally designated historic landmark and archaeological site that was used as a cemetery by free and enslaved people of African descent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses the African Burial Ground.

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses the African Burial Ground.

Dowoti Desir, Executive Director of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, discusses the African Burial Ground.

Rodney Leon, African Burial Ground Memorial architect, discusses the site.

135-137 Mulberry Street
Soon after the Revolution, in 1785, a group of wealthy, powerful white men formed the New York Manumission Society. Although many were slave owners, their mission was to aid the enslaved, and to gradually end slavery in the state.

Mercer Street near Houston
On Mercer Street in the fall of 1821, King Lear limped out onto stage and the audience went wild. Lear was black.

African Methodist Church moves uptown to Harlem
Commentary by Cynthia Copland

42 Baxter Street
As soon as it was legal for black New Yorkers to organize, they did so. In 1808, the African Society for Mutual Relief was founded. (The Society may have met in secret earlier, but there are no records to prove it.)

3940 Broadway
Best known as the place where Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, the Audubon Ballroom has long been a center of African American social and political activity.

Dowoti Desir, Executive Director of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, discusses the Audubon Ballroom.

Bedford-Stuyvesant, also known as Bed-Stuy, is home to the largest concentration of blacks in New York City and one of the largest in the country.

Bethel AME Church, Amityville
The Bethel AME Church of Amityville was the first black church on Long Island. Daniel Squires and Delaney H. Miller organized the church in 1815, after founding the Sunday school one year earlier.In 1839, Elias and Fanny Hunter offered land on Albany Avenue to the congregation but it would take four more years for the church to call this home.

Bethel AME Church, Amityville
The Bethel AME Church of Amityville was the first black church on Long Island. Daniel Squires and Delaney H. Miller organized the church in 1815, after founding the Sunday school one year earlier.In 1839, Elias and Fanny Hunter offered land on Albany Avenue to the congregation but it would take four more years for the church to call this home.

10 Church Street
Blacks who fought with the British lived in “Negro barracks”. These men fought in units known as the Black Pioneers and the Black Brigade. Most did the hard support work the army needed, but some were armed and fought.

Booker T. Washington House
Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in 1856, and labored on the Burroughs tobacco farm in Virginia. Nine years later, he and his family were freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation and moved to West Virginia, where he worked in the salt mines while attending school.

Fort Salonga, Huntington, Long Island
Between the years 1911 and 1915, Booker T. Washington traveled from Alabama to Fort Salonga for rest and relief from the hottest months of the summer. Located on the north shore of Long Island in the Town of Huntington, Fort Salonga was a peaceful, scenic place for the Washington family to spend their vacations.

311 Bridge Street
It was October 1865, only months after the last shots of the Civil War were fired. People in Brooklyn opened their newspaper, the Brooklyn Eagle, to learn that "Last evening an immense congregation, fully half consisting of whites, was present at the African M. E. Church in Bridge street."

51 Warren Street
Catherine ("Katy") Ferguson was born in 1779 with almost nothing--not even freedom.

Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets
If you were black and orphaned in New York in the 1800s, there was nowhere to go but the cruel streets.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses the Colored Orphan Asylum.

67 Lispenard
David Ruggles might have been the most hated activist of his day.

5 Broad Street
Before New York was called the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster.

110th Street and 5th Avenue.
Edward Kennedy Ellington (1899–1974), known as Duke Ellington, changed the sound of popular music in America and around the world.

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses Duke Ellington.

Robert O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Columbia University, discusses Duke Ellington.

Eastville, Long Island
Eastville, like many early free African American communities on Long Island, was multi-ethnic. African Americans arrived in Sag Harbor seeking employment in the profitable whaling business sometime prior to 1840.

Eastville, Long Island
Eastville, like many early free African American communities on Long Island, was multi-ethnic. African Americans arrived in Sag Harbor seeking employment in the profitable whaling business sometime prior to 1840.

Sullivan Place & McKeever Place, Flatbush, Brooklyn
Located in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, Ebbets Field was constructed in 1913, costing $750,000 to complete. Its home team was the Brooklyn Robins, renamed the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1932 .

Foley Square btween Lafayette and Centre Streets
The year 1741 started out badly. Poor whites and blacks lived in fear of freezing or starving to death.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses the Execution Grounds.

Worth Street & Baxter Street
Five Points was a neighborhood around the intersection of Worth Street, Baxter Street, and Cross Street, which no longer exists.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses Five Points.

One Bowling Green
Fort Amsterdam was designed to be a state-of-the-art diamond-shaped fort, built of stone and bristling with cannon.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses Fort Amsterdam.

54 Pearl Street
Around the time of the American Revolution, everyone in New York knew Samuel Fraunces.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses Fraunces Tavern.

Freetown, East Hampton, Long Island
Freetown is a small, unincorporated hamlet within the Town of East Hampton, located along Three Mile Harbor Road between Jackson Street and Abraham’s Path. Following the passage of the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799 in New York State, John Lyon Gardiner and other wealthy local slave-owners settled newly freed slaves in Freetown.

36 Lispenard Street
Dressed as a sailor, Frederick Bailey stepped ashore a free man, but he was not safe until the great abolitionist David Ruggles took him into his home.

Freedom's Journal
Before 1827, blacks didn't exist in the newspapers, unless they committed a crime. African American weddings, births, deaths, and accomplishments were not to be found in a newspaper anywhere in the United States. But the year 1827 saw big changes. New York finally abolished slavery, and two young black men, John Brown Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish, founded Freedom's Journal.

Freetown, East Hampton, Long Island
Freetown is a small, unincorporated hamlet within the Town of East Hampton, located along Three Mile Harbor Road between Jackson Street and Abraham’s Path. Following the passage of the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799 in New York State, John Lyon Gardiner and other wealthy local slave-owners settled newly freed slaves in Freetown.

Harlem has been a black community for over 100 years.

Dr. Manning Marable, Professor of History and Political Science and founding Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, discusses Harlem.

Robert O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Columbia University, discusses the Harlem Renaissance.

290 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan
The Harlem Community Art Center was created in November 1938. Its opening was attended by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who welcomed the community’s new hub for creativity. During its brief life, the Harlem Community Art Center had a tremendous impact. Many of its students became artists who took pride in their culture and community. Paintings created by students at the Center often depicted scenes of Harlem; it was as if the students looked out a window and drew what they saw in the street.

207 Lenox Ave, Manhattan
In the mid 1990s, author and community leader Geoffrey Canada conceived of a new vision for Harlem. After years of hard work with Harlem’s Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families, Canada felt that many children in poor communities were still slipping between the cracks. He decided to create a program that would uplift the entire neighborhood: the Harlem Children’s Zone.

One West 142nd Street
On a cold February afternoon in 1919, thousands of people gathered along New York's Fifth Avenue and swayed to music provided by military band leader James Reese.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses the 369th Street Armory.

143 Nassau Street
Harriet Tubman, or “Moses” as some called her, was worth $40,000 to anyone who could capture her and return her south.

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Commencement Speech for Hofstra University. On June 13th 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. was Hofstra University’s honoree and guest speaker. King focused on the need for active participation to end racial inequality, poverty and war.

Hofstra University, Hempstead, Long Island
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to several Long Island audiences in 1965, but on June 13th his commencement speech at Hofstra University stirred up a wide variety of community sentiments.

Liberty and Trinity
In the spring of 1741, all eyes were on a tavern at the corner of Liberty and Trinity Streets.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses Hughson's Tavern.

93 West Broadway
In 1824, the aged Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette returned to America for a tour of the nation he had helped to forge.

John Street Church
At the opening of the John Street Methodist Church, the priest addressed "those in the gallery," welcoming the African Americans. The segregated black worshipers could cook the food, clean the homes, and care for the children of the white worshipers, but they could not pray together with them.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses the John Street Church.

Joseph Lloyd Manor
Granted to James Lloyd I in 1685, Lloyd Manor encompassed approximately 3,000 acres of land on the north shore of Long Island. The Manor supplied the Boston-based merchant family with cider, cordwood, and clay among other inventory. It wasn't until 1711 that the first Lloyd, Henry, took up residence. That same year Henry Lloyd recorded the birth of a slave named Jupiter Hammon on Lloyd Neck.

Joseph Lloyd Manor
Granted to James Lloyd I in 1685, Lloyd Manor encompassed approximately 3,000 acres of land on the north shore of Long Island. The Manor supplied the Boston-based merchant family with cider, cordwood, and clay among other inventory. It wasn't until 1711 that the first Lloyd, Henry, took up residence. That same year Henry Lloyd recorded the birth of a slave named Jupiter Hammon on Lloyd Neck.

Lakeville
Manhasset, a hamlet in the Town of North Hempstead, had a fairly large, steadfast African American settlement in the early 19th century. This community was unique due to its size and composition. The population was colonial in origin, comprised of people who were both born into slavery and "born free." By the third quarter of the 18th century, free African Americans had established a community along Valley Road near Lake Success

Lakeville, Manhasset, Long Island
Manhasset, a hamlet in the Town of North Hempstead, had a fairly large, steadfast African American settlement in the early nineteenth century. By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, free African Americans had established a community along Valley Road near Lake Success that was known variably as Success, Lakeville at Success and Valley Road.

Minetta Lane
In the hills and swamps that stretched across Manhattan Island one mile north of New Amsterdam, both free and enslaved blacks began to clear the tangle of trees, vines, and shrubs to build their own homes and plant their own gardens.

20 E 127th St
One of the leading voices in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Langston Hughes focused his writing on the realistic plight of black people.

Conflict with the development of Central Park in upper Manhattan.
Commentary by Cynthia Copland

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses Langston Hughes.

34-56 107th Street in Queens
The world’s most famous jazz musician lived in modest Corona, Queens.

34-41 137th Street in Flushing, Queens
Lewis Latimer was born free in 1848; his parents George and Rebecca Latimer made sure of that.

1900 Madison Ave.
Thought by many blacks to be another Moses, Marcus Garvey rose from humble beginnings in Jamaica, West Indies, to become the number one advocate of the "Back to Africa movement."

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses Marcus Garvey.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses Marcus Garvey.

118th street at Saint Nicholas Avenue, Manhattan
Henry Minton, a tenor saxophonist and the first black delegate to Local 802 of the musicians’ union, opened Minton’s Playhouse in 1938. Located on 118th street at Saint Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, adjacent to the Hotel Cecil, the Playhouse was a frequent temporary residence of musicians passing through New York.

158 Church Street
In the late 1700s, the Methodists of the mostly white John Street Church welcomed Africans and their descendents, and many came to worship there.

Gramercy Park
With the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War began to be more about black freedom.

Formation of enclaves origins of Seneca Village, formerly in Central Park.
Commentary by Cynthia Copland

263 Mulberry St
In 1996, Pope John Paul II bestowed the title of “Venerable” on Pierre Toussaint. Two years later, Pierre Toussaint Square was named for him.

Riverside Park on 150th Street, Manhattan
The Ralph Ellison Memorial at Riverside Park on 150th Street, Manhattan New York is not your typical African American landmark in New York City.

Rikers Island
On March 5, 1864, a crowd of over 10,000 New Yorkers watched in awe as 1,000 well-disciplined Union army troops left Rikers Island and marched west to the Hudson River, their dark blue uniforms and crisp white gloves and white leggings glistening in the sunlight.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses Rikers Island.

Rocky Point
Rocky Point is a hamlet located in northern Brookhaven Town. Today, it is a typical suburban settlement characterized by strip malls and shopping areas along North Country Road and residential neighborhoods to the north of this main road. In the 19th century, however, it was a rural, farming community and home to a small settlement of African Americans.

Samuel Ballton
Samuel Ballton was a well-respected citizen of Greenlawn in the Town of Huntington. It was in 1899 that Ballton was crowned the "Pickle King." His efforts produced an amazing crop of 1.5 million pickles in a single season. Ballton, however, had already led a remarkable life and went on to leave a unique legacy.

1538 Woodrow Road
On February 23, 1828, Captain John Jackson purchased land in a place known as Sandy Ground on what is now Staten Island.

515 Malcolm X Blvd
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture holds one of the best library collections focused on black history in the world.

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses the Shomberg Library.

Central Park near West Drive & 85th Street
As a community of free black property owners, Seneca Village was unique in its day.

Seneca Village Community
Commentary by Cynthia Copland

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses Seneca Village.

409 W. 141st St.
The Shiloh Presbyterian Church boasts a long tradition of radical black leadership.

Maiden Place
In the early 1700s, New York had one of the largest slave populations of any of England’s colonies.

74 Canal Street
In 1797, a baby girl named Isabella was born in upstate New York.

31 Centre Street
The congregation of St. Philip’s has roots that reach back to 1704.

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses St. Philip's Episcopalian Church.

144 W 125th St
From before this nation was formed, Africans and their descendants have contributed enormously to American culture.

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses The Studio Museum in Harlem.

122 Pearl Street
Lewis and Arthur Tappan were brothers who earned a fortune importing silk from Asia.

Pearl St. between Whitehall Street and Broad Street
On an August day in 1664, the Dutch ship Gideon reached the Great Dock in New Amsterdam.

40 Wall Street
The Manhattan Company was formed to bring fresh water to New Yorkers. Or at least that was its stated purpose.

Wall Street and Water Street
In 1711, New York was growing quickly, and the growing needs of the city were often supplied by slave labor.