Voices of Crown Heights oral histories

Call Number

2016.027

Dates

2016-2017, inclusive

; 2017, bulk

Creator

Ali, Zaheer

Brooklyn Movement Center (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.)

Johnson, Walis (Role: Interviewer)

Kitto, Svetlana (Role: Interviewer)

Mondésir, Obden (Role: Interviewer)

Okechukwu, Amaka (Role: Interviewer)

Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History

Extent

42 Gigabytes

in 119 files; Running time (of described records): 66 hours, 34 minutes, 20 seconds.

Language of Materials

English .

Abstract

This collection includes oral histories conducted by Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), Brooklyn Movement Center (BMC), and Weeksville Heritage Center (WHC) beginning in 2016 and collected and arranged by BHS in 2017. The assembled collection was part of broader programming efforts by the three organizations to commemorate and examine the transforming Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn a quarter-century after the August 1991 conflicts and unrest sometimes called "the Crown Heights riot." The oral history collection features a broad range of narrators; educators, community organizers, activists, entrepreneurs, artists, bloggers, and longtime neighborhood residents, who describe the changes they have observed in their neighborhood over decades.

Historical note

History of Crown Heights: From the late nineteenth century up to the World War I era, the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights was known for being an upper and upper middle class residential enclave. Russian Jews, Irish, and Italians moved there as a part of the boom in immigration from 1880 to 1940. Smaller migrations to Crown Heights occurred as well, with Caribbean migrants among these. Seeing an opportunity for first-time home ownership, some of Harlem's African American residents moved to the neighborhood in the 1930s. A great wave of Caribbean immigration followed in the 1960s and 1970s. With many White residents removing to the suburbs, those immigrants along with Caribbean Americans and African Americans invested and lived in the majority of residences from the 1960s to the 1990s. The Lubavitcher Hasidim, a Judaic movement that established its headquarters in Crown Heights in 1940, accounted for about eight percent of the population, according to 1990s figures. In 1991, long simmering tensions between members of the Lubavitcher and Black communities, and two fatalities, propelled the neighborhood into three days of unrest and violence. Encapsulated by the news media as the "Crown Heights Riot," the community took years to heal. Another demographic shift began as the 1990s ended; and by 2010 a new confluence of amenities, development, and rising property values was affecting the diverse face of the roughly 130,000 residents.

Voices of Crown Heights project: Staff for this project included Zaheer Ali (Oral Historian), Amaka Okechukwu (Project Coordinator), Svetlana Kitto (Interviewer), Walis Johnson (Interviewer), Obden Mondésir (Interviewer), and several more interviewers. From December 2016 to April 2017, project staff conducted three workshops for community partners and affiliates, with the purpose of informing participants about the neighborhood history, exposing participants to primary sources, and training participants in oral history methods. Unique to the Voices of Crown Heights project was its public engagement with oral history and contemporary neighborhood concerns. A first set of programs were done in partnership with WHC, and the second with BMC; BHS concluded with two final programs in June and July 2017. Project staff have presented about the Voices of Crown Heights at conferences, seminars, and panel discussions, engaging specialists, scholars, and oral history practitioners.

Arrangement

The collection of oral history interviews is organized into three series based on collaborative community partnerships within the project. Series 1: Brooklyn Historical Society consists of recordings conducted by the in-house Oral Historian and Project Coordinator, as well as by interviewers consulting for the institution.

Series 2: Brooklyn Movement Center includes interviewers linked to the project through their participation with the Brooklyn Movement Center, including the organization's Project Coordinator and consultants.

Oral histories represented in Series 3: Weeksville Heritage Center contain interviews conducted by that institution's Oral History Project Manager and the institution's consultants.

Scope and Contents

The Voices of Crown Heights oral histories feature a range of narrators from diverse backgrounds. Several have been immersed in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn for a relatively brief, recent, and rapidly gentrifying period of the early twenty-first century. Others have first-hand experience with the community for roughly a quarter century prior, and can contrast the earlier period with the later one. This collection focused on recent history and social interaction in Crown Heights, with particular interest being paid to the August 1991 conflict in the neighborhood, public schools, gentrification, and policing and safety.

Subjects

Organizations

Congress of Racial Equality

Genres

Interviews (sound recordings); Oral histories (document genres); Transcripts

Topics

Places

Bedford-Stuyvesant (New York, N.Y.); Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.); Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Social conditions; Crown Heights (New York, N.Y.)

Conditions Governing Access

Oral histories can be accessed onsite at Brooklyn Historical Society's Othmer Library and online at the Oral History Portal.

Conditions Governing Use

Use of the oral histories other than for private study, scholarship, or research requires the permission of BHS. Please see the Oral History Note for guidelines on using Brooklyn Historical Society's oral history collections. For assistance, please consult library staff at library@brooklynhistory.org.

Preferred Citation

[Narrator Last name, First name], Oral history interview conducted by [Interviewer First Name Last Name], [Month day, YYYY], Voices of Crown Heights oral histories, [Object ID]; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The oral histories that make up this collection were conducted by staff or consultants for Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Movement Center, or Weeksville Heritage Center. Preparation took place in 2016 and the bulk of the oral histories were created in 2017.

Related Materials

Brooklyn Historical Society has oral history collections and other records related to the Voices of Crown Heights oral histories.

• The Crown Heights History Project collection includes thirty-three interviews conducted from 1993 to 1994 (1994.006)

• The West Indian Carnival Documentation Project Records includes thirty-four interviews dating from 1994 to 1995 (2010.019)

• The Listen to this: Crown Heights Oral History collection includes forty-three interviews conducted in 2010 (2010.020). Narrators Karim, Camara, Richard Green, Constance Lesold, Evangeline Porter, and Meredith Staton were also recorded for this collection.

• 959 Park Place Tenants' Association records (1978.009)

• Eastern Parkway Coalition records, 1952-2007 (2007.016)

• Mark Naison papers, 1931-2011 (2016.021)

Collections related to the community activism referenced in these oral histories include:

• Arnie Goldwag Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) collection (ARC.002)

• Bob Adelman photographs of Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) demonstrations (V1989.022)

Physical Facet

All recordings and transcripts were born-digital.

Bibliography

Goldschmidt, Henry. Race and Religion Among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.

Gregor, Alison. "Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Where Stoop Life Still Thrives." New York Times. (New York, NY), June 17, 2015.

Shapiro, Edward S. Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006.

Oral History note

Oral history interviews are intimate conversations between two people, both of whom have generously agreed to share these recordings with the Brooklyn Historical Society archives and with researchers. Please listen in the spirit with which these were shared. Researchers will understand that:

1. The Brooklyn Historical Society abides by the General Principles & Best Practices for Oral History as agreed upon by the Oral History Association (2009) and expects that use of this material will be done with respect for these professional ethics.

2. Every oral history relies on the memories, views and opinions of the narrator. Because of the personal nature of oral history, listeners may find some viewpoints or language of the recorded participants to be objectionable. In keeping with its mission of preservation and unfettered access whenever possible, BHS presents these views as recorded.

3. Transcripts commissioned by a party other than BHS serve as a guide to the interview and are not considered verbatim. The audio recording should be considered the primary source for each interview. It may contain natural false starts, verbal stumbles, misspeaks, repetitions that are common in conversation, and other passages and phrases omitted from the transcript. This decision was made because BHS gives primacy to the audible voice and also because some researchers do find useful information in these verbal patterns.

4. Unless these verbal patterns are germane to your scholarly work, when quoting from this material researchers are encouraged to correct the grammar and make other modifications maintaining the flavor of the narrator's speech while editing the material for the standards of print.

Collection processed by

Brett Dion

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-12-19 19:32:01 +0000.

Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Language: Description is written in: English, Latin script.

Processing Information

Voices of Crown Heights oral histories were processed by Brett Dion, Oral History Project Archivist, in 2017. Interviews in each series were processed to the item level. Due to privacy concerns, the specific dates of birth of all narrators or other named individuals were redacted from the digitized transcripts and audio recordings.

Repository

Brooklyn Historical Society