Explore every episode of the podcast Mapping the African American Past (MAAP)

Willoughby and Duffield Streets
In September of 2007, Duffield Street in downtown Brooklyn got a new name.

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.

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.

235 W. Broadway
One day in the mid-1800s, 28 men, women, and children snuck into New York City.

Across from the Meal Market, where enslaved workers could be hired or bought, was the Tontine Coffee House, home of the New York Stock Exchange.

One Wall Street
A gang of black men labored as long as daylight allowed, digging a three-foot-deep trench from the East River all the way across Manhattan Island to the Hudson River.

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

1698 Bergen Street
Far from the bustle and racism of Manhattan, on what was then the outskirts of Brooklyn, free blacks built a community called Weeksville.

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

Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue, Brooklyn
Many slaves brought the tradition of African outdoor ceremonies to the Caribbean. However, once enslaved, they were prohibited from holding public celebrations despite their slaveholders' engagement in street parades like Mardi Gras.The Harlem permit was revoked in 1964 due to a violent riot. Five years later, a committee organized by Trinidadian Carlos Lezama obtained another permit for a parade on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. The parade has been held there ever since, beginning at Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue and ending at Grand Army Plaza.

245 Park Drive, Mastic Beach, Long Island
William Floyd, the first son of Nicoll and Tabitha Floyd, was born on the south shore of Long Island in 1734. His father purchased the Mastic Beach property in 1724 building the Old Mastic house to serve as the family’s home.

245 Park Drive, Mastic Beach, Long Island
William Floyd, the first son of Nicoll and Tabitha Floyd, was born on the south shore of Long Island in 1734. His father purchased the Mastic Beach property in 1724 building the Old Mastic house to serve as the family’s home.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.