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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Trace/s' Connects Slavery in Brooklyn With Present Day Families
00:22:16
A new exhibition at The Center for Brooklyn History traces Brooklyn's ties to slavery by presenting artwork and archival material from its special collections.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Listener supported.
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Alison Stewart
You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. The center for Brooklyn History reminds us that the legacy of slavery is not as distant as we think. A new exhibition connects some present day New Yorkers with their formerly enslaved ancestors who lived in Brooklyn. The exhibition is called Traces. For example, there's a portrait of Mildred E. Jones alive and well today. Mildred is the great great granddaughter of Samuel Anderson, who was formerly enslaved by the Lott family in Brooklyn. The CBH commissioned Mildred's portrait to sit alongside a portrait of John Lott, the man who owned Mildred's ancestor. The exhibition also displays bills of sales journals, newspaper articles and estate records, all of which provide context into how the slave labor into house Slave labor contributed to Brooklyn's economic growth. Traces is on view at the center for Brooklyn history through Aug. 30. The center is part of the Brooklyn Public Library and BPL Chief historian Dominique Jean Louis is here now. Dominique, nice to meet you.
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Dominique Jean Louis
So nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.
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Alison Stewart
So New York State began gradual emancipation from slavery in 1827. But before emancipation, how prominent was slave ownership in Brooklyn?
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Dominique Jean Louis
Slave ownership in Brooklyn was very prominent. So across the what is now the borough of Brooklyn in Kings county, about 40% of Brooklynites owned enslaved people. But depending on where you look in Brooklyn, so the village of Flatbush, for example, that number ticked much higher. And so certain areas of Brooklyn, you'd be just as likely to find enslaved people as anyone else. So Brooklyn was really defined by its relationship to the institution of slavery for many years.
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Alison Stewart
How did it drive the Brooklyn economy at the time?
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Dominique Jean Louis
So Brooklyn is really the breadbas of a growing New York City area. When you're looking at a growing Manhattan, for example, a lot of what's being eaten, a lot of what's being grown, it's not happening in Manhattan, it's being grown in Brooklyn and being sent over the East River. So when we're thinking about the growth of what is now New York City, the cabbages and potatoes and carrots that are grown in Brooklyn are really what's facilitating that growth. So slave labor and the production of these agricultural products, it's hard to overstate how important that is. For the New York City and the Brooklyn that we know today.
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Alison Stewart
Listener, you are the descendant of enslaved.
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Listener/Host
Or formerly enslaved ancestors, and you've traced it back. We want to hear your story. Call us now. 212433, WNYC 212433, 9692. How did you discover your family history? What made you want to learn more about your ancestors? 212433, WNYC 212-433-9692. I want to talk about the title.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Oh, yes.
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Listener/Host
Of the exhibition Traces. Traces. But there is a slash between the E and the S. Yes. Why did this title make sense?
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Dominique Jean Louis
Sure. So as we were doing the research and as we were learning more about this topic, I kept coming across this idea of the word trace having multiple meanings. So trace, on the one hand, is an action. It's what you do when you're tracing your family's history. You're looking for them through time. But when we look at the archive at research institutions like ours, we're also really looking at traces of history, looking for those clues in the archives of who were these enslaved people. A lot of their stories weren't maintained, aren't in the archival records, but we have these traces of who they were, the lives they lived. And so we're looking for those traces in the archival record. And then as well, a trace is a physical object. You lead a horse by its traces, and so it's also a marker of bondage. So thinking about the multiple meanings of that word is a really helpful way to think about the multiple ways that slavery shapes Brooklyn, the multiple ways that we research and we ask questions about the past to try to get a sense of how this history has changed the Brooklyn we live in today.
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Listener/Host
You could have just concentrated on the past, but you bring past and present together. Can you explain?
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Dominique Jean Louis
Sure. So, obviously, as an institution that centers history, we care about what happened in the past. We care about how Brooklyn arrived to the state that it's in today. But we're also a public facility. We have people coming into our building every day who are kids in school, groups who are interested in learning more. And so honoring the community we have now is really important to us. So throughout the exhibition, we worked in close partnership with the Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society. And these are, you know, volunteers. They're not paid. These are people who just are interested in family genealogy research and get together to be in community amongst people who are doing this research. And so the vibrancy of the people who are doing this work today really Inspires us to think about the importance of the press, as well as the clues and the traces and the documents of the past that help us tell a more full story and help us reveal the stakes of it, too.
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Listener/Host
There are newspaper articles. There are journal entries. There's our bill of sales. First of all, what is the one that you got and you read and said, I can't believe this. I can't believe this.
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Dominique Jean Louis
I mean, I don't love to pick favorites. There's so many great documents. But there is a bill of sale for a young girl named Mercy. And this is an interesting document because at the point where she sold, gradual emancipation had already begun. So the people who are doing the sale know that she's gonna be free someday. So it's quite a long document because it stipulates, for example, that Abraham Vanderveer, who's the one purchasing this girl named Mercy, and by the way, even just the fact that her name is Mercy is a very moving part of that document. But he has to guarantee that she will be taught to read and write. But the most fascinating thing about that document is that it's being edited in real time. You see brackets where they're adding words, where they're changing things, and you really get a sense of that moment in time when, through this document, this girl's life is changing. This little girl who's being sold by herself. We don't know what family she comes from or what happens to her afterwards, but that document is so much a part of her story, and it's really humbling and overwhelming to see it in person.
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Alison Stewart
As a historian reading through these documents, you have to read between the lines a little bit.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Absolutely.
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Alison Stewart
Tell us a little bit about the history gathering that happens in these documents, which aren't always clear.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Right. So one of the most important things about the documents that are on display in this exhibition is they were not written with the intent of telling us the story of enslaved people. They're personal journals. They're legal documents. And so it really is a matter of searching for the subtext and what's not written as much as it's exploring what is written. So we not only look at the who, what, where, when, why that's listed in the document, but also pulling in historical context, what else is happening at the time that influences what we're seeing here. So, for example, we have a diary entry from a man who is referencing experiences he has with enslaved people and also the fact that he witnesses a solar eclipse. And so you're thinking about, okay, what else is happening in this time? And we know solar eclipses have made a role in history in inspiring slave revolts. And so connecting this document to other slave revolts in other enslaved other countries and other states where slavery happened, that's where you can pull in the history and see not just what's written, but what is the meaning of what's written and what are the stakes of what's written. So pulling in historical context is really great. And my researcher and I, Niall Solomon, have these great conversations about did you see that? And look at this part. So it really is about really examining the documents from all angles, pulling in all the context you can being and staying curious about what questions can you ask these documents? And even if they can't answer them, you know, what do you still have curiosity about?
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Alison Stewart
I'm speaking with Dominique Jean Louis, chief historian at the Brooklyn Public Library. The exhibition Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn is on view now at the center for Brooklyn History, which is part of the Brooklyn Public Library. That will be up until August 30th. If you are a descendant of enslaved, formerly enslaved ancestors and you found your way back to your history, we'd love to hear from you. 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. You display old copies of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, including one from September 18, 1898 that says, Born a slave in Flatbush. Who. Who's the subject of this article?
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Dominique Jean Louis
So this is a fascinating document. The subject of this article is a man named Samuel Anderson who was being inter the Brooklyn Daily Eagle because he was one of the last living people who was enslaved and has memories of being enslaved. And so they feature this article asking him to describe his daily life, what he remembers, and it's a remarkable document. But my favorite thing about it is that they keep asking him about his memories of freedom. And he keeps responding. Sorry, his memories of slavery. And he keeps responding with what he's done with his freedom, the churches that he's joined, the families that he's made. And you can see this man literally writing himself into the historical record and taking agency to do so, that if this is my chance, where history is passing me the mic, I am going to make sure that I'm talking about my kids, talking about my faith, talking about my garden. And you really just get a sense of who this man was. And I'm so glad that record exists both for the family who is descended from him, who we got to know over the course of this exhibition. But also to just have that example of humanity and someone speaking their experience from their perspective. Its value is incalculable and I'm so glad we have it in our newspaper collection at the center for Brooklyn History.
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Listener/Host
The exhibition Traces Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn is happening now at the center for Brooklyn History. We'll have more after a quick break.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it.
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Alison Stewart
You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with Dominique Jean Louis, chief historian at the Brooklyn Public Library. We're talking about an exhibition titled Traces Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn. It's on view at the center for Brooklyn History, which is part of the Brooklyn Public Library. It's up through August 30th. Okay, so when you walk in the front of the exhibition, so the crux of it is these two giant portraits.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Giant is the word.
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Alison Stewart
And they are connected one way to each other. Let's start first with John Lott.
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Dominique Jean Louis
So John A. Lott is a very esteemed Brooklynite. In fact, our collection is not the only one that has a giant portrait of him. He also this portrait, another copy of it also hangs in Brooklyn's Borough hall, another in Albany in the state courts. He is known as a lawyer and judge who was really instrumental in the urbanization of Brooklyn following the end of slavery. So he's a member of the Lott family. The Lott family is a very prolific, important family in Brooklyn's history. And his uncle Jeremiah owns Samuel Anderson, who we just discussed, an enslaved man. And Samuel Anderson's great great granddaughter is still living with us and born and raised in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. And so we decided that the contributions of Samuel Anderson's descendants also deserve to be honored through oil portraiture. So we reached out to a community based oil Portrait artist Rusty Zimmerman and commissioned a portrait of Mildred E. Jones, this descendant of Samuel Anderson. And my favorite part about it was, you know, Ola portraits say a lot about who you are. So we encouraged her to add little Easter eggs about her family's history, who she is as a person. And so there's a lot to see in comparing and contrasting what's in the portraits.
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Alison Stewart
Well, I was going to ask, you know, how important was slavery in the development of the Lot family wealth? We see this big picture of John Lott. Tell us a little bit more.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Absolutely. So the Lott family are descended from some of the earliest Dut colonists arrivals to Brooklyn, and they're prolific. In fact, we have a family tree of the lots in our collection, in our research collection. And there's not a table big enough in the building to hold it. It's about 12ft long. It's this giant family with all these different arms to it. So he's a member of a larger system of a very important wealthy family. And a lot of that wealth, it comes from their history of profiting from owning farms, from farm labor, and not paying their workers because they were enslaved. So a Lot Lott family. There's Lott streets in Brooklyn. Their name is on a lot of different street names and other kind of places. There's a historic house, the Lott House. So they've really been raised up. And John A. Lott, as this judge, is able to make a name for himself as a lawyer and judge, in part because he has access to an excellent education. He has access to other wealthy people who can enter into legal practice with and who will support his nomination for the judicial bench. And so there's a direct relationship between the kind of family wealth that's derived from owning. From slave labor and owning enslaved people to being able to not only live a life of comfort, but also live a life of influence and have a say on how Brooklyn develops so very much. The streets we walk on, the way that space is organized, the way that land derives its value, has everything to do with the fact that Brooklyn was a place where slave labor happened. And the people who benefited from that got to make the calls about what happened next.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, shoot me some of the streets that might be you might be walking down that you didn't know the history of.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Absolutely. We have some of them on display in the exhibition. We see the Bergens and the Vanderbilts and the Lefferts and these names that in Brooklyn, we know quite well. We maybe don't know about where some of these Families come from and why they're so influential.
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Alison Stewart
Back to the portrait of John Lott. What does the painting reveal about him and about how he saw himself?
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Dominique Jean Louis
Absolutely. So looking at that portrait, and it is large, it's 40 inches by 50 inches. We see that he's wearing a gold watch chain. We see that he's surrounded by his legal texts. We see him very well dressed. He's in this very fancy suit. It really, oil portraiture has a real language to it, and he's using himself and the artist who painted it, Thomas Jensen, they're using the language of oil portraiture to give an impression of a person. He's really someone who was influential, and they wanted to make sure his oil portrait looked like it. That portrait entered our collection through donation. The family, his descendants later donate it to what was then the Brooklyn. What was then the Long Island Historical Society, so that it could be enjoyed and shared and remain influential for years to come. And so we wanted to take that same approach to having this new commissioned portrait made and really thinking about. And it's an interesting thought experiment for any of us, what would I have in my oral portrait? What accessories would I wear? What would be in the background? For instance, Mildred requested that. Or we painted her with these two statues that she has reflecting her family's West African ancestry before enslavement. And she literally refers to them as her ancestors. That's, you know, how she refers to them in her home. And having that connection to her family's history, even before slavery enters the picture, is also really stirring because, of course, while we are interested in her family's legacy as descendants of enslaved people, what her choice to include those statues reminds us is that her family's lineage goes far back beyond slavery. Right. That there are people who come from Africa who have a heritage and a language and a culture even before slavery took that from them.
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Alison Stewart
So you've got your picture of Mr. Lott on the right. You've got Mildred E. Jones. That portrait is, I guess, to the right. To the right, left. And in the portrait, is there a picture of a cowbell?
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Dominique Jean Louis
Yes. Well spotted.
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Alison Stewart
Okay, so tell us about the cowbell.
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Dominique Jean Louis
She's holding a cowbell. And when I should mention that when we went to go have her portrait painted, I was also able to sit down and do a nice long oral history interview with her. And that will be part of our collection. So people will get a chance to list. But it's been handed down in her family as long as they can remember. And by their best estimate, this would have been the property of Samuel Anderson, if not the generations before Samuel. And it's worth noting that Mildred's his great great granddaughter. That's not that far back ago. So we're talking handed down by the family. You know, this is her, you know, grandmother's or grandfather's father. This is not that far along. Go. So these artifacts that the family has and has passed down and Mildred intends to keep passing down to her and to their children, we can pretty safely say that that is an artifact representing Samuel Anderson and their past of their family's enslavement in Brooklyn.
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Listener/Host
Now, Mildred had a brother named Gus, Gus Harris, who did a lot of work researching his family histories. Why were his efforts so important in preserving Mildred and the family's legacy?
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Dominique Jean Louis
So Gus was really interested in just seeing where their family had been. I think, like many people, it wasn't a lifelong interest. He kind of got older and wanted to research the family's history. And we're so glad that we got to honor him. His photograph is also on display in the exhibition, because while Mildred is really interested and curious about her family's history, it was really her brother Gus that led the charge for, you know, they always knew that they were always from Brooklyn. We have this great quote blown up on the back wall of the exhibition about how this is who we are. This is where we've always been. But he's the one that went through and did the work. Found the article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1898, looked at the census records, really went through what can be a very challenging and frustrating process of researching African American history. There are ways that. That can give you a dead end. There are ways that. That can be really challenging and painful to encounter. So we're so grateful that he took on that responsibility, that he was equal to that challenge, because not only is that the story of what his family has been important for Mildred and for her children and for her children's children, but also for anyone who's interested in history, A family history is always going to offer a more nuanced picture, a picture that centers humanity more than the archival record does. That's just a, you know, a tally in a census. This is you approach your family's history, trying to figure out identity, who were the people that I came from. And that approach really helps everybody have more meaningful histories. When we're curious about the past, we're.
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Listener/Host
Talking about the exhibition Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn. It's on view now at the center for Brooklyn History, which is part of the Brooklyn Public Library. It's up until August 30th. My guest is Dominique Jean Louis. We've just got a few minutes left. There are other people whose stories are told. Can you give me an example of.
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Dominique Jean Louis
One whose stories are usually told? Yeah. So certainly we have many different Brooklynites whose names are kind of raised up usually, like I mentioned, some of their names are even familiar to us as our parks and our streets and our subway stations. So thinking about the Lefferts family, and there's a whole historic house that's dedicated to storytelling around the Lefferts family. And one of the things the exhibition really tries to do is establish how these families and these better known, you know, these people whose names we are maybe more familiar with, like John A. Lott, whose portrait hangs in Borough hall, like the Lefferts family, that they're connected. They're intermarrying, they're passing down property, including enslaved people amongst one another. And so those people who are maybe better known as politicians or as, you know, people of influence, understanding where their wealth comes from and how it's concentrated amongst a, you know, a farmer class is really important to make note of that. It's a whole system that's raising up just a handful of families and really keeping down those who don't have access to the same kind of wealth and land.
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Alison Stewart
Muriel Roberts. Yes, tell me about Muriel Roberts House.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Absolutely. So Muriel Roberts, we feature a number of different contemporary New Yorkers who have traced their history back. And Muriel Roberts has this excellent story where she's always known that she has mixed black and indigenous history. But her family has this amazing document from 1825 that is basically the freedom papers of her ancestor, her great, great, great grandmother Rachel, who was an indig woman, who has this document signed by the mayor of New York City at the time, declaring that she's a free woman. And as she got older, you know, it wasn't just family stories that she was thinking about. She was able to do some of the research and realize, oh, slavery happened amongst indigenous people too. That's part of why this document's in my family. And so we were really delighted that she shared it with us. And we were able to kind of make recommendations about how they should care for it so that it can stay passed down in their family. But. But it's such an important illustration of why doing family history is useful.
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Alison Stewart
There's so much to see at the exhibition, Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn. You can see it at the Brooklyn public library through August 30th. I've been speaking with Dominique Jean Louis, chief historian at the Brooklyn Public Library. Thank you for sharing this with us. We really appreciate it.
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Dominique Jean Louis
Yes, thanks for having me.
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Alison Stewart
Coming up on tomorrow's show, we're celebrating debut novel Novelists will speak with five authors about their first works of fiction, including Ada Calhoun, Maggie sue and Kavek Akbar. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow. If I don't see you tonight at Get Lit.
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