Slavery began in NY State in 1626, and officially ended on July 4, 1827. Yet in 2021, housing segregation and discrimination, school segregation, economic disadvantage and police abuse still overshadows Black American life in NY as well as the rest of the country. During this history/discussion ride, we will see some cute Dutch houses and explain why we should look at them as former slave labor sites. We'll visit Weeksville, one of the largest communities of free Black Americans before the Civil War, and find out why it faded away. The next stop is Ocean Hill/Brownsville, the center of late 1960's community school activism and where a racially charged teachers strike created huge rifts between NYC's Jewish and Black communities. Segregation in communities like this was the result of government policy, such as the "redline" map shown with this listing (full picture at  https://s3.amazonaws.com/holc/tiles/NY/Brooklyn/1938/holc-scan.jpg ) where the government told bankers that not a single existing residential area of Brooklyn could be considered fully safe for mortgage lending due to the "infiltration" of "Negroes, Jews, and immigrants" (see https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=11/40.654/-74.129&city=brooklyn-ny&area=D8&adimage=2/40/-154.06).

BRING LUNCH - we are not going indoors except for bathroom stops. Cue sheet, RWGPS link and speaker's notes will be distributed electronically at start of the ride - please contact leader ahead of time if you need a paper version.