Brooklyn Resists

The Black Lives Matter protesters who flooded the streets last summer follow in the footsteps of two centuries of Black activists in Brooklyn. From suffragists and abolitionists, to the famed Civil Rights protests staged by leaders of Brooklyn’s chapter of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), there is a long history in Brooklyn of fighting for racial justice through Black-led protest. While there are often conspicuous absences in the historical record when it comes to documenting movements such as these, archives also allow us to draw out the untold stories of the leaders in these uprisings—particularly Black women—and set them in the greater lineage of protest and the liberatory movement toward justice. Discussing the archive through the Black Lives Matter movement also allows us to ask important ethical questions about who contributes to the historical record, the carceral and surveillance state, and locating power in communities to determine their own narratives.

This series of three programs, co-presented by NYU and the Center for Brooklyn History (CBH), focuses on that history and celebrates its trailblazers. Weaving together highlights from CBH’s collection--including documents from our Civil Rights in Brooklyn collection and oral histories from the summer of 2020--with moderated perspectives of experts and activists, this series will create a throughline over two centuries long that grounds Brooklyn’s deep and ongoing struggle for racial justice. Jami Floyd, Senior Editor for Race & Justice Unit at New York Public Radio and the Legal Editor in the WNYC Newsroom, will serve as the series moderator.

Scholars, artists, activists and descendant community members join in a dialogue to connect lives, historic processes, and the future of equity in our world. Featured guests will share their research journeys, offering critical examinations of power, the archival presence and absence of Black lived experience, and how knowledge is produced and transformed within historiographic and storytelling processes. We share this revolutionary journey in three acts. 

This series is co-presented by Brooklyn Public Library's Center for Brooklyn History and the New York University's Brooklyn-based 370JProject, in partnership with NYU's Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation (OGI), the Center for Black Visual Culture and the Institute for Public Knowledge.