The post-George Floyd racial reckoning in America was forged in the fires of generational frustration and boomeranged into a weapon of crass destruction, igniting passionate political actions in all quadrants of the country, and especially in the South.
Yet, viewing slavery-related racial reckoning as a mostly Southern problem while glazing over the history of slavery and racial injustice in the North, and specifically in Brooklyn, is a mistake. I say that from an experience that still makes me feel angry and embarrassed.
America has a greasy history of slavery, racism, stolen land and discrimination. The reckoning of those grave injustices – injustices on which the economic power of this country is built – is overdue. However, a large swath of white Americans refuses to reconcile the position of the United States in the world with the economic advantages created by chattel slavery.
Take away those economic advantages that the brutal system of chattel slavery gave to the United States, and America pans out more like Canada! "They Not Like Us" indeed. Getting a conservative white person in America to embrace racial reckoning has built-in admissions of genocidal actions and anti-Christian behavior, and is a refutation of American exceptionalism. Good luck with that.
An intense push-and-pull struggle exists. There's a large contingent striving to broaden racial reckoning, as an opposing group is bending over backward to obscure this country’s unsavory history with book bans, legislation and court decisions while wearing a Caitlin Clark jersey.
America is like the big-time cocaine dealer now gone legit, and hell-bent on dodging its ugly past, even banning mirrors from the house to avoid its reflection.
The good, the bad and the ugly of racial reckoning are dirtier than Lee Van Cleef's face in a spaghetti western, so it took multiple overlapping occurrences in a Venn diagram of f**kery to get here.
American chattel slavery is historically associated with the South. It brings to mind plantations, a hot and oppressively humid climate, southern drawl and cotton farming, which is why Alex Haley didn’t film Roots in Newark, N.J.
The southern states are active battlegrounds for racial reckoning owing to the regional history of its all-slaves-everything energy, losing the American Civil War, Jim Crow and Reconstruction. The South has statues, streets, schools and buildings named after avowed racists that are targeted for removal.
Pulling down the litany of monuments honoring Civil War generals in the South is made for TikTok moments; but, plot twist, the North is going through a historical reckoning of slavery and land appropriation as well.
Many institutions wait until the fear of losing control of the narrative becomes greater than the fear of the fallout from the reckoning. Fear of losing control of the narrative struck many institutions in that 2020 reckoning, but before that, all was quiet on the Western front.
I was hoodwinked in 2017 when I hosted a television segment about the 150th anniversary of Prospect Park for BRIC TV. A production goal was to creatively, if not exhaustively, show the many features and attractions of a historic and storied institution, and do it in under eight minutes.
We started the day shooting at the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza, the farmers market near the northwest entrance to the park, on our way to visit Lakeside Center, Goats + Woodland Restoration, multiple waterfalls, the Carousel, the turtles in the lake, and even the composting toilet.
Litchfield Villa was amazing. It’s where I interviewed Sue Donoghue, then the president of the Prospect Park Alliance and Park Administrator. Litchfield Villa is a beautiful Italianate mansion, designed by renowned architect Alexander Jackson Davis, for Edwin C. and Grace Litchfield. It was completed in 1857 before Prospect Park existed and currently is the headquarters for the NYC Parks Department and the Prospect Park Alliance.
Donoghue, now the Commissioner for the Department of Parks and Recreation, gave me a thorough breakdown of the attractions on our shot list, including Lefferts Historic House, the 18th-century home of the Lefferts family. It was one of the stops I was looking forward to highlighting. But, guess what tidbit was left out of our Lefferts Historic House briefing? Yup, slavery.
Not a slave or two either, but a full contingent of 25 enslaved Black people lived in that house against their will. The slave history wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t the most commonly known point about Lefferts House.
The slave history was worth communicating to our production team, especially as the host of the segment, me, is Black. Somebody could have mentioned all them slaves in that house! Just as an FYI.
It didn’t dawn on me that the house would have a slave history, and I don’t think it dawned on the producers, even though it was built in the 18th century when slavery was the economic engine that ran America or when 74% of families in Flatbush owned slaves, who made up 30% of the total population in Brooklyn.
Lefferts Historic House Museum began life as a working farmhouse on a working farm, and not dissimilar to the South, which is culturally linked to slavery in America, Europeans in the North also depended on the exploitation of enslaved Africans for profit, comfort and lifestyle.
I found out about the slave history of the Lefferts House when I learned of the “Reimagine Lefferts” initiative, via artist Delphine Fawundu’s Ancestral Whispers exhibition at Lefferts House this year. Reimagine Lefferts pivots away from telling the house’s story from the wealthy, white, Dutch perspective and centers on the enslaved Africans and the Lenape native tribe, whose ancestral home was where present-day Flatbush, Brooklyn is located.
Fawundu is the first ReImagine Lefferts Artist in Residence at Prospect Park. And though the exhibition was great, and the research that went into humanizing the 25 known slaves who lived in Lefferts House, spearheaded by Dylan Yeats, project manager for ReImagine Lefferts Initiative, was exhaustive, it didn’t make me feel better.
I said glowing things about the house for the segment in 2017. I lightheartedly penned a faux proclamation that Lefferts House was “Litty” and re-enacted the process of making linen clothes from flaxseed. That was re-enacting slave labor. The whole indignity of pantomiming slave labor, which is something I would never willingly do, is difficult to bear. I don’t even watch slave movies, let alone act like a slave! I feel ashamed, offended and disgusted all at the shame time! Yes, at the SHAME time!
That one of the slaves who lived at Lefferts House was named Dick worsened the feeling! It made me feel like I was getting Punk’d; which was an MTV reality show for you Gen Z folks. I was re-enacting slave work while sharing a name with a slave owned by the Lefferts in that house…and the video lives forever on the BRIC YouTube channel. It’s there as a learning lesson and an example that today, not tomorrow, is the best time to jump-start atonement.
Racial reckoning efforts can be performative because the world is always watching in the social media era. You act differently in your house when the blinds are closed than when the blinds are open. My anger is mixed with embarrassment as I got hoodwinked, bamboozled and led astray. I was catfished into feeling comfortable and now I live online doing slave sh*t.
It’s why I now give a side-eye to many racial reckoning initiatives, which often come about when institutions feel pressured. I reckon I could have used some of that reckoning back in 2017, but I guess the vibes weren’t right yet.
Richard Burroughs is a Brooklyn resident, an art curator, a DJ and a freelance reporter for BK Reader. This piece is a reprint from the blog Please Don't Feed The Machines, originally published on July 8, 2024. You can read the it on the blog by clicking here.
