The following is a rebroadcast of a show which first aired on June 9th, 2017.

The story of Sennaka Village and the forgotten Black communities of New York in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Stay tuned to the end of the show for some newly written material and an update on the Black Gotham Experience and the Weeks Fill Heritage Center.

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Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.

The stories of history, of American history, are often summaries.

Immigration is spoken about in terms of the primary cultures of those who came over in the greatest numbers, the Irish and the Germans in the mid 19th century, for instance.

History tends to be written by those with the megaphone, given a voice either by the accident of their birth or by the sheer force of their number.

Mostly in primary sources, those without voices, those outside the main bullet points of the historical record.

These voices are often ignored or even erased.

Today I'll be looking at one of those communities, often shut out of mainstream retellings of the city's history.

The Black residents of New York from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Now this is obviously a monumental story for many reasons, not only impacted by the institution of the American slave trade,

but in later its violent and contentious abandonment of that institution.

But the shameful treatment in New York of both formerly enslaved and free Black people.

So I'm going to narrow the focus here specifically on place, the physical spaces themselves, the settlements, the neighborhoods,

where early Black New Yorkers lived their lives.

Today we sometimes define African American culture by place, most notably Harlem, and also Bedstuy.

Neighborhoods that developed as mass centers for Black residents in the 20th century.

But these weren't the first.

...