Willoughby and Duffield Streets
In September of 2007, Duffield Street in downtown Brooklyn got a new name.

132 West 138th Street
Known for its charismatic leadership and community outreach, the Abyssinian Baptist Church was formed in 1808 by a group of African Americans and Ethiopians who refused to accept the segregated seating in the First Baptist Church of New York City.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, on the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Robert O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Columbia University, on the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

290 Broadway
The African Burial Ground is a federally designated historic landmark and archaeological site that was used as a cemetery by free and enslaved people of African descent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, discusses the African Burial Ground.

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Columbia University, discusses the African Burial Ground.

Rodney Leon, African Burial Ground Memorial architect, discusses the site.

Dowoti Desir, Executive Director of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, discusses the African Burial Ground.

135-137 Mulberry Street
Soon after the Revolution, in 1785, a group of wealthy, powerful white men formed the New York Manumission Society. Although many were slave owners, their mission was to aid the enslaved, and to gradually end slavery in the state.

Mercer Street near Houston
On Mercer Street in the fall of 1821, King Lear limped out onto stage and the audience went wild. Lear was black.

African Methodist Church moves uptown to Harlem
Commentary by Cynthia Copland

42 Baxter Street
As soon as it was legal for black New Yorkers to organize, they did so. In 1808, the African Society for Mutual Relief was founded. (The Society may have met in secret earlier, but there are no records to prove it.)

3940 Broadway
Best known as the place where Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, the Audubon Ballroom has long been a center of African American social and political activity.

Dowoti Desir, Executive Director of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, discusses the Audubon Ballroom.

Bedford-Stuyvesant, also known as Bed-Stuy, is home to the largest concentration of blacks in New York City and one of the largest in the country.

Bethel AME Church, Amityville
The Bethel AME Church of Amityville was the first black church on Long Island. Daniel Squires and Delaney H. Miller organized the church in 1815, after founding the Sunday school one year earlier.In 1839, Elias and Fanny Hunter offered land on Albany Avenue to the congregation but it would take four more years for the church to call this home.

Bethel AME Church, Amityville
The Bethel AME Church of Amityville was the first black church on Long Island. Daniel Squires and Delaney H. Miller organized the church in 1815, after founding the Sunday school one year earlier.In 1839, Elias and Fanny Hunter offered land on Albany Avenue to the congregation but it would take four more years for the church to call this home.

10 Church Street
Blacks who fought with the British lived in “Negro barracks”. These men fought in units known as the Black Pioneers and the Black Brigade. Most did the hard support work the army needed, but some were armed and fought.

Booker T. Washington House
Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in 1856, and labored on the Burroughs tobacco farm in Virginia. Nine years later, he and his family were freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation and moved to West Virginia, where he worked in the salt mines while attending school.