Black Gotham Experience and Council 400 Offer an Inclusive and Honest Approach to Local History
Black Gotham Experience (BGX), the Lower Manhattan-based immersive visual storytelling project that commemorates the impact of the African diaspora on New York City since 1624, is entering the final two weeks of its Council 400 exhibition and events, with free gatherings this weekend on Front Street.
Tonight (Friday, November 22, from 7pm to 9pm), the Office Hours series (conversations with academics and thought leaders) continues with Plain Sight, a dialog between Martina Caruso and Zak Risinger (both of the South Street Seaport Museum) and BGX’s Rashid Littlejohn. They will discuss the emerging discipline of critical cataloguing, a protocol by which the Seaport Museum identifies and addresses harmful language, stereotypes, and outdated references in its collections.
Tomorrow (Saturday, November 23, from 1pm to 5pm), a new installment of the Reflections sessions will feature an artist workshop hosted by painter Ingrid Yuzly Mathurin and photographer/curator Kamau Z. Akabueze, and a tasting from the artisanal purveyor Brooklyn Tea.
On November 30, from 3pm to 5pm, a workshop titled Dream Work will focus on the intersection of dreams, manifestation, and yoga philosophy. After this workshop, Black Gotham Experience will host the ceremonial closing of the Council 400 initiative.
These events are free and open to the public (organizers request that anyone planning to attend RSVP online) at the BGX Gallery, 192 Front Street, between John and Fulton Streets.
BGX was founded in 2010 by artist/historian Kamau Ware to celebrate, explore, and document the intersection of Black history with New York’s history. He reflects that, “the conventional origin story of Black New York starts in Harlem in the 1920s, but that leaves out 300 years of history.” Mr. Ware’s determination to examine Black history in this country back to 1624 (the year Dutch settlers established the colony of New Amsterdam) was the genesis of Council 400, triggered in part by the realization that Africans in chains began arriving almost immediately after the colony’s founding. “Some of the first Black people to set foot anywhere in North America landed in what is now New York as slaves,” he says.
His own exploration of legacy racial diversity in New York began in 2008, when he was working at the Tenement Museum, on the Lower East Side. “I had just finished a presentation to a middle-school group, talking about the various ethnicities and immigrant communities that historically lived in tenements, and a young Black child from Brooklyn raised her hand to ask, ‘where are all the Black people?’ I was a little embarrassed to realize she was right. We didn’t have any information about that chapter of New York’s past. I was working in a history space that didn’t talk about Black history.”
Two years later, Mr. Ware, who describes himself as “both a nerd and an entrepreneur,” founded BGX. The firm has since grown to offer interactive walking tours, gallery exhibitions, and original content ranging from films to graphic novels. “BGX weaves together art, research, fashion, and entertainment. We illustrate what’s there, but not always visible.”
“We look everywhere else for insights about the history of slavery, but it’s actually right here,” he observes. “More than any city in the American south, New York is central to a true understanding of the slave trade. New York City, New York State, and the state capital, Albany, are all named after slave traders. This was the center of that web, where all the strands — financial, political, military, logistical — converged. The city that eventually became New York was the heart of the whole system.”
The idea behind Council 400 and BGX itself, Mr. Ware says, “is an invitation to talk and listen, rather than being dogmatic or didactic. People are at a tipping point, where they want a more inclusive and honest approach to history. There’s an empathy, scholarship, and creativity that can satisfy that thirst. And the way to do it is through stories, which are a communal currency of humanity.”
For more information about BGX and Council 400, please go to blackgotham.com.