Project Description

The Crown Heights History Project (1994) combined exhibits and educational programs in an attempt to foster better relations and intercultural understanding among the African American, Caribbean American, and Lubavitch communities in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. The project was developed in response to long-simmering interracial and inter-ethnic tensions brought to a head by a violent interracial incident in 1991. The Crown Heights History Project was developed to facilitate dialogue and understanding between the communities.

The project was a collaboration among three organizations. Through an exhibit of photographs, oral histories, and artifacts, The Brooklyn Historical Society traced the history of the three main groups in the community and illustrated how the media can overreact and distort the representation of a community. The Brooklyn Children's Museum exhibit presented a positive view of the multicultural community from a child's point of view. The Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History exhibit examined how and why people came to Crown Heights, tracing the population from the time of migration from Africa to the present.

Civic Engagement/Dialogue Activities
The project's Community Advisory Committee, comprising representatives of different groups, met with project directors every few months. Project directors identified community residents with the help of neighborhood leaders who had also provided oral histories and objects for display in the exhibitions. This process laid the groundwork for the type of communication the project aimed to encourage. Community residents were solicited for their ideas about the community's history and invited to suggest the kinds of community structures that might be developed to bring about greater long-term harmony and stability. Panels and discussions with public audiences accompanied the exhibits.

Project Summary

Information Sources

Ford Foundation grant summary; Cassedy O'Donnell, Susannah. "Making Peace in Crown Heights," Museum News, July/August 1994.