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Critical PerspectivesEssay AbstractsThe full collection of Critical Perspectives Essays can be purchased through the Americans for the Arts bookstore. The Slave Galleries Project, St. Augustine’s Church and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
Project Overview
In this context, The Slave Galleries Restoration and Preservation Project is underway at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church. Built in 1828 for the city’s patrician elite, today the church houses a largely African American congregation. The congregation worships in the shadow of two slave galleries, haunting, box-like rooms above the balcony where African Americans were forced to sit for much of the 19th century. This rare artifact of racial segregation in New York stands as a stark, physical reminder of how and why boundaries of marginalization are drawn and contested. In partnership with the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the church has sought to preserve the slave galleries as a sacred site of African American people. But both organizations also believed that there were multiple heirs to the Slave Galleries’ difficult legacy. Together, they developed The Slave Galleries Project to use the power of this symbolic setting to shift what was commonly heated debate and competition around issues of marginalization to dialogue that would find common ground and deepen understanding among its various residents. The project brought together 30 community preservationists—leaders representing African American, Asian, Latino, Jewish, and other ethnic and religious groups—with scholars and other preservationists in a collaborative learning process. During a year's time, guided by dialogue professionals experienced in intergroup relations, community preservationists explored the meaning and use of the slave galleries as a space for dialogue for the larger Lower East Side community. They drew parallels to the history of segregation in Chinatown, the segregated “galleries” of a local synagogue where women sat, and to the experiences of countless illegal immigrants. Guided by three priorities—to humanize the experience; to raise difficult, enduring questions; and to tell the story from multiple perspectives—the community preservationists set out to engage people within their own communities in dialogue about the slave galleries as well as about current issues they face. Freedom’s Perch: The Slave Galleries and the Importance of Historical Dialogue
Historian, activist, and scholar, Tchen provides an analytical history of the slave galleries of All Saints Church. He describes the changing neighborhood of what would become known as Loisaida, “before the projects, before the social workers, before the tenements, before the large Jewish, Italian, Greek, and Irish migrations.” He traces the history to today, with the congregation of what is now known as St. Augustine’s Church, largely African American and Puerto Rican. “First African Americans, later other groups, and now Chinese immigrants battle...to survive and find their piece of the American dream. As we reconstruct the slave galleries history, so too must we reconstruct the histories of the various groups who have lived and worked in Lower Manhattan.” Tchen combines historical research with personal experience of the slave galleries: “Once having climbed the steps to the balcony, a steep, narrow, and shallow set of stairs takes you up to the slave galleries. My feet, not especially large, can only safely fit sideways.” Tchen describes in vivid detail the period in New York when slavery was legally abolished. He addresses the paradox of the name “slave gallery” to 1827 construction that took place after slavery was technically over, seeing the passing down of the term over the years as an important fact that “reveals something valuable about the attitudes of the church post-1827 Emancipation.” He states his own belief that “the name was used in both a racist and a reaffirming sense for white parishioners.” Tchen presents an eloquent statement of the burden of unexamined beliefs about the past, as well as of the value of research and dialogue in freeing us from “our fixed notions.” “Our fixed notions of the past numb us from feeling and understanding the continuity of unresolved and contested issues into the present...Systemic amnesia needs to be replaced by a democratic, popular, living understanding of the past.” The Colors of Soul
Johnson-Coleman speaks from her own experience as both a storyteller and an interpreter of history, noting the different, yet sometimes overlapping functions of each role. She addresses the complexity of revealing historical fact: Do the facts call into question “cherished beliefs and ways of seeing oneself?” Do histories contradict each other? How can oral traditions and memory be used as historical accounts? What is lost if those sources are not used? These are only a few of the provocative questions that Johnson-Coleman addresses. She attempts to identify with the people of the past she wants to understand: “As I take my seat in the slave galleries, I am immediately aware that the space is small, cramped, uncomfortable, and has a limited view. It will be up to me to use my voice and some evocative telling to convey exactly how it feels to sit here.” Words of the playwright Wole Soyinka guide Johnson-Coleman as she seeks to tell the story of St. Augustine’s slave galleries. She studies historical context, including that the slave galleries were built in 1827–1829, at a time when slavery was illegal in New York. She notes the recent collaboration between the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and St. Augustine’s Church to showcase the galleries as a part of African American history. She describes the physicality of the slave galleries as they are today. But her main preoccupation is in how to tell the “untold story” of the people who lived it, who are no longer here to tell their own story. Inspired by the slave narratives, and especially the narrative of Sojourner Truth, Johnson-Coleman's essay culminates with a creative narrative of her own. She calls upon a wisdom woman and invokes the voice of the slave gallery itself to bring together in a poem/prayer her understanding of the past’s lessons for the present and future. St. Augustine’s Church Slave Galleries Project
Taylor uses newspapers and other documents to provide details of the 19th-century slave galleries in New York: “Forced into special sections customarily in white-run churches, African New Yorkers stood in the back or sat in the balconies, or in some places, in sparse and sometimes locked rooms called slave galleries.” Emancipation became New York State law in 1799, but the vast majority of slaves in the city were not freed until 1827. The St. Augustine slave galleries were built after 1827, perhaps reflecting New York City’s continuation as the northern capital of the slave trade, a transfer station from Africa and the West Indies. Taylor writes vividly of African New Yorkers who worked the docks, sold food on the streets, cleared snow, held dance contests and prizefights, and created a nightlife of music and dance. He traces the changes in the Lower East Side neighborhood into the 20th century, including quotes from 1916 and 1927 about the slave galleries that reveal the attitudes of the times. Particularly revealing is an excerpt of an actual script of a 1924 neighborhood pageant held at the church, then known as All Saints’ Church, that includes slaves in chains who are invited to join the church services, to be seated in the hidden galleries. Taylor first attended St. Augustine’s Church as a child in the 1960s. His personal commitment to communicating the historical significance of the slave galleries and its neighborhood is evident in his history of African Americans in New York and the development of the Lower East Side. As a member of the St. Augustine’s Slave Galleries Committee, he portrays some of the ins and outs of his own role as well as the collaboration with the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in the Slave Galleries Project. Building Upon a Strange and Startling Truth
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