quotation-icon.jpgBedford Stuyvesant was a 100% white neighborhood from until the late 1930s when some blacks started moving in from the south and WI. By the 1950 it was 50/50 and in the 1960 and early 70s you still had some old white families in the area. Spike Lee shows us that in Crooklyn set int he mid 1970s. In 80s and 90s it was hard to find a white person. Today on the Nostrand Ave A train platform it was about 40/60 the area is going back to the feel of the 1950s when it comes to diversity and I really think it needed. This will help us learn from one another and appreciate each other.

— by Amzi Hill in New Bed-Stuy More Like Old Bed-Stuy?


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  1. why not call Albany part of weeksville while we are at it… Hell I live in Stuyvesant Heights and not Bedford Stuyvesant according to the Brooklyn Eagle July 1892… I don’t know what else to tell you… unless there was the community that was not counted on the census from 1780-1920.. Even my family was counted in the Virginia census of 1810 and those people are black and mulatto’s. I guess you are telling me that census takers did not count black people in Brooklyn but they counted them in the village and central Manhattan…
    I look through these kind of records all the time. I have trace my family back to Ghana, England and France going back to 970AD… Maybe all those records are false according to you… Maybe George Washington lived in Las Vegas hey why not… I have been doing this for three decades. My homework in researching the brooklyn genealogy did not start today. I have looked up many of addresses of the area I live in, Bed-Stuy… Maybe I could tell you the people that lived on your block 100 years ago. Maybe the 1925 census online can help you out… http://www.stevemorse.org/brooklyn/brooklyn.html I am over this discussion.

  2. ” I have looked at every page of this district in the 1900 and 1910 census from Fulton to Lex. bounded by Reid and bedford.”

    Is this the basis of your claim that “Bedford Stuyvesant was a 100% white neighborhood from until the late 1930s?” Sounds like you’re projecting to me. Also, I live close enough to the Weeksville site to walk there. I know where it is. Finally, as I mentioned, the boundaries of Bedford -Suyvesant (and Weeksville,as Just Wondering notes) have changed over time. I still haven’t seen an example of your source data. But hey, let’s just say we have a difference of opinion.

  3. The Weeksville community was much larger than the current boudaries of Crown Heights. It extended well into Bed-Stuy and of course pre-dates the Brownstones. Farmhouses were probably torn down and the residents displaced so that Brownstones could be built.

    I met a Black family whose home was on the house tour a couple of years ago who traced their ancestry in Bed-Stuy back to the 1800’s. No where in Brooklyn was 100% white until the 1920’s or 30’s.

  4. East New York ancestry.com are the records the original census records…. you can see the handwriting of the enumerator and he goes down each block and counts the people that live on each block. It list name, marital stats, birthplace, age, occupation, education, RACE etc…. I will help you out, look at the 25th district of Brooklyn and find some people of color please and let me know. I have looked at every page of this district in the 1900 and 1910 census from Fulton to Lex. bounded by Reid and bedford. Back in those days everyone was counted in the US and sometimes twice. If ancestry is not your thing go to the library or go to the national archives in DC for all I care and look them up yourself. I have been to all these places. Oh as for weeksville. Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue (to the west), Park Place (to the north), Ralph Avenue (to the east) and Clarkson Avenue (to the south). It is about two miles (3 km) long and two miles (3 km) deep. The neighborhoods that border Crown Heights are: Prospect Heights (to the west); Prospect Lefferts Gardens (to the southwest); Wingate and Rugby (to the south); Brownsville (to the east); and Bedford-Stuyvesant (to the north). I think weeksville in somewhere in there..

  5. Please, folks, remember the cardinal brownstoner rule of diversity:

    100% white = homogeneous
    100% black = diverse

    Hence, a neighborhood that is 50% white and 50% black is less diverse than a neighborhood that is 100% black. Memorize and learn so that you don’t make this mistake again.

    Thank you.

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