I plan to write up this story for publication — about racially integrating the Weeksville school in 1893. Meanwhile, I’ve created a short, illustrated, 300-word version of the story, here. (above. downloadable pdf here. )
Learn more about Weeksville — an 1830s-era black settlement in what is now the Crown Heights/Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Central Brooklyn — at the Weeksville Heritage Center. Also see Judith Wellman’s 2015 book.
This image comes from the Brooklyn Historical Society’s Early Brooklyn and Long Island photograph collection. “The photo depicts an interior view of an unknown Brooklyn classroom during the fall of 1897.”