“The story of the Negro in America is the story of America— or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans.”
-James Baldwin, 1955
By Robert Louis Brandon Edwards
Is it really a new narrative or are some folks just now realizing that a part of history has been excluded from lectures, textbooks, conversations at the dinner table, and at museums and historical sites all across America? I ask you— what do you about the history of slavery? What do you know about the history of segregation? Think about how and why you know what you know. I know it is incredibly annoying to some, to read an essay with questions but this is a time for reflection and to provoke thought— to maybe ruffle a few feathers even. So if you suffer from a bad case of fragility please turn the page, and the next, and maybe even the page after that because this may take a while.
As an architectural historian I am trained to see a structure and a space and think about when it was designed, its architectural features, who designed it, and for whom; as an architect, I am trained to imagine and reimagine structures and spaces and to develop innovative design concepts; but as a black man, I am trained to question if some of these structures, spaces, and even landscapes are designed for me and how. How does a black body experience the built environment or maneuver through different landscapes? There is a certain level of “spatial consciousness” that I encompass and for me, the relationship between race and space is not theoretical. It is ingrained in the history of this country and cannot be fully understood from an article, podcast, documentary, or historical plaque or marker. It cannot be fully understood from a series of webinars or from the news of yet another police shooting of an unarmed black person. This is something that can only be fully understood with years of exposure, something that is felt and seen on a regular basis. It is something that I experienced first hand growing up in New York City during the 1990s. Not only would I get stopped and frisked in certain neighborhoods by Giuliani’s police department, but I encountered the invisible lines of segregation, inequality, and racism that were strategically placed throughout the city. I lived in Harlem, which at the time was a predominantly black community in Manhattan, but I attended schools in predominantly white communities, so I learned to maneuver through these different environments with a certain cultural dexterity.
Today, as a black man in a professional field that is also predominantly white and has traditionally seen the relationship between race and space and the importance of material culture from a white male’s spatial imaginary, I think it is time that architectural historians and historic preservationists take on a more culturally dexterous approach to the race and space narrative and how we preserve the structures and spaces associated with it. It is time to deploy diversity within our respective fields and into the narratives that we tell. Let us include other spatial imaginaries in order to tell a more inclusive and more authentic story. I mean, aren’t you tired of visiting museums and historical sites and not getting the full unedited version of events? I know I am. Because buildings and stories serve as chapters in history, how they are preserved and talked about is essential to fully understanding the history of this country. If we include other spatial imaginaries and have a diverse collection of representation and ideas, we can start to see things through a much clearer lens. While they are just as important, I should acknowledge that I do not discuss other intersectionalities such as class, sex, gender, sexuality or even other races because I cannot speak to those identities and this is is why diversity and representation is so important.
The Untold Story of the Black Marines Charged With Mutiny at Sea
In today’s social climate, people are becoming more culturally aware and familiar with the one spatial imaginary that has dominated this country (and the world) at every level. People are now hip to terms such as police brutality and systemic racism— methods of oppression which have plagued black communities and black people since this country was founded. Fully understanding the relationship between race and space is essential to understanding America. One does not have to look long and hard to see how some stories overlap and sometimes repeat themselves. I mean I can off the top of my head name dozens of unarmed black men who have been killed by white law enforcement officers who swore to protect those very lives that they took. One does not have to have a PhD to see the similarities between slavery and mass incarceration. In fact, I wrote an essay on it called New Slaves: From the Fields of the Angola Plantation to the Fields of the Angola Prison— check it out! We can go on and on about how messed up things are but that’s not what this is about. Remember this is about reflection and provocation of thought. So if systemic racism is so prevalent in this country, why are we just now having these types of conversations? Why aren’t museums, classrooms, and preserved buildings and spaces a reflection of this? Why is there such a disproportionate number of preserved buildings associated with black history in this country? Why is there a disproportionate number of black people in architectural history and historic preservation?
Let me try to wrangle this back in with a story. Okay picture this—
It was September 4th, 1838 around two o’clock in the morning when a black man by the name of Frederick Bailey had finally arrived in New York City. The young 20- year-old was excited but exhausted because he had just travelled over 200 miles North by every mode of transportation imaginable including horse, train, boat and on foot. When he arrived in the city, dressed in nautical attire, in the disguise of a free-sailor, Bailey was on a mission. That mission, to escape slavery. In spite of his new freedom, Bailey had no one and nothing in this unfamiliar landscape. He had no real plan about what to do next. First he encountered Jake, another black man who had escaped slavery and who had warned him that although they were now in a free state, slave catchers roamed the city’s streets. Not too long after that, a “warm-hearted and generous fellow” by the name of Stuart took him to the home of David Ruggles at 36 Lispenard Street, not far from the docks along the Hudson River. Ruggles was an abolitionist and the secretary of the New York Committee of Vigilance, founded three years earlier to challenge the institution of slavery and to protect the rights of both free and enslaved African-Americans with legal representation. The Committee also protected free black New Yorkers from being kidnapped and auctioned off into slavery in the South. Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York would draw attention to this problem in his widely read memoir Twelve Years a Slave.
By 1838, Ruggles was the leader of a secret network with connections to antislavery activists in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New England, and Upstate New York. He regularly searched the wharves, on the lookout for fugitive slaves to help. Ruggles took Bailey into his home and advised him to change his name to help avoid recapture. Frederick Bailey became Frederick Johnson, and for the next couple of days the two men would discuss the abolitionist movement in Ruggles’ parlor. Bailey, now Johnson, would in fact marry Anna Murray in this very same parlor. Ruggles gave the couple five dollars and told them to head to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Nathan Johnson, another black abolitionist, would receive them. Once they arrived in New Bedford, Frederick Johnson would change his name one last time. He would become Frederick Douglass.
Before he became a famous photographer, Gordon Parks was a musician. He played the trombone as the only black member of Larry Funk and His Band of a Thousand Melodies. In March of 1933, the band went to New York City. According to Parks, when they arrived at the Park Central Hotel on West 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue, “things quickly went wrong— when I started through the front door, the doorman called me aside and told me I would have to use the servants’ entrance— we stood glaring at each other for a moment and since I wasn’t sure how Larry would take this kind of trouble, I backed down. And even if I had won, the victory would have been slight, for the orchestra, I learned an hour later, was disbanding immediately.”
Just like Douglass almost one hundred years earlier, Parks was now stranded in an unfamiliar landscape. He knew this hotel, like many in the city would not accommodate him so he headed Uptown to Harlem. Harlem at the time was known as the “largest Negro city in the United States.” One of the few places that would accommodate him was the Harlem YMCA on West 135th Street. The Harlem YMCA was known as “the living room of the Harlem Renaissance” because this is where all of the established black artists, musicians, writers, and intellectuals stayed between 1918 and 1939. Parks stayed at the Harlem YMCA that night and when he returned to the city ten years later in 1943 as a photographer, he stayed at the Harlem YMCA again. He would recount, “I went to the YMCA in Harlem simply because it was the cheapest and safest place for me to stay. You know, it was absolutely crazy man but uh there were memorable days and uh, I never will forget the YMCA because it saved my life for several years.” Throughout the years, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and Sidney Poitier were just some of the black men who stayed at the Harlem YMCA. Many of these men knew about the Harlem YMCA through word of mouth. Others knew about it because it was listed in the 1941 edition of the The Negro Motorist Green Book.
Just like Douglass almost one hundred years earlier, Parks was now stranded in an unfamiliar landscape. He knew this hotel, like many in the city would not accommodate him so he headed Uptown to Harlem. Harlem at the time was known as the “largest Negro city in the United States.” One of the few places that would accommodate him was the Harlem YMCA on West 135th Street. The Harlem YMCA was known as “the living room of the Harlem Renaissance” because this is where all of the established black artists, musicians, writers, and intellectuals stayed between 1918 and 1939. Parks stayed at the Harlem YMCA that night and when he returned to the city ten years later in 1943 as a photographer, he stayed at the Harlem YMCA again. He would recount, “I went to the YMCA in Harlem simply because it was the cheapest and safest place for me to stay. You know, it was absolutely crazy man but uh there were memorable days and uh, I never will forget the YMCA because it saved my life for several years.” Throughout the years, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and Sidney Poitier were just some of the black men who stayed at the Harlem YMCA. Many of these men knew about the Harlem YMCA through word of mouth. Others knew about it because it was listed in the 1941 edition of the The Negro Motorist Green Book.
So let’s go back to that theme of race and space and think about the similarities between the safe spaces for black people during slavery and during segregation. Prior to their emancipation in 1865, enslaved and free African- Americans traveled invisible networks along the Underground Railroad to navigate the racialized topography of America. Much like the Underground Railroad, The Negro Motorist Green Book was used as navigational tool that African-Americans used to carefully move through landscapes of oppression, segregation, institutionalized racism, and violence. How will we remember the spaces of today? How will they be preserved? What will the narrative be one hundred years from now or even just a decade from now?
The way we interpret history needs to change. The historical plaques and markers are simply not enough and monuments are clearly not the answer. These types of acknowledgements are not engaging enough unless they are recontextualized with graffiti and art spray-painted by the public and community to challenge the motives behind these objects. They are not reaching an audience beyond the historians and history buffs. As historians we should not create installations for us, we should create installations for the public. Installations should be approachable, exciting, provocative, contemplative and also strike a chord. Not all history will make us smile. It is not supposed to. History is there for us to learn from. I call them installations because they should change and evolve over time like art exhibits. Nothing should be stagnant. We are always evolving as people as well as the questions that we ask. Some museums and historical sites have had to reexamine the narratives and panels that they presented because the way things were talked about and written about in the previous decades will make you cringe. Historians, public officials, and preservationists must collaborate with artists, community members, activists, writers, musicians, children, and other creative minds in order to come up with new ways to interpret and reinterpret past, present, and future historical sites for the communities that they serve. We must improve the current practice of historic preservation in order to make the collective memory in this country more inclusive and engaging.
During the few short years that he lived at 36 Lispenard street, David Ruggles would help over six- hundred enslaved people make it to freedom. Today, that building with all of that history in it, is a coffee shop. There is a historical marker on the facade of the building that mentions Ruggles, however the building is not historically protected because of its significance to Ruggles or to the work that he did helping so many black people reach freedom- the building is protected because it is i included in the Tribeca East Historic District.
While the plaque at 36 Lispenard acknowledges Ruggles, it is not enough. The heroism, unwavering conviction, and sacrifices of the men and women whose courageous work at this site will not be known to everyone who walks by this plaque. Most people don’t even see this plaque. Plaques are ineffective. They don’t capture the true essence of the people and history that took place at the site. It was violent and dangerous and people like Ruggles risked their lives and their freedom constantly. A plaque is simply not enough. This essay is not enough. The building at 36 Lispenard deserves so much more. It deserves an installation where different people can interpret and reinterpret the space to commemorate the history that was made there. Artists, musicians, writers, community members, children, activists should collaborate with historians, public officials, and preservation groups to discuss new ways of interpreting this site. We owe it to David Ruggles. We owe it to future generations. When I spoke to the staff at the La Colombe Coffee Shop, none of them knew anything about the building’s history or even David Ruggles. They don’t even have a coffee named after him.
There is a building just a block West at 2White Street that is also significant to the abolitionist movement. There is no plaque that mentions the free black abolitionist who lived there— so I will— Theordore Wright. The building is currently a Tod Snyder. Meanwhile while this sort of erasure or lack of acknowledgement is taking place, any house, piece of furniture, space, or whiff of air even remotely tied to white men in history receives the utmost protection. Not only are they protected but they are duplicated, and then duplicated again. Shout out to you Lydia Brandt! People will drive miles and miles out of their way (during a pandemic) to see a reconstruction of a house that Jefferson may have stopped at to use the bathroom on his way back to Monticello from Poplar Forest.
Let me acknowledge that the lack of diversity in organizations, agencies, firms, and on committee boards is just the an extension of the systemic racism that does not only occur in the streets. It is happening in our classrooms and in our offices. Look around the room, how much diversity do you see? As historians, we should be talking about racism and lack of diversity in the past tense and referring to it as history, not as a current practice and in the present tense. As of 2019, there were more than 95,000 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places and of these only 2 percent were significant to the African-American experience. Historian Anne C. Bailey notes that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are over 1,800 Confederate monuments and memorials but at the same time, there are less than 50 marked slave auction sites. To add to this point, there are even fewer monuments and memorials dedicated to the 200,000 African-Americans who fought during the Civil War. What happens when the white spatial imaginary dominates the memory and monumentality of statues, historic sites, and landmarks? The white male’s spatial imagination gets projected into the cultural landscapes and is what shapes the present and future collective memories. So we have ideologies and spaces that represent old white men. This is similar to what Nikita Stewart of The New York Times refers to as “educational malpractice.” If we start to conceptualize how preserved sites associated with slavery and segregation might change the current landscape and the tone of this country, we might see things a little differently. This country will then have to face its history of racism, slavery, and segregation which will lead to us having a (much needed) real conversation. Isn’t that how we grow as people? By actually engaging and learning from each other? That won’t happen if we don’t open up the lines of communication. Why do Confederate memorials and monuments receive more protection than spaces associated with black history? In my own experience in historic preservation, I have witnessed similar one-sided interpretations of spaces and cultural landscapes. Why are some people comfortable talking about Thomas Jefferson but not comfortable talking about Sally Hemmings? Why must words like “slavery, violence, and rape” be left out of the narrative? Architectural historian Dell Upon talks about cities, and says “much like
this country as a whole, cities use myths” and edited narratives to explain themselves to themselves (cough- The Lost Cause). If the historical sites, landmarks, monuments, and statues throughout this country reflect the white spatial imaginary, what does it say about the narrative of this country?
The Harlem YMCA provided and still continues to provide accommodations, educational resources, and recreational facilities to black men (and now women) throughout the city. I even took karate lessons there as a kid. The plaque that acknowledges the Harlem YMCA is also not enough. It does not capture the people and the stories that occurred within the walls of this space. It does not capture how essential the Harlem YMCA was within the community and within the larger network of safe spaces for African-Americans. A plaque cannot capture the imagery that accompanied the racism, segregation, humiliation, and violence that made a place like the Harlem YMCA a necessity.
I do this type of research not to preach to you. I do it because there are so many beautiful stories that came out of ugly situations that have been ignored and forgotten about for so long. My research does a number of things— it calls out the universities, agencies, organizations, firms, museums and anyone responsible for the current state of historic preservation; it brings awareness to the fact that these groups need to be more welcoming to people who don’t look like them or think like them; it brings awareness to the disproportionate number of preserved buildings and spaces associated with black history in this country and to the disproportionate number of black people in architectural history and in historic preservation; and it also acknowledges the fact that the network of sites along the Underground Railroad and the network of sites listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book were very similar and necessary to the black experience in America.
Brent Leggs, who is also a black historic preservationist (our club is very small) said, “A lot of our work is to balance America’s collective memory, but that work can’t be accomplished without rebalancing something else. To diversify historic preservation, you need to address not just what is preserved but who is preserving it— because, as it turns out, what counts as history has a lot to do with who is doing the counting.” African-Americans constitute less than six percent of the more than twenty thousand employees of the National Park Service, and they are underrepresented in most other careers related to historic preservation, accounting for not quite four percent of academic archeologists, five percent of licensed architects and engineers, and less than one percent of professional preservationists.
“We must never for a single moment fail to recognize the injustice which has made it an unfortunate necessity.” -W.E.B. Du Bois, 1914
If we continue to view things through the same spatial imagination, nothing will change in this country in fact, history will continue to repeat itself. Preserving material culture does not stop at the site or designation report; it travels all the way to scholarship and into classrooms, conversations, and collective memories. More black people and other intersectionalities need to be visible in these programs, classrooms, and careers. If we utilize innovative methodologies and creative thinking in historic preservation, we can reach larger audiences and create spaces for real discourse. These sites deserve it, and we deserve it. Context matters and history matters. It motivates change. I began this essay with a quote from Baldwin, “The story of the Negro in America is the story of America— or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans” and ended the essay with a quote from Du Bois, “We must never for a single moment fail to recognize the injustice which has made it an unfortunate necessity.” These two quotes play off of each other. They say this country is the way it is because of the people in it. So if this is true, if this country is the way it is because of the people in it, that means that we have the ability to make it a better place, right? It means that we can use these experiences and these chapters in history as lessons when thinking and engaging with the past so that we can have a better future. It means we must never forget the cultural landscapes that made these networks, sites, and people “an unfortunate necessity.” It is imperative that these stories and buildings are protected and shared and that ALL types of people are allowed to participate in that protecting and sharing. Many of the racialized spaces, cultural landscapes, and invisible networks have not been documented nor preserved so it is up to us to make sure that they are not forgotten so that we can fully understand and learn from the relationship between race and space.
