Weeksville Playground

Howard Ave. bet. Atlantic Ave. and Herkimer St.

Brooklyn

Directions via Google Maps

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

Weeksville Playground is named for the historically significant community of Weeksville. Founded in 1838, eleven years after slavery ended in New York State, Weeksville was a long-lasting and thriving community of self-sufficient free African-American landowners in what is today Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant. The community took its name after James Weeks, who purchased his first plot of land in 1838 and became one of the communities’ largest property owners. Over time Weeksville became both a safe haven and a refuge from violence and oppression and a place for African people throughout the diaspora to seek political, economic, and cultural independence. By 1850, it had become the second largest community for free men and women in pre-Civil War America.

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