Sumner Playground

What was here before?

The Sumner Houses and Public School 59 were built between 1955 and 1956, and this playground was constructed to serve their needs. Both the playground and Houses got their name from Sumner Avenue which has since been renamed Marcus Garvey Boulevard, after the influential African American activist of the early 1900s.

How did this site become a playground?

This site was deeded to NYC Parks in 1951 for purposes of a playground for Public School 59 and the Sumner Houses. This central Brooklyn playground has many amenities for Bedford-Stuyvesant families and kids of all ages. Most notable, this playground is home to the first "skybox" in New York City parks, an area with barstool-style seating with a view out onto the playground and the natural turf ballfield.

Who is this square named for?

This playground is named after Charles Sumner (1811-1874), the abolitionist senator from Massachusetts. 

Charles Sumner was born in Boston on January 6, 1811. As a young boy, his views were shaped by his father, who believed in equality for all. Sumner went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and became an advocate for prison reform and an improved educational system.

He was elected to the Senate in 1851 and took up the abolitionist cause. His criticism of slave ownership provoked Congressman Preston Brooks (1819-1857) of South Carolina to break into the Senate chamber and beat Sumner with a cane so severely that it took him three years to recover.

Following the Civil War, Sumner fought for voting rights to be guaranteed to African Americans before Southern states could be readmitted to the Union. In 1870, he co-authored the Civil Rights Act of 1875 with John Mercer Langston (1829-1897), one of the first African Americans to hold elected office. Sumner died in office on March 11, 1874, a year before the bill would pass and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885). It was the only civil rights legislation for 82 years until the Civil Rights Act of 1957.