A Walking Tour of Flatbush History
Premise:
Sankofa, a philosophical principle from the Akan people which means “go back and fetch it”. When contemplated deeply, it’s an Afrofuturist principle which bends time and space to recover and reclaim lost histories, suppressed lessons, and infinite future possibilities.
Guiding Question:
How do we use history as medicine - to interrupt cycles of oppression by looking unflinchingly at the past and to broaden the realm of possibilities beyond what has been done before?
Designed by GrowHouse NYC - inspired by “Historian as Curandera” by Aurora Levins Morales and Black Gotham Experience
Upcoming Walking Tours
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Upcoming Walking Tours 〰️
Sankofa Interactive Historical Walking Tour designed by Shanna Sabio of Growhouse for FABG.
Audio Walking Tour
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Audio Walking Tour 〰️
GrowhouseNYC/Hunter College & FABGC presents
SANKOFA: AN AUDIO WALKING TOUR
Click play on the playlist above and travel with us from the comfort of where ever you are! Reference the supplemental imagery below when prompted by the audio.
Physical on-site tours will resume once the weather changes.
Note: Track “Part 1 - Present” talks about our work within the past year to stop NYC’s Request for Proposals (RFP) for developers to build public housing on the burial ground site. Since this was recorded, FABGC banned together and successfully stopped the RFP! This means that the city will no longer have housing as an option to be built on Eve’s Garden.
This story remains important for understanding the recent context of our collective fight to protect ancestral land.
We’ve met our first goal, but we have other goals that need to be met. The fight to have a proper memorial for “Eve’s Garden” with community engagement and the city is still the number one priority.
Detail from an 1855 map showing the Flatbush African Burial Ground, at what is now the junction of Bedford and Church avenues in Flatbush. (Present-day Flatbush street grid overlay denoted in red)
Image courtesy of The New School graduate students Maude LaVante, Benjamin Rybisky, and Chase Louden.
The Zabriskie Homestead and the Historical Old Linden Tree.
Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library
CREDITS
Sankofa: An Audio Walking Tour in Flatbush, Brooklyn is co-created by Shanna Sabio of Growhouse NYC, Prisca Edwards & Kiara Holley of Hunter College, and Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition (FABGC).
The audio tour features voices of Flatbush African Burial Coalition leaders and community members: Shantell Jones, Corazon L. Valiente, Samantha Bernardine, Reverend Norma E Williams, Juvanie Piquant, Tricia Olayinka Ben-Davies
Music: Sacral Chakra Healing Wind Chimes Meditation by Calm Whale, Relaxing Drum Music by Relaxing & Meditation Music, Drums by Betty Blue Jazz & Rhythm in Blue