Seneca Village

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In Seneca Village, Alexander Manevitz showcases the ideas of freedom that underpinned this remarkable community, built in upper Manhattan with the intent to foster Black social, economic, and political self-determination. Between 1825 and 1853, free African Americans bought land and built an innovative settlement. Then, through the 1850s, New York City forcibly evicted the residents, seized the land, and destroyed the buildings, burying this thriving neighborhood under the landscape of the new Central Park.

In this most in-depth investigation to date of Seneca Village, Manevitz reconstructs the essential history of the community from the overlooked traces they left behind, focusing on the interconnected lives of Seneca Villagers and the daily work of liberation. Decades before the Civil War and Reconstruction, they honed a vision of Black freedom on their own terms, fighting to create space for themselves in a country that promised liberty for all but denied it to many.