History gets a voice
Locals share tales of growing up inAfrican-American Weeksville
BY JOYCE SHELBYDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Dorothy Rhodes, 82, looks on as daughter Linda Jones shows a photo of them from Jones' babyhood.
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A $3 million project, completed in 2005, restored Weeksville's historic Hunterfly Road Houses.
-->Though 82-year-old Dorothy Rhodes grew up in the historic African-American community of Weeksville, she didn't think she had anything really important to contribute to an national oral history project.
But at the insistence of her daughter, Rhodes reluctantly agreed to record a conversation that will be preserved in the Library of Congress.
"The die is cast. We're here now," Rhodes sighed as she and her daughter, Linda Jones, settled into a soundproof booth sent to the Weeksville Heritage Center on Bergen St. by StoryCorps.
Since 2003, StoryCorps has documented the stories of nearly 10,000 people across the country. Excerpts from a select few are aired Fridays during National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."
Once Rhodes warmed to discussing her past, she described a Brooklyn that has been all but lost today - wintertime puddings and gelatins chilled in fresh snow and of pulling blocks of ice from Fulton St. to her house on Atlantic Ave.
"My sister and I would take a rope and ease the ice along the street until we got it home," Rhodes said.
"On the ground?" Jones asked.
"Yes, we didn't have tongs," said Rhodes, who now lives in Crown Heights.
Weeksville, a community of free African-Americans, was named after stevedore James Weeks, who purchased land in 1838 from another free African-American, Henry Thompson.
New York State's first female African-American physician, the city's first African-American police officer, as well as ministers, teachers and other professionals all lived in the community, which is now part of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Rhodes' grandfather, the Rev. John Hamlin, was pastor of the Mount Lebanon Baptist Church when it was in Weeksville.
Five years ago, while researching her family's history, Jones learned that her grandmother, Rhodes' mom, had lived in Weeksville's orphanage. The news was a complete surprise to Rhodes.
"No one ever talked about it," said Rhodes, who cried when she found out.
"StoryCorps is a project about everyday people and Weeksville is all about that," StoryCorps founder David Isay said, noting the project focuses on "the kind of heroism, kindness and generosity of everyday people just trying to struggle through life."
The visit was a first in New York City for a StoryCorps mobile unit. There are two permanent units here - one at Grand Central Terminal and another at the World Trade Center site.