Twenty years after the riots, we walk the vibrant streets of Crown Heights. Activists and ordinary folks talk about what's changed and the continuing racial divisions.
This opens with a scene directly across the street from where I grew up. The Telephone building wall. We used to play "Chinese" handball against that wall. While talking to Horatio Brown, the building I grew up in is shown. The interview with Adira Gorelik is just down the street, the corner of Troy and Montgomery St. Having grown up there from my birth in 1951 through the late 1960's, I could talk about changes that happened in the neighborhood, but what's the point. people today are mostly unaware of what happened before 1970.
As someone who grew up in crown Hights I would be more than happy give a lecture on different Jewish topics specifically for the non Jewish community! If the chance presented itself I would be more than happy. G-d bless, may peace and harmony ring throughout the world.
I spent a week in Crown Heights, all the people were really friendly. But once they know you are not a Jew, they no longer want to continue talking with you. Or it was just my personal feeling. But it's definitely an interesting community of people and really interresting part of Brooklyn
At one point, Crown Heights was all entirely Jewish. So were other surrounding areas like Bedford Stuyvesant, Brownsville, East New York, Flatbush and Canarsie. However, all those areas slowly became all black neighborhoods. Crown Heights actually almost lost all of it's Jewish population and only scattered numbers were around. Later on, their population started to regrow into a fully developed community, but only in a small portion of Crown Heights and the surrounding neighborhoods are all African American, Caribbean, and some Latinos.
Yeah your almost right from the 20's up to the 50's Crown Heights was 89 percent white of which 50 to 60 percent were jewish. In the 20's west indians as well as blacks from the south started to migrate to crown heights and by 1957, 250,000 blacks made up one fourth of the population in crown heights. When whites of other backgrounds and less religious and secular jews left, the smaller group of jews the Labavich stayed and prospered.
CALLING ALL DEMOCRATS! VOTE FOR RENEE COLLYMORE FOR STATE COMMITTEE TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 13, 2016 (less than 30 days away to vote for Renee) The 57th Assembly District, representing the communities of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights and parts of Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Park Slope.