Weeksville Heritage Center Receives Spark Prize

Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

For years, the Weeksville Heritage Center has stood as a reminder of Black American contribution to central Brooklyn. Recently the Center received a $100,000 prize to keep fighting for social justice and racial equity.

“We are a small but mighty team here at the [Weeksville] Heritage Center,” said Sierra Hamilton, a tour educator, about the recent win for the Center. “The work that was done here centuries ago was life changing. All we can do now is keep the history alive and keep supporting our community.”

Hamilton said the prize from the Brooklyn Community Foundation, “is going to help us keep this place as it deserves, and with the good weather around the corner we can’t wait for the community events that aids like this allow us to host.”

The Spark Prize provides over $600,00 each year to organizations working toward a better Brooklyn. Each year the Brooklyn Community Foundation selects five nonprofits to aid through a competitive application process. This year Weeksville Heritage Center was one of the winners. Foundation President Dr. Jocelynne Rainey said, “These nonprofits are among the best that Brooklyn has to offer. We are looking forward to seeing what [the Spark Prize] will help them achieve.” She views the Center as not only a legacy of self-determination but also a historic space that serves as an education space and a low-cost recreational, artistic, and communal hub.

Weeksville Heritage Center works hard to preserve its rich history, empowering the community and showcasing the historical importance of the area. Raymond Codrington, the President and CEO of Weeksville Heritage Center, expressed his thankfulness to the Brooklyn Community Foundation: “The stability and opportunity this prize provides the Center help our efforts of stabilizing the community. Now we can think about what kinds of work can we introduce that supports the systems we have in place, as well as any new projects we feel are needed.”

One of the first activation events the Center hosted after the Spark Prize was the Cash Rules Everything Around Me (CREAM) fair—a partnership with multifaceted performance artist Ayana Evans. The non-traditional professional fair focused on non-discriminatory hiring and offered resumé writing workshops, panel discussions about arts and tech career fields, collective artmaking, and community care.

Artist Ayana Evans seeks to create change for marginalized folks who often get overlooked by prospective employers, particularly Black, queer, and trans incarcerated or court-involved youth and adults. She said, “Working on this project, I started to see that tech and the arts are two spaces where someone who has been court-involved can begin a career and encounter less resistance to their entry into the employment market than if they work in most other areas. Culinary arts, music, and hairdresser/barber are the other exceptions I’ve found.”

Mostly youth gathered at the Center to enjoy Evans’s presence and listen to the advice she had to share. One young woman attended who had been court-involved within the last two years. She asked that her name not be shared but said, “[Finding employment] has been very difficult. Once they see my record, I don’t get called back. It is very hard, and it shouldn’t be. I have personal matters I am taking care of, but I deserve to have social mobility just like anybody else.” She shared how much C.R.E.A.M. motivated and helped her to keep job-searching. “Evans made me realize I have workforce options I didn’t know I had.”

The Center also held a cannabis summit hosted by Koren Benbow-Fung, founder of cannabis brand Chicks & Flowers. The event, A Piece of the Pot, seeks to uplift and mentor Black New Yorkers to understand the ins and outs of the cannabis industry. “It is important we take up space in the surging cannabis industry. As the city keeps pouring money into this, we must make sure we are involved and more importantly, that we bring those resources back into our communities,” Benbow-Fung said.

The Center’s Deputy Director, Dr. Anita Romero Warren, said, “From its inception, Weeksville is a place that has promoted entrepreneurship…Having a summit that educates people on an industry like cannabis is necessary. I am glad to bring this into my community.”

The event’s panelists shared tips and information for people who wanted to get started in the emerging industry. Pratt University professor Jeffry Hoffman said, “People need to be in touch with [their] local elective representative. You want to find out who your House member and your Senate member are and stay in touch with them as much as you can.”

Codrington, CEO and President of the Center, was content with how the panel turned out. He said, “The Center fosters education. It is one of our main priorities here…To stay behind on cannabis education and its legal hurdles would be a disservice to our community. We want our community to have the right resources, so we will continue to bring events to our grounds that help our neighbors better their quality of life.”

Through the Center’s ongoing effort to keep Weeksville alive, Pratt University professors Jeffrey Hogrefe (humanities and media studies) and Scott Ruff (architecture) have started an oral history archive.

Hogrefe said, “Anti-Black violence, taken form by urban renewal and redlining, tried to erase Weeksville from the map at the end of the 19th century, and not much has changed today…As more and more people move to New York City, where newcomers find housing starts expanding outwards, now reaching Weeksville.”

Ruff doubles down on that worry. He said, “Real estate people are trying to claim the term Weeksville when a couple of years ago, before the luxury condos started popping up, one could not Google Weeksville.” He continued, “The efforts to keep the history of this place is up to us. It needs to be clear to predatory development that Weeksville holds cultural and historic importance.”

The Weeksville Heritage Center is thrilled to collaborate with the Pratt Weeksville Archive to document and preserve the history of the community. Codrington said, “I’m glad there are people like Hogrefe and Ruff bringing our vision to an institution like Pratt. The resources a private school can offer our mission is incredible.” He continued. “Bringing students to learn to care and preserve Brooklyn history is priceless…[students] are our future. I’m happy they will take [Weeksville] history with them.”