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Black Heritage Site Seeks Riots Testimony

This summer, the neighborhood will mark a grim anniversary: the 25th year since anti-Semitic violence and rioting swept Crown Heights in August of 1991. To mark the occasion, the Weeksville Heritage Center, a local African-American Historical and Cultural Institution, is asking those who “participated in or experienced” the 1991 riots to tell their stories.

From DNAinfo by Rachel Holiday Smith:

The Weeksville Heritage Center, built on the site of a 19th-century free black community on Buffalo Avenue and Bergen Street, has collected oral histories of “primarily black voices and lives” in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant since 1970, the group wrote in a post about the project last week.

Now, Weeksville is looking for those who participated in or experienced the 1991 riots to tell their stories. Anyone who has heard family or friends discuss the violence is also invited to contribute as well as those who have lived in Crown Heights for 25 years or more to capture “how the neighborhood has changed,” the group said.

“As Brooklyn experiences economic, demographic, and cultural changes, we think it is important to collectively remember and record Brooklyn’s past and present,” the posting said.

In addition to Crown Heights locals, the project is open to those with relevant stories from neighboring areas including Bedford-Stuyvesant, Prospect Heights, East Flatbush, Brownsville, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Flatbush, the post said.

Those interested in being interviewed by staff at Weeksville should contact Amaka Okechukwu at 718-756-5250 ext. 305 or by email at amaka@weeksvillesociety.org.

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17 Comments

  • really?

    I highly doubt they are looking for our/my perspective on the riots? Will they really record or post about the trauma I went through, as a young mother trapped in my home by flying rocks, my husband unable to come home because the streets were blocked off to “let them vent”
    Wake up

  • Mike Dressler

    Every time I see that photo of Mr. Bitton and his son my heart breaks. Hard to believe that 25 years have passed.

  • Chutzpah.

    This was not a “riot”. It was a pogrom perpetrated by Blacks against the Jewish community. After 25 years, it’s time to call it what it was.

    Perhaps we should have attacked the Black community after a Black man sped past a school bus dropping off a Jewish boy in Crown Heights and put him in a coma back in 1993?

    What about the time a Black man tried to rape and then stabbed a Jewish Mother 24 times in front of her child back in 1991?

    What about the time a Black cab driver ran over and killed a Jewish rabbi in 2015, and then escaped manslaughter charges?

    What about the THOUSANDS of muggings perpetrated by Blacks against Jews in the Crown Heights community, the hundreds of beatings, the “knockout games” and the stabbings?

    Shall I go on?

    What about the car thefts, the broken car windows, the egg pelting of school buses with Jewish children, the rock throwing?

    The only thing Blacks should be doing is formally apologizing to the Jewish community and teaching their children how to respect other human beings.

  • Anonymous

    All these riots that you see there are committed by these blacks around the country for some reason excuse for not doing nothing is because they say let them vent them selfs out let the fire burn out on who’s expense. So why when you hear a wild animal escape from a zoo they Don’t let it run around for a little while and tired itself out why do they go after it and shoot it right away

  • hopeful

    B”H

    Number three said it all. couldn’t agree more.

    Gotta be dumb to come forward and tell stories. can’t get any stupider.

    That’s what the african americans need to do, A P O L O G I Z E!!!!! and teach their youth that jews are peaceful people, don’t kill, don’t mug, don’t steal, don’t hurt others, etc., etc., We are good people.

    • Hello milhouse

      I have been commenting that for years!!! The lubabs are busy with hiskafia while the satmars wouldn’t let this go by a DAY!

    • Milhouse

      What on earth made you think I wrote that comment? I didn’t, and if I had I would have put my name on it.

  • don,t believe it

    I agree….I hardly think the blacks are going to portray the pogram for what it was…..My family was interviewed by a black reporter after the riot… When she presented her story i hardly recognized that it was she interviewed…Everthing was taken out of context and she did NOT describe the riot how we presented it to her.

  • yankiv

    People don’t cooperate with the JCRC and its local unelected “community council” they will do ANYTHING to get on the news and in the good graces of the mayor who by the way worked for the guy who caused all this DAVID DINKINS.

  • #3 100% correct

    The only “story” they need to hear is that the black community and the gov’t needs to Apologize and Remunerate us for all the pain and suffering they caused. (isn’t that what they demand, all the time?)

    Do not let them whitewash this

  • O.T . boy 73-76

    , i remember when he came
    to crown heights in aug of 1991 . it was scary
    times . i actually saw and heard rev daughtry
    and that fat al sharpton , come down president st
    screeming on a bull horn kill the jews and there children .. and he got away with it . and press did not print it – the city and the press and the blacks of crown heights all covered up the truth ..
    we as jews , were and still are big cowards,
    we have ghetto fear still in our heads .
    hashem yerachaim . we need moshiac now

  • Used to be that way

    Go the Satmar way.

    Different demographics here. For a while that worked. But when thieves were beaten up (one case into a coma for grabbing a hat) for non-violent crimes, such as shoplifting, the black community felt that was going too far.”For this you beat the guy up?!”.
    After the shoplifting incident, some murderers took “revenge” by clubbing Yisroel Rosen (not to be confused with Yankel Rosenbaum) over the head into a coma (died a month later). After that, we had to follow the “law of the land” – put them in jail.

    • SOXFAN

      He is the son of Issac Bitton, the man who is laying unconscious on the sidewalk. I don’t recall the boy’s first name.

  • my grandmother

    lived through pogroms in Poland and then experienced them while living in crown heights. (she was visiting in ’91 from Australia and was petrified).
    we were also visiting from Melbourne and I was a small child. we were staying on Eastern Parkway between Kingston and Albany and it was petrifying. we shut the blinds, lay on the floor, had to be quiet. windows were broken, men and boys running and breaking doors. it was so scary.