Listen to Charlotte-based spoken word artist and poet Hannah Hasan’s piece about Brooklyn.
Building thriving Black neighborhoods businesses churches
Spaces for family
to grow communities
Is a hallmark of Black American growth and Black American identity
When what we have built doesn’t match the acceptable form of beauty
Of what whitewashed excellence and success looks and feels like
Change is considered
Who gets to live and grow and build there is restructured- reconfigured
Undesired by some
Became a home for many
A space to grow roots and build for Black people and their families
A space to turn another persons disregarded
To opportunity for ideas to be born and community to be started
At the center of starting
of building
of growing something that can outlive itself
Is the pursuit education
For the next generation
This is how Brooklyn would build itself
A community like this was built out of necessity
A need for those who might need a safe Haven just to exist
A space to learn and love
A safe place to live
Brooklyn was built one business, one church, one school, one Black person at a time
A big deal in the segregated South
Home to those from all walks of life
Giving love and opportunity to those once cast out, to those once left behind.
Even within the prosperity
The hope for what was and what could be
Existed the reality of a community
Coping to exist through the side effects of the truth of a dark history
The dark spots provided an excuse
To urban renewal Brooklyn out of the picture
Make it more digestible for the affluent
Another Black community destroyed
The divide grows thicker
Building after building comes down
Schools and churches, homes tooBusinesses leveled
Memories removed
Displacement at its core
Redistribution of those who call Brooklyn homeMove them like pieces on an economic development game board
As they seek stability while their memories are gone
Keep the legacy alive the people would say
Document the story of the community with images and plays
Museums and stories
Reunions and gatherings
Unrecognizable to those who once lived there
A ghost town to its former inhabitants
And that’s what displacement does
That’s what urban renewal has done
Brooklyn was home and community to many
The only option for growth and development for some
In its history lives in the narrative
That can never be replaced
In a hope for future justice and city-wide accountability
We speak the stories
So that legacy isn’t erased.
