The Morris-Jumel Mansion is proud to celebrate Black History Month with a special installment of the Virtual Parlor Chat series honoring the lives of the enslaved people of New York City in collaboration with the Lefferts Historic House Museum, a leading organization in the research and preservation of this history. Join Riah Kinsey and Dylan Yeats from Lefferts Historic House Museum in Prospect Park, Brooklyn to learn about their research into the lives, resistance, and resilience of the Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family and, through them, in New York generally. Slavery was a central element of the economic and social structure of what became Brooklyn from its colonization in the 1640s through the abolition of slavery in New York state in 1827. Kinsey and Yeats will share inspirational stories from their research about how enslaved Africans built Brooklyn, navigated the American Revolution, and fought to end slavery in New York and nationally.
Riah Lee Kinsey, M.A. is a Black queer scholar, archivist, and educator. Trained at the University of Delaware and the City University of New York in historical archaeology, gender studies, archives and digital humanities, he is currently Public Programs Manager at Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY. Kinsey’s interests include Black/queer historical subjects, reparative museum and archival practice, and the material culture of the enslaved. As someone who has often struggled to find traces of himself in traditional histories, Riah is dedicated both to showing the expansiveness of what is possible to recover about the past, and to reminding himself and others that merely being present to continue the search is proof enough of the enduring legacies of all marginalized people.
Dylan Yeats is a committed public historian and trained archivist who has directed, curated, and consulted on numerous community memory projects and history exhibits. A proud descendent of refugees who fled ethnic and political persecution in Europe, Yeats earned a master’s in Public History & Archival Management and a doctorate in U.S. History from NYU. His scholarship focuses on the “culture war” politics of race, gender, religion, and empire from the Indian Wars of the colonial period to the Islamophobia of today as well as the history of NYC and especially its largest borough, Brooklyn. Yeats considers democratic history-making to be a form of social healing and community-building, so he seeks to share hard-to-find sources and methods wherever he can. He is currently Director of Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park.
