Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass Points to Shoddy Research

MARCH 25, 2007, BROOKLYN — There is no dispute that Downtown Brooklyn was once a hotbed of Abolitionist activity. During the Civil War era, most of New York was pro-slavery, so these brave souls would bring firearms with them when going to church because they faced the real risk of being lynched.

The issue has become urgent again because developers, with their friends in City government, want to destroy a few homes to build an underground parking lot and an access road for a hotel.

Residents claim that their homes should not be taken by the City through eminent domain because there is historical proof that their homes were part of the Underground Railroad. In 2004, in order to undermine the residents, the New York Economic Development Corporation (EDC), with their private contractor AKRF, claimed that they consulted prominent historians. Unfortunately they were caught lying: Christopher Moore of the Schomburg Center came before the City Council and testified that he had not been consulted, as claimed by AKRF.

So AKRF went back to the drawing board, and on March 13, 2007, they released a 500+ page document trying to prove that there is insufficient evidence to save these houses from destruction.

Essentially, the document claims to have gone through every scrap of paper. Here’s a sample of the EDC prose:

The index listings for Kings County court hearings, minutes, determinations, etc. at the New York City Municipal Archives for the 1830s and 1840s and through the 1860s were reviewed, but did not turn up any cases relevant to the Duffield Street and Gold Street buildings, residents or owners.... Searches of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle online database found to relevant references to escaped or fugitive slaves. The Library of Congress has indicated that there are no unpublished slave diaries in their collection.

Wow. That sounds really comprehensive. But the poetry of one reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle directly contradicts the supposedly comprehensive study. Walt Whitman, who lived just a few blocks from Duffield Street, vividly described an escaped slave coming to his home.

Of course, you could say that the content of Leaves of Grass (1855) is outside AKRF’s methodology. So let me give my impression of AKRF’s methodology:

• Use of passive voice to give a false sense of authority
• Hiring oral historians who get into yelling matches with their subjects, and then claim that the research found no conclusive evidence
• Hundreds of pages of thorough research on local genealogy and property ownership that somehow misses the greater historical context
• Arbitrary criteria that are not standard for New York City landmarking
• Ignoring contradictory evidence
• Ignoring its own evidence
• Blatantly cutting out important evidence

It may seem that my claims are getting a little shrill, so let me be specific. AKRF claims that there were no tunnels between the buildings, and as proof it reprints maps of the block, including the Perris 1855 Brooklyn "fire" atlas. The map shows a dotted line across several properties, which AKRF claims could be a porch. However, the key to map describes these lines as "Buildings communicating," which is one way to describe tunnels. The key was left out. Why?

The Courier Papers on 3/23/07 reported that the AKRF document concludes that there is no proof, and this is what the company wants you to believe. However, if you bother to read Appendix C of the AKRF document, you will find that many of the historians that they hired come to the opposite conclusion. They urge the City to preserve these properties.

If the Economic Development Corporation can confiscate and destroy properties that their own historians urge them to preserve, where will they stop? How can we as humans sit around while the EDC destroys these homes against the will of their owners and residents?

There are many causes to fight for, but just a few voices can help preserve these homes of Abolitionists. The City Council will address this issue on April 11 at a public hearing of the Landmarks Subcommittee. This will be chaired by Melinda Katz, who has a reputation as being anti-preservationist. Please contact your City Council representative and Christine Quinn and urge them not to destroy these homes.

-Yero

Note: The EDC is the lead agency of the Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment plan, which is not the same as the Atlantic Yards proposal for Prospect Heights. Both use eminent domain, call for the destruction of historic buildings, and use AKRF to study the local impacts. The City wants to confiscate the homes on Duffield Street to give to a developer other than Forest City Ratner, but Ratner is the owner of MetroTech, which is a few feet away for the proposed confiscations.

This article is not copyrighted and can be distributed freely. This author would like to acknowledge the authors of Village Views, Volume X, Number 1, for pointing out the Walt Whitman connection, the Christopher Moore timeline, the 1855 Perris map, and AKRF's arbitrary framing of the historical criteria.

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