Stephen Van Cleef, a fictional Seneca Village resident played by Billy Eugene Jones (left), meets a New York City police officer, played by Andy Truschinski, in The People Before the Park at Premiere Stages at Kean University in Union, NJ Foto: Mike Peters/Premiere StagesIn the middle of Central Park between 82nd and 89th Streets, heading east from its Western border on Central Park West, sat a village in 1825 with a population of about 300 mostly free Blacks. Cynthia Copeland of the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village Historyspoke to NPR about the smear campaign the press ran against the villagers in order to
…help justify destroying people’s homes and cemeteries, using eminent domain to make way for what would become the most visited city park in the country. The village was leveled in 1857, the same year construction began on Central Park.read more
