In 1838, just eleven years after New York State abolished slavery, a free Black man named James Weeks made his first purchase of land in Brooklyn. In the same year, Green-Wood Cemetery was established as one of the first rural cemeteries in the United States. This tour begins with a survey of the many prominent Black New Yorkers and abolitionists laid to rest at the Cemetery, including Margaret Pine (1778–1857), the last woman to have lived as a slave in New York, Susan Smith McKinney Steward (1847–1918), whose family owned land in Weeksville and who became first black female doctor in the state, and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1959–1988), among many others. Then we head to Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown Heights to learn about its history (one of America’s largest free Black communities prior to the Civil War) through the stories of its residents.

From arsenic complexion cream and electric corsets, to séances and spirit photography, the Victorians missed no opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of wacky and sometimes outrageously dangerous fads. On this tour, discover complex and compelling figures behind these crazes, such as the curious lengths to which Victorian women went to achieve ultra-white skin and the strange and dangerous obsession with green dye in the fashions of the day.