Finding Joy in a History of Loss: Juneteenth in Central Park's Seneca Village

June 2023: Our Juneteenth in Seneca Village celebration is back! Join us on Sunday, June 18 at Seneca Village in Central Park for a free, family-friendly day commemorating and celebrating the connection Black New Yorkers have with wellness and nature. Learn more on this year's event page.

On June 19, 2022, world-renowned artists performed throughout the Seneca Village landscape in Central Park, interpreting the history and significance of Juneteenth and this lost but not forgotten community through dance, poetry, music, storytelling, and art activities. Andrea Buteau, Vice President of Visitor Experience at the Central Park Conservancy, and Andromeda Turre, a professional vocalist, composer, and the founder of Growing Up Jazz, spoke about their process curating this inaugural event and bringing people together to create a experience that is both a powerful act of somber remembrance and celebratory joy.

Located in the middle of Manhattan, Central Park welcomes over 42 million visitors a year. Our visitors and their experience of the Park are at the heart of your work here at the Conservancy—and of course that means acknowledging and accommodating the diverse perspectives they all bring to this shared space. How does that factor into what you do?

Andrea Buteau: My team is responsible for engaging the Park’s diverse audience—from our neighbors to tourists, volunteers to school groups—providing excellent customer service through visitor centers and gift shops and offering a wide variety of public programs and tours. Our goal is to welcome everyone and foster a greater appreciation for the profound significance of Central Park—including honoring pre-Park history—and the role it plays as a truly democratic space. The Park makes the City livable for so many people, and it relies on these very people to not only keep it green and clean, but to help it thrive.

As our country continues to reckon with the historical and modern-day implications of racism, it’s imperative to consider how public spaces are affected by this too. As with many aspects of New York City history, Central Park has a complicated past, which includes the destruction of Seneca Village, the community of predominantly African-Americans who once lived on the land that is now the Park. How does this impact people’s experience of the Park and inform your work?

Andrea: We’ve learned so much from our community and have been in dialogue with local organizations around commemoration for a long time. In addition to the research we have conducted and the focused interpretation through our in-Park signage exhibition, the Conservancy educates the public about the history of Seneca Village through monthly tours that we’ve curated over the past decade, ongoing virtual school field trips, and periodic educator workshops. Our unique interpretive angle on the history of Seneca Village is grounded in a deep understanding of the site and its relationship to the Park in the context of 19th-century urban development.

Seneca Village existed and thrived during a time of slavery in this country. It’s important for us to understand our past and center Black narratives in order to advocate for and actively create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive future for all people. More people than ever are aware of Seneca Village and are eager to learn more, and we’re planning to continue this dialogue as we work toward a more permanent commemoration in the Park.

Let’s talk about the Conservancy’s Juneteenth celebration. While we’re continuing to learn more about Seneca Village, so much of its history has been lost. How are we honoring the past through this month’s commemoration?

Andromeda Turre: It's been a really great opportunity to partner with the Central Park Conservancy for this celebration because the landscape tells so much of the Village residents’ story. It's been a real treat for me to put this together as a New Yorker myself. I grew up playing here, and I didn't even know that it was Seneca Village. One of the many reasons I feel it's so important for organizations like the Conservancy to share this history and be upfront with it is because it normalizes the telling of the true history of our nation.

How does art help us understand a community like Seneca Village?

Andromeda: I think that art is a really important way to share and imagine history. Because for so many places, like Seneca Village, we're really limited in what we actually know about the people. But what we can do is bring the stories of this community to life and give audiences an experience of what it might have felt like [to live here]. Art amplifies this.

At each of the different Seneca Village sites, I let the physical environment guide my artistic expression. What I'm really hoping everybody will be able to see is how those stories were intertwined, and that audiences will be immersed in the culture that is still around today from the Black community.

What can audiences expect?

Andromeda: The first thing visitors experienced as they were welcomed into Seneca Village on Juneteenth [2022] is the sound of African drumming and other traditional instruments, specifically the kora, an African instrument that is often played by griots—the storytellers and the history keepers of African communities.

Something that really stood out to me was the fact that they had a school in Seneca Village. We' brought that school to life with a beautiful performance of banjo and African storytelling. My idea in creating this experience was to imagine how the teachers might have educated their students; literature and children's stories in the 1800s didn't always present young Black children in the most flattering light. I would imagine that in a place like Seneca Village, the teachers would share African stories so the children could find pride in themselves and in their culture.

The sharing of stories is so important to this work. Can you talk about one story in particular that inspired your curatorial vision for this event?

Andromeda: Andrew Williams, who was one of the first landowners here in Seneca Village, shined shoes for a living. When I started reading his story, I thought about how he might have transformed this space, and how he earned the money to make it his own. It was his shoes. The incredible tap artist and actor DeWitt Fleming, Jr., brought Andrew Williams’s story to life through dance, connecting it to this environment. I'm really excited to share his story because the land that he owned here in Seneca Village gave him the right to vote. That was really powerful, and it still is.

We’ve learned some surprising things as we’ve dug deeper into the past. What has been a focus for both of you as bring this history to light?

Andrea: One of the themes we focused on for this event was empowerment. Seneca Village included a surprising number of Black female property owners. One of the performances depicts an elegant tea party of the women landowners, inspired by a teapot that was found at the site of [Village resident and landowner] Nancy Moore’s home.

Andromeda: Those must have been really incredible women. Miche Braden, who is a vocalist and actress, Carla Cook, a vocalist and composer, and Angie Swan, a guitarist, discussed some topics that might have been pertinent at that time and that are still affecting the Black community today. And they shared joyous song and traditional African-American music through blues, jazz, and spirituals as well.

Andrea: Yes, and that brings up another important component of this event: reflection and commemoration. Summit Rock—located on the Seneca Village landscape and the highest point in the Park—would have been a prominent location for Village residents. We interpreted this central location as a place to contemplate the duality of celebrating Black success during a time of unimaginable hardships and tragic loss (when the area was seized by eminent domain to build New York City’s first public park).

Andromeda: From the vantage point of Summit Rock, Village residents would have been able to see far across the river to New Jersey and to the east side of Manhattan, a fitting place for reflection. That's where we take you on a journey through loss, commemoration, and celebration with four incredible artists. Myles Nurse’s “Dancing Ancestors” sculptures helped visitors to imagine these people in this physical space. The musical element, featuring three female instrumentalists [award-winning cellist Akua Dixon, harpist Ashley Jackson, and drummer and percussionist Shirazette Tinnin] offered an opportunity to reflect on the loss—but also to find joy, rounding out the full experience here on Juneteenth.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kaitlyn Zafonte is Associate Director of Editorial at the Central Park Conservancy.