Location: Clinton Street

​

This site is a municipal park.

​

The important history of Haverstraw’s African American community is now commemorated at the Haverstraw African American Memorial Park at the base of Clinton Street. Two years in the making, the park features a kiosk with displays about local history and the African diaspora. The riverfront location creates a tranquil atmosphere and allows visitors to feel at peace with nature as they enjoy the garden and water fountain.

 

The park is a collaboration between the Village of Haverstraw and the Haverstraw African American Connection, a civic group founded by Virginia Norfleet. When she was building her home across Clinton Street from the site that would later become the park, she found “a brick with a cross etched into it,” she told Journal News reporter Robert Brum in June 2016, when the park was dedicated. “The brick turned out to be the cornerstone of the African Methodist Episcopal Bethel Church, founded by slaves and free blacks in 1846 [and] Rockland’s first house of worship for blacks.” Norfleet’s research started a journey that led her to discover that African Americans were brought by the Dutch as slaves in the 1600s, earlier than she had thought, Brum noted. The U.S. Census from 1790, a decade before slavery was abolished in New York State, cites 238 slaves living in Haverstraw.

 

At the park, visitors can take a visual journey back to the arrival of African people in a new and strange land, stopping at the auction block and following the road to Emancipation. Haverstraw’s African American legacy also includes patriotism: seven black residents fought in the Civil War with the 26th New York Regiment. After slavery, African Americans worked as tailors, blacksmiths, and farmers; moreover, as many as 60 percent of brickyard workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were African American, many having migrated from the South.

 

Other displays highlight the birth of Haverstraw’s African American churches, as well as the culture, music, and arts that were born here. Inlaid bricks in the park are inscribed with the names of local families and brickyard workers, recognizing their critical contributions to the building of Manhattan, as well as the State of New York.

​

Our thanks to Robert Brum of Lohud.com. Part of this description is drawn from his article “Haverstraw to Dedicate African-American Memorial Park,” Journal News, June 11, 2016.