Emancipation Day: Volunteers clean up Sandy Ground ahead of July 5 community event [Video]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of an ongoing journalistic initiative to rally the community and the country around a critical, but endangered, historical site: Sandy Ground, the nation’s oldest free Black settlement still inhabited by descendants of its pioneers. Launched during Black History Month in 2023, the work has shined a spotlight on the site’s rich past and urgent needs as its historians seek to pass the torch of preservation to a new generation.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Julie Moody Lewis labored outside a white weathered ranch home on Woodrow Road recently with a small army of volunteers to cleanup and beautify what’s left of the once fertile ground on which her ancestors reaped and harvested fresh fruit and vegetables.

That land, named Sandy Ground for its appearance and texture in the 1820s, is the oldest free Black settlement in the country still inhabited by descendants of its pioneers.

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