NEWBURGH – Funded by a grant from the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights program, the City of Newburgh has begun an African American Oral History project, which will document the experiences of those living in the East End Historic District.
Neighborhood Stabilization Coordinator Nick Edward said the effort will ensure preservation of the community, its culture and architectural integrity, by hearing firsthand from people who lived through the period.
- “Gaining their testimony and their trauma of anti-black lending practices or other 20th century planning policies such as suburbanization, white flight, redlining and other policies or situations that occurred as a result of the negative treatment and lack of equity, or non-equity, to black people in the City of Newburgh,” he said.
The project will also include an educational outreach campaign along with recommendations to incorporate the oral histories and archival research into the Newburgh Enlarged City School District’s K-12 curricula.
