Historic communities come back to life in “Living on Common Ground: A New Look at Northport’s Black History”

To kick off Black History Month this past Sunday, the Northport Historical Society hosted a lecture offering perspective and insight into the under-told stories of Northport and East Northport’s historic Black community, from the 1660s to the 1960s. 

The goal of the lecture, said speaker and historian Ceylan Swenson, was to recognize the generations of people whose stories she shared, “to keep their memories alive, and to reaffirm the critically important contributions of Northport's African American community to the Village community (and beyond) as a whole.” 

Response to the Sunday, February 2 event, entitled “Living on Common Ground: A New Look at Northport’s Black History,” was overwhelming. Approximately 50 people filled the museum’s main space with an overflow of registrants invited to watch live, via Zoom. 

“Today I would like to honor the people who looked out on the same waters and walked on the same rolling hills as we do today, but who were not always given the opportunity to let their roots here become as strong as they were long,” Swenson said to open her lecture.

The lecture covered the history and breadth of Northport's Black community, collectively and as individuals within the community, spanning from the times of enslavement to liberation, and telling the stories of both slave owners and slaves. Swenson touched on how enslavement and the economic development of Northport Village and its surrounding areas were intertwined, meticulously detailing – to the best of her research – examples of when and how members of the Black community felt “empowered to take up space here.”

There will be many examples of injustice, discrimination and hate, Swenson said. “But despite so many odds there was so much love. Despite the wrongs that were perpetrated, the continued disenfranchisement caused by white power structures that have permeated our community, the Black people who lived in Northport and East Northport found love here, made friends of different races here, and proudly made their mark on the whole community in many ways.”

Swenson navigated the times and personalities of the period from Northport’s establishment in the 1650s to the community’s first enslavers (including one of Northport’s oldest and wealthiest families, the Scudders), the Battle of Long Island in 1776, evidence of the first Black landowner, James Treadwell, in 1837, the formation of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in 1843, the arrival of Samuel Ballton (aka Greenlawn’s famous Pickle King), the presence of the KKK in town and the torching of a Black family’s home on Makamah Beach Road.

A Northport High School graduate, Swenson is a museum professional currently working in administration at the Museum of the City of New York. She is also the creator of the Northport Black History Walking Tour, which she hosted annually as research assistant and museum educator at the Northport Historical Society until 2022, and continues to host today. 

“I started the walking tour in 2021 in response to community interest in Northport's Black history,” Swenson told the Journal. “The purpose of the tour is to introduce attendees to the broad strokes of that history by highlighting the stories of African Americans with connections to downtown Northport locations.” 

During her research, she gathered information about Northport and East Northport's Black communities that didn't fit into the walking tour. “Living on Common Ground dovetails onto the stories I present in the walking tour while offering a more comprehensive view of these historic Black communities,” she said. 

Swenson was a student at Fifth Avenue Elementary School when she met and was greatly inspired by then East Northport resident and school district employee Thelma Jackson-Abidally. A historian and author of “African Americans in Northport: An Untold Story,” Jackson-Abidally spoke to Swenson’s class about Booker T. Washington’s summer home, now designated as a historic landmark in Fort Salonga.

“The experience stuck with me and helped shape the way I approach local history,” Swenson said. She has since combined Jackson-Abidally’s research with new research of her own, some of which she presented during the lecture.

She featured in her lecture vignettes of the “extraordinary ordinary lives” of some of Northport’s Black community members, highlighting people such as Myrtle Phillips, a live-in servant for Scudder Arthur; Henry Lewis, who worked for many years on the oyster boats at Seymour’s; and Lottie Brazer, Northport High School’s third African American graduate (Thomas Wood was the first). In 1923, Brazier was selected to be Huntington’s female entrant into the Suffolk County spelling bee. She was a prolific writer and contributed to Northport High School’s first student newspaper, the Live Wire. She also wrote the majority of the school’s 1926-1927 yearbook, “a beautiful and precious piece of writing because it is currently, as far as I know, the only example of writing by an African American in Northport in the historical society archives,” Swenson said.

As the lecture neared its end, Swenson reflected on why Northport’s Black population may have declined in the 20th century, including internal and external factors, such as racial bias in real estate practices as many farms were developed for single-family housing. 

“Though after the [19]70s there was little physical evidence of the African-American community in Northport-East Norport, their stories were always here, in our yearbooks, in our memories and in the pages of our newspapers,” she said. 

What’s next? 
Swenson urged those interested in local history to get involved, “start going into the historical data…because this work, local history, cannot be exclusive or exclusionary. We welcome anybody who wants to honor our common ground together,” she said. She also requested that community members support their local history museums, including the Northport Historical Society and the Huntington African American History Museum, formed in 2022 and currently in progress, with a site on Mill Dam Road. To learn more about the HAFAM Museum, including its mission to provide a forum to explore and celebrate the contributions of African Americans’ lifestyle, culture, art and traditions through education, exhibits and programs with an emphasis on Huntington’s African American history, visit hafammuseum.org.

Ceylan Swenson’s lecture at the Northport Historical Society can be viewed in its entirety here.