Alexis Holloway
Alexis Holloway
Mission
Voices of Lefferts aims to document neighborhood history through community writing, art, and oral history, that is, through the stories and voices of the people who live here. The deep structural changes in wealth, housing, and demographics taking place locally, nationally, and globally today are as significant—if not more so—as those in the Depression era. While they are documented in contemporary film, photography, literature, and journalism as well as by social media as a kind of citizen journalism, there is no unified effort “to introduce America to Americans” comparable to that of the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project.
In addition to “introducing PLG neighbors to PLG neighbors,” Voices of Lefferts serves as an example of community writing, art, and oral history that can be replicated in neighborhoods anywhere. Inspired by great documentary works like Richard Wright’s Twelve Million Black Voices, written to accompany Farm Security Administration photographs, as well as by contemporary interest in community writing (e.g., Coalition for Community Writing and The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers), VoL aims to empower Flatbush-PLG residents to tell their own stories in their own words, to engage in wider public dialogue about the neighborhood’s past, present, and future, and to promote community literacy.
PROJECT TEAM
To contact the project team, email info@voicesoflefferts.org.
PROJECT DIRECTOR
Deborah Mutnick is a professor of English at Long Island University Brooklyn. She has lived in the neighborhood since 1996 and sits on the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association Board of Directors. She has led several community writing and oral history initiatives over the years involving public schools, 1960s civil rights in Brooklyn, and neighborhood story circles.
ORAL HISTORY DIRECTOR
Sarah Schuster (she/her) is a social worker living in Brooklyn. After spending 7+ years in Los Angeles working as an editor and writer at an online community for people with health conditions and disabilities, Sarah moved to Prospect Lefferts Gardens/Flatbush for a girl and then fell in love with the neighborhood. Now, you can find her organizing with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, turning compost in the Maple Street Community Garden, and recording oral histories with Voices of Lefferts.
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
Kimberly Denise Williams is a lifelong PLG resident and an NYC enthusiast. Her writing covering culture and history has appeared in several print and online publications. She’s also participated in arts and media projects for several community organizations. If you are looking for her in the neighborhood, you just may find her running or walking in Prospect Park.
PODCAST CREATOR
Jules Bradley (she/her) is a documentary audio and film producer and veggie farmer. She is a recent UnionDocs collaborative studio fellow and currently farms at the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm in Sunset Park. She is an active member of the Maple Street Community Garden.
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Frank Marchese has directed creative teams for more than 17 years, after co-owning a graphic design agency for 20 years. He specializes in the design and copywriting of marketing materials. Frank and his husband, Stephen, have a collection of original art that they proudly display in their home in Lefferts Manor, Brooklyn.
PHOTOGRAPHER
Nance Treuber is a Brooklyn native and local photographer who has contributed her visual storytelling to eleven issues of Voices of Lefferts since 2021. A resident of the PLG/Flatbush area since 2012, she played a key role alongside fellow neighbors in the founding and advocacy of the Maple Street Community Garden.
COACH/EDITOR
Brenda Edwards is a longtime PLG resident and retired high school English teacher who taught as well as an adjunct at New York City Technical College. She sits on the PLGNA Board of Directors and is a devoted community activist. Edwards also participated in the first round of community publishing and contributed to “In Between.”
Photo by Marcia Lloyd
COACH/EDITOR
Rina Kleege is a trained performer, singer, and songwriter with her band, Axiom Addicts, and a medical editor. Her previous experience in public relations for films, their producers, and actors also prepared her for her work with the PLG community’s performing arts and artists. She holds a Master of Science degree in Publishing.
COACH/EDITOR
Andrea Phillips-Merriman is a longtime Brooklyn resident. At Columbia University, she majored in literature and writing. As a community development/housing counselor, she addressed housing problems such as foreclosure and displacement, advocated for tenants, and educated residents about their rights and responsibilities. She is currently writing children’s books and food stories.
COACH/EDITOR
Reverend Norma Williams is a mother of three adult daughters who originally hails from Jamaica, West Indies. Since moving to the United States in 1976, she has dedicated herself to education and ministry. She holds degrees from Church Teachers’ College in Jamaica, a BA and MA in Secondary School English from Brooklyn College, and an MPS and M.Div from the New York Theological Seminary.
COPY EDITOR
Sanjay Surana started his journalism career as a copy editor and television columnist in Hong Kong. He has since worked as an editor at Condé Nast Traveler in New York, and as a freelancer based in Singapore and then back home in Brooklyn.
COPY EDITOR
Jess Frost is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn who also serves as a Master Composter. Her daily life is a juggle of managing community initiatives, food scrap processing, and professional projects, all while raising a toddler.
Jen Shin is an artist, illustrator, and urbanist. Her background spans public architecture, urban development, urban ecology, education, and illustration. Jen documents stories, places, and ideas through drawing. The daughter of immigrants and granddaughter of refugees, Jen is fascinated by what it means to make a home and by the places where communities create home together. Jen lives and works in Brooklyn.
SPONSORS
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
ARCHIVAL PARTNER
NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORY
Originally settled by the Lefferts family in 1660, PLG consists of a eight block rectangle of landmarked brownstone and limestone houses known as Lefferts Manor and a surrounding area bordered by Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York Avenue, and Clarkson Avenue. In the 1960s, realtors used blockbusting tactics to scare white residents afraid of falling real estate values into selling cheap so agents could get higher prices from black buyers anxious to escape overcrowded, impoverished, predominantly minority urban neighborhoods. Once the racial transformation of the neighborhood was underway, redlining practices by banks deemed it a “risky” investment and made it difficult to obtain mortgage loans. Growing racial tensions and violence resulted in middle class white flight, disinvestment, and the “abandonment” of PLG and many other Brooklyn neighborhoods for the remainder of the 20th century.
Previously known as Flatbush, a name still preferred by many longtime residents, the neighborhood was renamed “Prospect Lefferts Gardens” in 1968 when a progressive, interracial, neighborhood association sought to fight back against the banks and realtors by enlarging the map of the community beyond the small historic district made up of Lefferts-era single-family houses to encompass a wide swath of working class and middle-to-low income homeowners and renters. The Prospect Lefferts Neighborhood Association (PLGNA) was formed explicitly to promote a multiracial, multi-income residential neighborhood in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.
By the mid-2000s, Brooklyn had become “hot,” attracting major developers like Forest City Ratner and ushering in a new “Brooklyn Renaissance” supported by tax breaks like New York State’s 421-A tax abatement program. In 2007, the first sign in PLG of the unfettered development that has transformed downtown Brooklyn and areas like Williamsburg could be seen in plans for a 23-story glass condo half a block from Prospect Park. Community opposition formed quickly, and the proposed new development was widely condemned as out-of-scale with a footprint that would increase density, result in rising prices and rents, obstruct views of the park, block light, and endanger migrating birds.
Though local protest indicated the potential for coalition building in opposition to gentrification, it was the 2008 financial crash and the developer’s loss of funding that saved the neighborhood from the glass tower. In 2016, the Parkline, another 23-story tower overlooking the park opened its doors not far from the high-rise projected in 2007. Although the Parkline has no glass towers and is set further back from the road to reduce its impact, it also met with strong local opposition, including an unsuccessful lawsuit charging that the developer’s Environmental Impact Study was insufficient. A racially and economically diverse mix of homeowners, tenants, and merchants, PLG residents face complex legal, ethical, and political questions about what constitutes affordable housing and how best to stop the displacement of longtime, low- and middle-income residents and preserve the racial and economic diversity that has been a neighborhood goal for nearly fifty years. According to the 2010 Census, since 1990, PLG’s black population has decreased by 25.5 percent while the number of whites increased by 127 percent from 2,390 in 2000 to 3,040 in 2010.