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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, MARCH 3, 2019
BLOCKADE: Workers barricaded the space beneath the Grand Army Plaza arch,
preventing pedestrians from passing through. Photo by Colin Mixson
ARCH
off their year-long, $9-million
restoration of the Civil War memorial
in 2020 , which includes
repairing stonework throughout
the ancient arch, as well as
replacing its rooftop observation
deck and fi xing the iron
staircase leading to it.
Following the city-funded repairs,
locals will be able to enter
the arch for the fi rst time since
leaders of the Puppet Museum
that formerly occupied space inside
it moved their institution to
Brooklyn College in 2010.
The restoration project also
calls for sprucing up the pavement
around the arch, and installing
landscaping and lights around
the plaza’s Bailey Fountain.
Workers last repaired the
arch, which turns 127-years-old
on Oct. 21, in 1980, seven years after
the city designated the structure
a landmark, and roughly
four years after the statue of Columbia
— a goddess-like fi gure
symbolizing the United States
— fell from its sculpted chariot
atop the monument in 1976.
Grace Chorale of Brooklyn’s
“A Long Dark Shadow” will
showcase three vocal works
that relate to that violent summer
100 years ago, a pivotal
time that has been largely forgotten,
said the choral group’s
director.
“Most Americans aren’t
that familiar with that summer,
but many historians argue
that it was one of the most
troubling events of American
history,” said Jason Asbury.
During the early 20th century
many African-Americans
fled Jim Crow segregation
in the south, some
finding jobs in northern cities
that suffered from labor
shortages during World War
I. But when white soldiers
returned from the war, they
resented the new arrivals —
and they wanted their old jobs
back.
Tensions boiled over at a
segregated Lake Michigan
beach, where a white man
killed a black teenager named
Eugene Williams for swimming
in the “wrong” area.
That murder, and the refusal
of police to arrest the
man responsible, ignited
months of racist violence in
Chicago and beyond, with
white mobs roaming northern
cities, lynching black people,
and destroying their homes
and businesses.
Those deadly months galvanized
the nascent civil and
voting rights movements, according
to Asbury.
“The more I learned about
the Red Summer the more I
saw that the foundation of the
civil rights movement and the
events of 1960s were mobilized
in 1919,” he said.
To raise awareness of this
history, the choral group commissioned
a brand new work.
“A Stone to the Head: The
Death of Eugene Williams,”
composed by Princeton Music
graduates Flannery Cunningham
and Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa,
which tells the story
of Williams and connects his
death to the ongoing struggle
with police violence against
communities of color, Asbury
said.
The material was tough
for many of the Grace Chorale’s
mostly white singers
to process when they started
rehearsing back in November,
according to Asbury, but
that just shows how Americans
need to lean in to their
discomfort surrounding the
country’s racist legacy in order
to overcome it.
“The first rehearsal we
went through the score, I
think everyone was uncomfortable
reading this text
about a white mob lynching
an African American,” he
said. “To be living with this
during the last three months
has shown that there’s no
escaping the legacy of how
this country has treated African
Americans in the last
400 years, and it’s up to us to
untangle that and to address
that legacy as individuals.”
The concert will also feature
the 1940 choral ballad
“And They Lynched Him on a
Tree,” with additional voices
from the Brooklyn College
Symphonic Choir and Conservatory
Singers and the String
Orchestra of Brooklyn, along
with an excerpt from Duke
Ellington’s rarely heard suite
“The River.”
“A Long Dark Shadow” at
St. Ann and the Holy Trinity
Church 147 Montague St.,
between Henry and Clinton
streets in Brooklyn Heights,
(917) 450–8172, www.gracechorale.
org. March 3 at 3 pm.
$20.
CHOIR
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