James Weeks

1798 – 1858

James Weeks was a free Black stevedore who in 1838 purchased land in what is now Crown Heights, Brooklyn, founding the settlement that came to bear his name, Weeksville. Under his and other early landowners' leadership, the community grew into one of the largest free Black settlements in pre-Civil War America, with its own churches, schools, an orphanage, and one of the nation's first Black newspapers.