Founded in 1838 by James Weeks, a free Black stevedore, Weeksville grew into one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America, located in what is now Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Nearly a third of its landowning men qualified to vote under New York's property requirement, and the community built its own churches, schools, an orphanage, and one of the nation's first Black newspapers, the Freedmen's Torchlight. Weeksville also served as a refuge for Black New Yorkers fleeing the violent 1863 Draft Riots in Manhattan. Rediscovered in 1968 after decades of obscurity, the surviving Hunterfly Road Houses are now preserved as the Weeksville Heritage Center.