Battle In the Margins Storytelling Project Explores The African Diaspora’s Impact On NYC During American Revolutionary Era Showing At Roosevelt Island FDR 4 Freedoms State Park

The Black Gotham Experience: … is an award-winning creative intervention that elevates the impact of the African Diaspora. We establish space to revisit untold and suppressed stories through a practice that invites people to walk, talk, and reimagine the past to expand public consciousness. We know that history is not an unbiased… collection of records but a cycle of events that we participate in collectively. We are creatives building intentional experiences at the confluence of aesthetics, scholarship, and wellness to learn, heal, and remember together. The Black Gotham Experience origin story begins: In the spring of 2008 on New York City’s Lower East Side, Kamau Ware was working as a Tenement Museum educator, and giving the “Getting By” tour to a group of Black middle school students. Kamau explained how German Jewish and Italian immigrants struggled in the late 19th and early 20th century. At the tour’s end, one of the girls who had been silent the entire time raised her hand and asked: Where were the Black people? The question was deeper than one of geography. The question was one of identity – Where are Black people in the story of New York City and how did Black people get here? Inspired by her question, Kamau Ware started creating the first Black Gotham walking tour in 2008. Two years later on August 28th 2010, this first tour debuted, combining history and visual storytelling to celebrate the impact of the African Diaspora on New York City…. The Black Gotham Experience will bring their storytelling skills to Roosevelt Island with the “Battle In The Margins” theatrical project premiering September 19, 2026 at the FDR Four Freedoms State Park. According to this press release from the New York State Office of Parks Recreation & Historical Preservation (OPRHP): The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) in partnership with Black Gotham Experience (BGX) today announced the launch of “Battle in the Margins” a new theatrical project exploring Black life in New York City during the American Revolution. Developed through a series of original ten-minute plays, this project centers the African Diaspora’s experience, resistance, and role in shaping early American history, shining a light on stories often left out of the nation’s founding narrative. The productions will premiere on September 19 at FDR Four Freedoms State Park from 3 to 6 PM. “Black history is American history,” said New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Acting Commissioner Kathy Moser. “Through the Our Whole History initiative, we are committed to illuminating the experiences of Black New Yorkers on both sides of the American Revolution who lived, fought, and made consequential choices during this defining period of our past. We invite the public to explore this work through these writing workshops, which create a space for meaningful dialogue around one of the Revolution’s most complex and enduring questions: what did freedom mean to those for whom it was not guaranteed?” OPRHP New York City Regional Director Leslie Wright said, “Battle in the Margins brings to life the stories of Black New Yorkers during the Revolutionary War. While the revolution raged around them, people were engaged in an urgent fight: for autonomy, dignity, and survival in a city transformed by war. Through these performances, audiences will discover how freedom was both deeply personal and a matter of survival. We are excited to partner with Black Gotham Experience, the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, and many others to bring this important history to light.” Black Gotham Experience Founder and Creative Executive Office Kamau Ware said, “New York City holds some of the most important American Revolutionary history. People of African descent were not only participants on both sides of the conflict, but their very presence and cries for freedom in the Americas, before and after the war, were central to both the British and American story. In true revolutionary fashion, we invite New Yorkers to put pen to paper in consideration of what the Declaration of Independence means in the United States of America 250 years after its initial publication in the summer of 1776.” … I spoke with Black Gotham Experience founder Kamau Ware and FDR Four Freedoms State Park CEO Howard Axel about the Battle in the Margins project. According to Kamau Ware: … We’re looking at the African diaspora’s impact on the American Revolutionary era. Often that information is not celebrated or talked about a lot, but the artifacts are all there. the history’s available and so we want to make sure we take some time to tease that out and have some time to discuss it…. … We’re going to have a series of 10-minute plays. There’s going to be at least one fireside chat. We’re going to have a DJ there to set the sound design so everybody can have a chance to move about the space and have some inspiration. But ultimately we’re investigating through art things that often are left in the margins as far as black people’s role in the Revolutionary War and why it was fought. So often we’re told that it’s fought solely about independence but also it’s about the future of the black people that were left here free or enslaved…. Howard Axel added: FDR 4 Freedoms {State} Park has been the site of a lot of exploration of freedoms, mostly around who has them and the dissonance of who does not. {President} Roosevelt talked about this in {19}41 and what happened before and what happened after. And it’s been an incredible honor to work with Black Gotham and Kamau on teasing out those stories. And that’s what the {FDR} Park is for, really looking at stories that haven’t been told. Bill vanden Heuvel spent a lifetime building the park and it’s such an incredible resource to have an actual physical place in New York City where we can explore untold stories. Really important right now…. Kamau Ware also traces the role of New York City during the Amercan Revolutionary era. Please click here to RSVP for the September 19 Battle In The Margins at FDR Four Freedoms State Park.