A project of Brooklyn Historical Society
 
 
 
 

Tag: Williamsburg

Shameeka Mattis
Oral History

"It just felt like every time I came to Brooklyn… it was always 100 new white people on the train, 50 new white people, and I’m like “This is different.” Because racially Brooklyn was the black borough in so many different parts… So feeling that difference, at first I was just in shock and then I was angry because I knew that that meant that the property values were going to go up and… that the faces that would represent mine wouldn’t necessarily be there.”