CBH Talk | Reimagining Filipino Brooklyn

Join us for a special program in celebration of Filipino American History Month.

How do we tell the stories of communities erased from the physical landscape of a city? And what role can historians, artists, and community members play in recovering and reimagining their past?

Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, Filipino seamen and their families settled in the working-class neighborhoods around the Brooklyn Navy Yard, most famously the rough-and-tumble sailors’ enclave of Sands Street. There, Filipino Brooklynites built communities and fought for civil rights at a time when the Philippines was a U.S. colony. In the decades after World War II, urban renewal and changing immigration policies all but erased this once-vibrant Filipino waterfront community.

Reimagining Filipino Brooklyn explores how contemporary historians, artists, and community members have worked to remember and reimagine this largely forgotten chapter of Brooklyn’s past.

Historian Michael Menor Salgarolo, Assistant Professor of History at Bard College and founder of UNASSIMILATED Walking Tours, shares how primary sources, oral histories that include those from his own family, and historical imagination shaped Blood and Water, his acclaimed walking tour of Filipino Brooklyn. Drawing on the Center for Brooklyn History’s collections, he will illuminate the lives and communities that once flourished along the waterfront.

Actor and filmmaker Claro de los Reyes screens Sands Street, his narrative short film set on the Brooklyn waterfront in the 1940s, where a Filipino steward and an African American welder form an unexpected bond. He will discuss what inspired him to bring this relationship and history to the screen.

The evening concludes with Caroline C. Pasion of the Filipino American National Historical Society Metro New York Chapter, who will share memories of growing up in Brooklyn’s Filipino community and reflect on how that history informs her work today.