In the 1960s and 1970s, New York City faced severe economic decline and the flight of whites. Buildings have been abandoned or set on fire, especially in the working-class areas of the city. Communities faced massive divestment – and only urban decadence remained.
It was around this time that Hattie Carthan, a 64-year-old woman living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, began a grassroots effort to turn this urban decadence into green space. What started with four newly planted trees in his neighborhood has turned into 1,500.
Along with the guerrilla gardening efforts popularized by the “seed bombs” of Lower East Side gardener Liz Christy, Hattie’s urban environmental movement paved the way for the city’s support for community gardens.
Today, approximately 500 community gardens line the streets of New York City. But the story of how we got them – thanks to the radical work of people like Hattie and Liz – is often overlooked. Watch the video above to learn more about their stories and how they ultimately transformed the New York City landscape.
Today, their legacy lives on through the Hattie Carthan Community Garden and Farmers Market, the Liz Christy Community Garden, the Green guerrillas‘work in progress, and many other urban gardens – including the South Bronx Casitas – which still thrive today.
This is the fifth and final installment of season 2 of Missing chapter, where we revisit underestimated and often overlooked moments from the past to give context to the present. Our first season covers stories of racial injustice, identity and erasure. If you have an idea for a topic that we should study in the series, send it via this form.
You can find this video and all Vox videos on YouTube.
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