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We're on top of Summit Rock at 140 feet, the highest point in central park.

Below us, a wedding party is gathered on the slopes, carved stone stairs for some beautiful photos.

To the west, looking down 83rd street, you can just make out the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond.

In case on all sides by New York's famous gridded streets, Central Park is an oasis of nature between Midtown to the South and Harlem to the North,

on the island of Manhattan. It is the jewel of New York City, spanning 843 acres of sweeping fields,

shaded pathways and picturesque viscars that draw in 42 million people every year.

It is the product of enlightenment philosophy and ideals of free and equal access to social, cultural and recreational resources.

But underneath this monument to enlightenment are the remains of Seneca, a village of African American, Irish and German communities whose inhabitants were forced from their homes to make way for the construction of Central Park in 1857.

Hello and welcome to American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman.

My guest today is Dr. Leslie Alexander, author, activist, professor, indeed Dr. Martin Luther King, junior professor of history at Rutgers University.

What an honor to have you on American History Hit. Hi, Leslie.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

You described yourself as a Czech-Ture website as an specialist in early African American and African diaspora history, late 18th, early 19th century black culture and resistance movements.

Well, that makes you the ideal expert voice for our subject at hand, which is a really interesting one.

A story of Seneca Village in New York City. It's an extraordinary, primarily African American community that once existed on lands now encompassed by what is now Central Park, right?

Yes, it's a community that, as you said, was predominantly African American, but just slightly south of what we believe are sort of the official boundaries of Seneca Village.

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