Group seeks to preserve historic Elmhurst cemetery

From the Queens Gazette:

Underneath a muddy desolate back lot near 47-11 90th Street in Elmhurst exists a forgotten cemetery. Almost two centuries ago, African-American residents of what was then known as Newtown buried their family and friends in this sacred place of eternal rest.

According to the Elmhurst History & Cemeteries Preservation Society, a total of 310 burials were made in the cemetery. Some burials have been removed but numerous remains are still at the site. The society stated that the African American community in Elmhurst traces backs to the time of slavery in the late 1600s.

In 1828 a parcel of land was donated to former slaves who were members of the United African Society (later known as St. Mark's AME Church) one year after slavery was abolished in New York State. The first African American church, parsonage, school and cemetery were set up at this site. Elmhurst had a free African American community living, working and worshiping in this particular area of Newtown.

In 1914, Booker T. Washington came to speak in Elmhurst to help raise funds for the St. Mark's AME church.

The goal of the society is to make the site a NYC Landmark and for it to be placed under the National Register of Historic Places.

More information, including a petition to save the burial ground, can be viewed here.

Child slavery in Flushing

From PIX11:

The neat brick facade along the tree-lined Queens street gave no indication of the horrific crimes taking place inside, according to the district attorney.

Sook Yeong Park, 42, is accused of holding two South Korean children as slaves for six years, starting when they were just 9 and 11. Park, who faces charges of labor trafficking, among others, forced both children to work grueling hours at the house and at nearby businesses, forcing one child to sleep on the floor with no mattress and the other in a closet, according to the Queens District Attorney.

“According to the charges, the defendant cut off all contact between the two young victims and their parents in Korea," said D.A. Richard A. Brown. Park enslaved the children after one of her relatives brought the brother and sister to the country in January 2010, according to the criminal complaint. She then confiscated their passports and moved into a well-kept home on 196th Street, where she would hold them for years, Brown said.

The children were forced to meticulously clean the house, with the girl working after school from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., during which time she was also expected to give Park lengthy massages, manicures and pedicures, according to the complaint. On at least one occasion, Park allegedly made the girl give her a body massage for five hours while she watched television.

Sometimes she would pull the children out of school for days or even a month while forcing them to work on her home at 43-52 196th Street, according to the district attorney. Along with the work at home, Park made the girl and her brother work at a Queens grocery store for $10 an hour and pocketed all of her earnings, according to the complaint.

Historical society seeks to rename Rikers Island

From DNA Info:

The head of the Harlem Historical Society wants Rikers Island renamed based on the namesake family's connection to slavery.

The embattled jail complex, which has been beset with scandal over poor treatment of inmates and calls to shut it down, gets its name from the family of Abraham Rycken, a Dutch immigrant who settled in New York in the 1600s, according to the New York Historical Society.

Jacob Morris, director of the Harlem Historical Society, recently started a petition to rename the embattled jail complex due to family member Richard Riker's history of helping send blacks into slavery during the 19th century.

Riker presided over the main criminal court in New York City, the Court of Special Sessions, in the early 1800s, and he used his authority in this position to send blacks to slavery as part of what abolitionists called the Kidnapping Club, according to historian Eric Foner.

Massage parlors proliferating everywhere

From WPIX:

On a rainy Monday approaching midnight, PIX11 Investigates took a drive along Northern Boulevard in Little Neck, Queens, heading east toward the Great Neck border. We noticed blinking, neon lights in two storefronts standing side by side. One of them was called “Relax Station,” and the blue and white sign indicated it was open. The next store had a red awning; the sign advertising $19.99 rubs for 30 minutes.

These are the spas of Little Neck and Douglaston in eastern Queens, and in the last couple of years, the name FOOT SPA has appeared increasingly on the signs.

PIX11 took note of the trend in our travels and decided to look into the phenomenon.

He'll be pimpin' in prison now

From the NY Post:

A Queens man was sentenced to life behind bars Wednesday for running a sex-slavery ring that lured young Mexican women to the Big Apple and New Jersey and forced them into prostitution.

Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest also ordered Isaias Flores-Mendez, 42, to forfeit $1.7 million to the government and pay $84,000 in restitution to the victims of his crime.

Prosecutors say some of the women were driven to rural New Jersey to have sex with up to 25 farm workers a day. Others were confined to dingy New York brothels that advertised their services with business cards passed out on local street corners. The scheme began in 1999.

Does this house in Jamaica date back to 1799?

"Here's a Queens gem for you. Have you ever heard of Keteltas Manor? According to photographer Matthew X. Kiernan, the colonial-period mansion built in 1799 is still standing at 88-35 144th Street in Jamaica. This building has had numerous renovations over the centuries and the City Map lists its completion as 1935.

Its original owner, Rev. Abraham Keteltas was a Revolutionary but also a slave owner. Its current owner is Deokallie Loknauth. Being located on a corner, I can imagine developers salivating over the thought of demolishing Keteltas Manor.

So let's fight for it while it has a chance!

Keteltas is a descendant of Huguenot French settlers. He is buried in Prospect Cemetery."

Your loyal reader

Slave burial ground in Bronx being recognized

From NY 1:

Little historians working on a school project helped uncover an African slave burial ground.

It started last year, when their teachers discovered the photo seen at left while working with the department of education's Teaching American History project that focuses on teaching local history to kids.

"There's an image that said, 'Slave burial ground' in the Bronx, but that was all the information we had on it," said Brian Carllin, director of the Teaching American History Project.
They turned to the Huntington Free Library for help. Its president, Thomas Casey, immediately recognized the photo and offered some insight.

"The U.S. census, the first one we have is 1790, and we find from the 1790 reports that, in fact, about one-third the population were slaves," Casey said.

They were slaves who belonged to the Hunts, Leggettes, the Tiffanys, families that owned large portions of land in the 17th-century Bronx.

The white landowners were buried in a fenced-off cemetery preserved in Drake Park, while the rest of the park was built over the burial ground for their slaves.

Elected officials and community members are now calling for official recognition of the land where the slaves are interred.

"Make sure that we put this site, we put this African-American burial ground on the site of the state historic registry," said state Senator Jeff Klein, whose district covers parts of the Bronx and Westchester.

Those involved say that even a sidewalk in the park could be hallowed ground. They believe that the burial ground stretches throughout much of this area, and they want to see the people buried here memorialized.

Legislators say they won't stop with recognition on the state registry and hope to have the burial ground recognized as a national historic site, too.

This is quite similar to the East Harlem MTA depot site.

But then there's Elmhurst, where no elected officials give a shit about a slave burial ground being destroyed by a condo project, and learning about its history is certainly not part of any school project.

MTA to vacate Manhattan slave graveyard

From the NY Post:

The MTA will likely shut down its East Harlem bus depot because it sits atop a 17th-century African burial ground, two transit sources told The Post.

The 126th Street facility — home to the M15 fleet that traverses Second Avenue, the city’s busiest bus route — could close permanently as early as June, one of the sources revealed.

The Post first reported three years ago that the agency had confirmed the existence of the burial ground, used by Harlem’s first house of worship, the Elmendorf Reformed Church, from 1665 until 1869 to bury slaves and freed slaves.

Community activists began lobbying to relocate the 67-year-old depot, a former trolley yard, to memorialize the cherished ground and even establish a cultural center around it. At the time, the MTA maintained it would continue to study the issue but planned to go ahead with the refurbishment of the depot in 2015.

Now the agency appears ready to wash its hands of the 104,000-square-foot building, sources said.

It's a shame that slave graveyard in Elmhurst isn't owned by the MTA.

Church hopes to preserve slave burial ground

Aerial view of site of United African Society in 1924

From the Daily News:

A local church is hoping to preserve a long-forgotten burial ground for freed slaves that was discovered on the Elmhurst site where a five-story condominium building is slated to go up.

Leaders of the Saint Marks A.M.E. Church in Jackson Heights plan to meet on Thursday with the owners of the property, at 90-11 Corona Ave., to plead their case.

The church was founded in 1828 on the site of the burial ground as the United African Society. Over the years, the congregation’s name and location changed.

“The site is very significant because it is believed to be one of the first places where former slaves organized and started their own church,” said the church’s pastor Kimberly Detherage.

“In a time when people are tearing things down and building, it’s important to know our history,” she said.

The construction crew found the body of a woman in 2011 when a machine accidentally dredged up her iron casket as they were tearing down a decades-old warehouse. She is believed to have died in the 1850s.

“We dubbed her the Iron Lady,” said John Houston, owner of the Triboro Funeral Home, in Corona, where she is stored. “The body is so well-preserved they thought it was a [recent] murder.”

After the discovery, construction was halted and the owners of the site, 90 Queens Inc., hired an archeologist to research the burial ground. Bones of 15 more bodies were unearthed in October.

Houston said there’s no telling how many more are buried there.

The city issued a partial stop work order at the site, which is across the street from Newtown High School.

“We were never aware there was a graveyard there,” said the project’s construction manager, who declined to give her name. “We covered everything back and are talking to the Health Department to find out ... the proper way to [handle] this.”

The property owners did not immediately return calls.

Condo project halted as cemetery is investigated

Received in e-mail:

"15 Graves Opened
CONDOS/STORE FRONTS BUILT OVER CHURCH CEMETERY

Recent construction on property previously owned by the Union Street African Methodist Episcopal Church and its cemetery has uncovered more than 15 exposed graves thought to be those of Negro slaves and their decedents that have been dug up and then recovered shallowly after a stop order from the Health Department. The property is the site of new condominium apartments and storefronts on Corona Avenue at 91st Street -- across the street from Newtown High School.

Wing Fung Realty is the management company whose sign declares they are conducting the sale of the apartments that are entered at 47-19 and 47-21 91st Street (next door to a residence at 47-07 91st Street) and the block of store fronts from 90-05 to 90-19 Corona Avenue, which are next door to the Sabor Colombia 2 restaurant at 90-31 Corona Avenue. Dahill Construction is listed as the current property owners on the NY Department of Transportation notices for sidewalk and bus shelter (Q 19) openings in the lobby and storefront windows.

The current Corona Avenue condos and stores are separated from the uncovered graves by a thin strip of parking lot. As more graves are suspected to be beneath the property, additional construction has been halted until January 3, 2014 while Saint Mark AME Church of Jackson Heights, the owner of the graves but not the property, investigates the situation." - Lydia Gardner

See previously.

Sex traffickers busted

From NBC New York:

Federal agents raided four brothels in New York and arrested 13 people in an alleged sex trafficking and prostitution ring dating back to 2008, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the suspects exploited dozens of women, trafficking some from Mexico to New York, to force them to work as sex slaves.

NBC 4 New York cameras captured the raid on one of the brothels in Yonkers Tuesday. Search warrants were also executed at brothels in Queens, Poughkeepsie and Newburgh.

The criminal complaint alleges the suspects lured women to the U.S. by engaging them in romantic relationships and promising a better life in New York. Once they arrived, the victims were forced to work as prostitutes under "abhorrent conditions," often subject to abuse and threatened with harm to them and their family members

In a typical day, a Mexican sex trafficking victim in New York had sexual intercourse with 20 to 30 customers, with each customer usually paying about $30 to $35 for 15 minutes of sex, according to authorities.

Of that money, half typically went to either the driver who took the victim to the client or to the residential brothel where the woman worked. The other half went to the victim, who was then typically forced to turn over all the money to the trafficker.

Pols outraged over backpage.com, but not the Trib

From CBS New York:

Lawmakers held an emotional hearing Wednesday, calling on Village Voice Media to shut down the adult section of its classifieds website.

City Council members choked back tears as a girl named “Briana,” now 13, testified from behind a screen. She described her ordeal as a 12-year-old sex slave being advertised on Backpage by her friend’s brother.

Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras’ voice grew loud as the attorney for Village Voice Media testified that keeping the site up helped identify missing and exploited children.

“You’re making a profit off these pimps putting these girls on your website,” Ferreras said.

The Gateways Progam’s director even testified Wednesday that 75 percent of the young women in the program have been trafficked on Backpage.

Brooklyn DA Charles “Joe” Hynes also testified that 70 percent of his sex trafficking cases come from Backpage.

Why wasn't the Queens Tribune put on the hot seat at the hearing? Could it be because all the pols on the council kiss Schenkler's ass in return for endorsements and positive coverage? Or because the tweeders hire Multimedia for their campaigns?

Korean woman's slavery claim

From the NY Times:

A Korean immigrant housekeeper has accused her former employers — a Korean Buddhist monk and his family — of keeping her as a prisoner in their homes in Queens for 12 years and forcing her to work as their “slave” under threat of death, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan.

The housekeeper, Oak-Jin Oh, 60, has alleged that the family forced her to work long hours without pay, deprived her of medical care when she was sick and “usually” refused to give her a bedroom or a bed to sleep in.

Though the family allowed her outside their homes from time to time — she was permitted to go to the grocery store to buy food for the family’s meals — they used threats to dissuade her from reporting her situation to the authorities, the lawsuit alleges.

“She was threatened with reputational harm, physical harm and death,” the lawsuit says.

The suit, filed last week, names the family patriarch, Soo Bok Choi, a Buddhist monk, as a defendant, as well as two of Mr. Choi’s brothers, his son and daughter, a niece and the personal representative of the estate of his mother, who died in 2009.

According to the lawsuit, Ms. Oh was introduced to the Choi family in 1998 by an employment placement agency in South Korea. Mr. Choi said he was looking for someone to work in his family’s home and in his temple in New York, the complaint says.

Ms. Oh agreed to travel to the United States to work for the family in exchange for a monthly wage of 1.3 million Korean won, equivalent to about $1,200 at current exchange rates, the complaint says.

Mr. Choi flew with Ms. Oh to Toronto, the lawsuit says, then smuggled her across the border into New York “under the cover of night” in a small boat.

Over the next 12 years, the Choi family “harbored” Ms. Oh in residences around Queens, including in Elmhurst, Little Neck, Bayside, Flushing and Whitestone, according to the complaint.

African burial site found at Maple Grove

From the Queens Chronicle:

After 10 months of research, a volunteer Queens historian has uncovered an African burial ground at a Kew Gardens cemetery.

Carl Ballenas last week announced the discovery after investigating a mysterious monument near the Lefferts Boulevard entrance to Maple Grove Cemetery. Armed only with the stone’s vague inscription — “Removals from church vaults at the corner of Prince and Marion streets New York, February 1877” — Ballenas, a social studies teacher who donates his time to Maple Grove, set out to determine the contents below the monument and the narrative behind it.

“It’s a phenomenal thing — history being brought to life here and it was right under our noses,” he noted with a laugh.

The monument is believed to be the marker of the burial site of 308 members of the First Colored Presbyterian Church, which was established in 1822 by the Rev. Samuel Cornish and more commonly known as the Shiloh Presbyterian Church. It was part of the Underground Railroad network of people and places that helped slaves escape, and relocated throughout Manhattan several times, including to a building at the corner of Prince and Marion streets, where it operated for nearly 30 years.

Ballenas said that according to Maple Grove’s interment records, in 1877, the church’s burial vaults were moved to the Queens cemetery, which was just two years old at the time. “Note — Int. 29 — 308 removals from the Presbyt. Ch. Vault New York City, corner of Prince and Marion St.,” reads a note in the 1877 interment ledger.

Hindu priest was a slave

From the Times Ledger:

A Hindu priest finally got some justice Wednesday after being forced to toil for $50 a week in a Corona temple for seven years.

A jury awarded Devendra Shukla more than $2 million after finding during an eight-day trial in federal court in Brooklyn that Sat Prakash Sharma, his wife Geeta and the Vishva Seva Ashram temple were civilly liable for forced labor, involuntary servitude and human trafficking against the 34-year-old Indian immigrant, according to Shukla’s lawyer, Sanjay Chaubey. Sat Sharma is the temple’s director and president and Geeta Sharma sits on its board.

Krishnan Chittur, the Sharmas’ attorney, vehemently disagreed with the verdict, saying it “was contrary to the weight of the evidence” and that the court had provided him with a briefing schedule for proceedings to have the verdict overturned on appeal.

Before Shukla came to America, he was told he would be paid $500 per week and receive free room and board for working as a priest at the temple, located at 104-38 Corona Ave., but when he arrived, he was forced to live in a tiny, cell-like room, and his employers paid him only $50 per week, for a total of $21,000 in seven years, Chaubey said.

He was forced to work days as long as 18 hours, doing all matter of tasks including ministering, construction work, janitorial duties and more, and the Sharmas used fear tactics to ensure he did not go to authorities or flee his situation, according to Chaubey.

Shukla was awarded about $2.8 million by the jury but the amount was lowered by $500,000 because Shukla may have improperly discussed certain details of the case with journalists, according to Chaubey.

Chittur contended that much of the evidence that Chaubey introduced was “fabricated” and that Shukla was free to move about, was paid the full $500 per week, lived in a nice basement room, was running businesses via laptop and that witnesses countered many of his grievances.

Exhibit on abused workers

From the NY Times:

Institutionalized slavery may have largely gone by the wayside in the United States around 1865, but that does not mean it has entirely vanished. And on Tuesday, a traveling exhibit outside the Judson Memorial Church, on Washington Square South, told part of that story of how and where forced labor still exists in the United States.

The exhibit, which moves to the Middle Collegiate Church on East Seventh Street on Wednesday before leaving town, is called the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum and consists of photographs, court papers and artifacts related to cases in which federal prosecutors have accused people of treating migrant workers — many of them illegal immigrants — as slaves.

The aim of the show, organized by a nonprofit workers’ group called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is twofold: to remind the public that people are sometimes still enslaved and to pressure produce companies to contract only with harvesters who treat workers fairly.

How about only hiring people who are here legally? It makes abuse much less likely.

Koreans forced into sex slavery

From the Daily News:

A malevolent Queens madam forced young Korean women into a life of sex slavery in Long Island massage parlors after promising them jobs at nail salons, prosecutors charged Tuesday.

Jin Hua Cui, 44, allegedly roped in the new immigrants with help wanted ads in Korean language newspapers, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.

"Women would respond thinking that they were going to work at a nail salon. She then forced them into prostitution through threats of violence, intimidation and embarassment," Spota said.

"If they did not cooperate she would reveal to their family, friends and members of the community in Flushing that they were working as prostitutes and threaten to have Chinese gangs kill them," he said.

The women were driven every morning to massage parlors in Huntington Station and Hicksville and forced to have sex for between $60 and $80, authorities said.

A sign in the window of the Huntington Station locale advertised a "Stimulus Plan," and "Asian Bodywork."

The johns were solicited with ads on Craigslist.

Cui allegedly pocketed the fees, leaving the women only whatever the men left as tips.

Detectives executing a search warrant at Cui's sprawling, million-dollar home in Flushing found $20,00 in cash, and thousands of condoms.

Martins Field now "Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground"

From the Times Ledger:

Bayside community activist Mandingo Tshaka said he was pleased after the city renamed Flushing’s Martins Field to honor the remains of African Americans and native Americans who had been buried there more than 100 years ago, but he has also called for the site to be locked up at night to prevent vandalism.

The city Parks Department changed Martins Field’s name to the Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground in mid-December. The site, between 164th and 165th streets along 46th Avenue in Flushing, had originally been a cemetery for 19th-century blacks and American Indians who had died of small pox and cholera.

Several new signs at the burial ground have been put up to notify community residents of the site’s historical significance.

The city had paved over the burial ground more than 70 years ago to build a playground and pool at the site, which had violated city law. In 2006, the city performed $2.7 million in renovations at the burial ground, such as adding a steel picket fence, new sidewalks and a playground with a commemorative plaque.

The burial site, which dates back to the 1840s, was originally known as the Colored Cemetery of Flushing. More than 1,000 people were buried at the site between 1840 and 1898.

City tries to combat human trafficking

From City Limits:

As disturbing revelations of human trafficking in New York City fade in and out of the headlines one by one, the city plans to deliver more consistent education to the public about this burgeoning problem with a consciousness-raising campaign to be launched in the first quarter of next year.

Often thought of a problem occurring to other people in other parts of the world, trafficking – which according to the UN means “forcible movement of a person from one place to another and forcible utilization of their services with the intention of inducting them into trade for commercial gains” – is very much a domestic concern. “We have to be careful not to define human trafficking as something that’s happening elsewhere and not right here in New York City,” says Norma Ramos, executive director of the NYC-based Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

In New York state, according to Mayor Bloomberg's office, there were 46 confirmed victims of trafficking in 2008 and 43 confirmed victims to date this year. And in New York City, between Dec. 2007 and Sept. 2009, there were 262 calls to a national trafficking hotline. The group Fight Slavery Now identifies the city as one of the country’s main ports of entry for trafficking, with JFK airport singled out as major hub.

The fight against "modern-day slavery" is receiving specific focus from the mayor’s office as it steps up the efforts of the Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, established in 2006, with a campaign suitably titled, “It’s Happening Here.”

Jennifer Dreher, the senior director of the anti-trafficking program at Safe Horizon, said that some of their staff members assist with the campaign in the mayor’s office. Dreher points out one of the disheartening realities about victims: “Less than 1 percent come out and say, ‘I am a victim.’ They don’t know how to describe what is happening to them.” In terms of awareness and avenues of redress, she likens it to what domestic violence was 30 years ago.

Dreher is particular about the language used to describe victims, aiming for inclusive terms that include the many forms of coerced travel and labor. The people she serves in NYC reflect a different story than what is generally thought of as human trafficking or even sex trafficking. The majority of her clients are women, with 60 percent trafficked in some form of labor – which can mean stripping, sexualized labor, or being bailarinas—women forced to dance in bars, accompany patrons and encourage them to spend more money that goes to the house. About one-third are in forced prostitution, with 5 percent in other forms including servile marriages.

Anti-trafficking activists say the crime flourishes because it hides in plain sight: among the blatant sex ads in some publications and the eager busboys in restaurants are men and women forced into servitude against their will.

Sex-slaver faces 25 years

By WILLIAM J. GORTA, NY Post

A Queens man who bought a woman for $2,000 and forced her to work as a prostitute is the first person to be convicted under New York's new sex-trafficking law, authorities said yesterday.

David Brown, 32, of St. Albans, paid an old girlfriend for the troubled 19-year-old woman and forced her into the sex trade in 2008, said Queens DA Richard Brown.

The woman was compelled to have sex with about 30 men over 12 days, charging between $60 and $200, which she gave to David Brown, according to the DA.

He faces up to 25 years in prison after being convicted Tuesday on charges including kidnapping and sex trafficking.