Flushing

Above: Ye Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground

When I moved to Flushing in 1993 and started bicycling around the neighborhood, I found 46th Avenue along Flushing Cemetery an ideal route — there were relatively few stoplights and intersections, and it was a convenient way to reach Glen Oaks, Hollis Hills, Bellerose and into Nassau. I used to pass a spacious, but nondescript, playground called Martin’s Field between 164th and 165th Streets. There were swings in the front, a sprinkler fountain, and the standard issue benches and lawns you find in a thousand other playgrounds around town.

However, Bayside historian and civil-rights activist Mandingo Tshaka had already been poring over real estate records and maps and had discovered that Martin’s Field lay directly on top of an old cemetery founded in the early 19th century and that over one thousand people, mainly African-Americans, Native Americans and also some whites found their final repose here, partially  due to a cholera and smallpox epidemic that raged through Flushing beginning in the 1840s. (more…)