NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Janise LaBoard’s grandmother had already written a book about her family’s roots in Staten Island’s Sandy Ground, the oldest, continuously inhabited free Black community in the country, but LaBoard still felt it was difficult to keep the stories alive. So, she decided to target the younger generation by writing a children’s book.
“The best thing is to go to the children,” LaBoard told 1010 WINS. “It was really divine inspiration. Everything just kind of worked and came together.”
Inspired by years of stories from her family — aunts and uncles, grandmothers and mothers — LaBoard dreamt up the tale of Landin Henry, a young boy assigned a project to learn about his ancestors where he discovers his family's rich past and deep ties to Sandy Ground.
In many ways, LaBoard is a lot like the fictional character Landin. The 41-year-old is close with her family and curious about her kin, collecting their shared history in order to preserve it. At the center of their story is Sandy Ground, a community on the south end of the island formed by a Black population at a time when they weren’t welcomed in many other places.
“When you look at what was going on in other places where people were still enslaved to then having a visual of Sandy Ground being a place where people are thriving and working for themselves and doing all these wonderful things, that’s awesome," she said.
A year after New York abolished slavery in 1827, LaBoard’s great-great-great-uncle, Captain John Jackson, purchased land on Staten Island, becoming the first recorded Black man on the island to do so. But even though Jackson’s purchase was the first to be recognized on the island, there was already a robust free Black community there, as LaBoard explained.
Captain Jackson, who built his life as an oysterman, was one of many shipworking migrants from Maryland who fled the state after restrictive laws were established for Black shipowners requiring a white person to be onboard boats with them. Lots of seamen resettled in Staten Island because of the opportunity to still operate their businesses without the prohibitive laws.
“There was a big influx here around the 1820s and 1830s of people trying to seek financial freedom,” LaBoard said.
Like most other families in Sandy Ground, Captain Jackson was a free Black man, as opposed to a "freed" Black man, a distinction LaBoard is adamant about making. Though it's unclear from her own records whether Jackson was ever enslaved, the narrative she and her family understand is that Jackson had always been a free man.
This differentiation is a key part of what makes the story of Sandy Ground so important as its legacy is one of a prosperous Black community that existed outside of the institution of slavery, an idea often overlooked in the telling of the Black experience in early America.
“That's hard to believe that in this country there were Black people that weren’t enslaved,” LaBoard said. “But there were people that came over from different countries that were of African descent that were not enslaved.”
The thread of the Sandy Ground community was and still is the Rossville African Methodist Episocopal Zion Church. With records dating back to 1850, the A.M.E. Zion Church is known to have aided escaped enslaved people as part of the Underground Railroad and now manages the property belonging to the historical community.
Also integral to the preservation of the community is the Sandy Ground Historical Society which safeguards the neighborhood’s archival documents, stories, histories and more and uses the resources to educate the public, especially schoolchildren, about the site out of a small museum on the grounds.
“I would say it’s almost like a mini national site,” LaBoard said. “They have a full blown curriculum which deals with the cultural aspects of Sandy Ground as well as incorporating agricultural and marine life concepts. They're holding on to a lot of the stories.”
Despite the efforts of dedicated Sandy Ground descendants, LaBoard often worries about the future of the community. While a handful of Sandy Ground’s original buildings are landmarked, most of the rest have disappeared and the stretch of land known as Sandy Ground has slowly whittled down to a few blocks. New neighbors have moved in, elders have passed and LaBoard sometimes feels the remarkable neighborhood slipping through her fingers.
“Mrs. Yvonne Taylor, who is one of the older women from Sandy Ground who was born here, she doesn't even know in 10 years if there will be any Black presence anymore,” LaBoard said. “And she's concerned. She's 88 years old. And that is one of my concerns. My concern is that, first of all, I can't hold up the legacy alone. And though Sandy Ground Historical Society is doing a really great job of doing what they can, they're aging out as well. So what are we going to do to sustain?”
LaBoard’s fear of the waning community is partially what motivated her to write her children’s book. She doesn’t promote it much, if at all, explaining that the book wasn’t meant to draw profit or make her famous. It was simply an act of love for her family and others to learn and continue to teach the history of Sandy Ground to aid in its perseverance.
Recent small wins for the community have been reassuring for LaBoard to continue her life’s work of protecting the story of Sandy Ground. In February, Mayor Eric Adams commissioned a Staten Island Ferry boat named for Sandy Ground and the New York City Department of Education will require the site to be included in the public school curriculum. And in the past few years, there’s been more interest in people eager to learn about places like these which for decades have been forgotten.
For LaBoard, caring for Sandy Ground also means honoring her grandmother, Lois Augusta Henry Mosley, who lived her whole life in the community and is now buried there, in the same small cemetery behind the church where Captain Jackson was also laid to rest. Mosley’s comprehensive book about the site, Sandy Ground Memories, serves as a treasure trove of information and collection of stories which give a peek into the lives of the people who called Sandy Ground home.
“I know everybody thinks their grandmother and their mother are the greatest,” LaBoard said. "I swear I say I've never met a woman like this woman. My grandmother. She is one of the most amazing people I've ever met in my life. It was an honor to be a grandchild. She fed all of her grandchildren love.”
Mosley’s resting place is surrounded by dozens of other once inhabitants of Sandy Ground, all connected through this one place, an oasis for Black families, a place LaBoard describes as magical. And LaBoard refuses to give up on fighting to keep it around for generations to come.
“This was a special place because it nurtured so many wonderful people,” LaBoard said. “And it’s still nurturing wonderful people. The heart of the people of Sandy Ground, you can see it throughout every family. That's the one thing that I can recognize we all have.”
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