Kaitlyn Greenidge, Evelyn Castro

Description

Weeksville founder; Long time teacher at PS 243; Longtime Brooklyn Resident; Weeksville Board member. Evelyn Castro was born in 1951 in Brooklyn, NY. Her father was a Jamaican immigrant who arrived in New York at age 11 on his own, to meet his mother who was already in the city. Evelyn remembers that he told her he was quarantined for a week at Ellis Island before he was allowed to enter the country. Evelyn’s mother was born in Newport News, VA. Her mother was from a large family in Virginia, the Rileys: in addition to her mother, the family had six sons. Her father and brothers founded a bank in her hometown to serve the needs of the area’s African American community. Evelyn’s mother graduated from Hampton University, where George Washington Carver was one of her professors. Evelyn recalls that her mother’s stories of Hampton encouraged her to become a teacher. One story her mother told her was how the Klu Klux Klan would ride on to Hampton’s campus and set up burning crosses, to intimidate students as they walked from the refractory to the dormitory. But Evelyn was not told this until she was an adult: she recalls that her family never told her that their ancestors were slaves, but would instead say only that they were “farmers”. Slavery and Reconstruction were shameful and painful parts of their past, and were not discussed until Evelyn was an adult. From one of her relative’s investigations, she learned that her great-grandfather,...

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Weeksville Heritage Center