NYC students visit John Brown Farm | News, Sports, Jobs

The program, back for a second year, takes three groups of 16 students of color from New York City who have never been to the Adirondacks on a two-week trip into the park. The goal of the experience is to empower the students to feel that they belong in the Adirondack wilderness, teach them about the strong presence of Black history in the region and expose them to potential educational and career pathways related to that history and environmentalism. The program culminates with a visit to Lake Placid’s John Brown Farm.

A variety of individuals from the farm, the Adirondack Council and the state spoke to students at the John Brown Farm event. SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. and Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, chair of the New York state Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, were among those who came to be a part of the event.

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“This story was erased”

Students from New York City pose with dignitaries, including Assemblywoman Michaella Solages, the Adirondack Council’s Aaron Mair, SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. and SUNY ESF’s Paul Hai at John Brown Farm in Lake Placid during a trip with the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

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The day began at 10:15 a.m. with speeches from the Adirondack Council’s Executive Director Raul “Rocci” Aguirre and Forever Adirondacks Director Aaron Mair.

The students were taken into the upper floor of the barn, where Martha Swan of John Brown Lives — the John Brown Farm friends group — talked more about Timbuctoo, the settlement in the Lake Placid area where Gerrit Smith granted 3,000 African Americans land in an effort to help them be able to vote.

More speeches followed from SUNY ESF Associate Director Paul Hai, SUNY ESF Executive Operating Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer Mark Lichtenstein, SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. and Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, followed by lunch and a conversation circle where students sat with King, Solages, Hai and New York state Office of Parks, Recreation and Preservation Special Assistant for Energy and Climate Chloe Hanna.

Students biked on the trails around the property and heard a presentation about Harriet Tubman, John Brown and the fight for equal voting rights, according to Hai.

SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. speaks to students from New York City during the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute trip to John Brown Farm in Lake Placid on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

Mair spoke to the students about environmental justice and the “erased history” that John Brown Farm and the institute were fighting to preserve.

Mair said that the students, being from “front-line communities that are going to be facing the worst effects of climate change,” had to learn about environmentally sustainable or green job opportunities in the Adirondacks rather than only the jobs that are traditionally offered in the city. They must understand that an environmentally sustainable economy will need workers who “engage in new careers and new ideas,” he said.

“We need the expansion of parks like (the Adirondacks) around the country,” he added, highlighting the effectiveness of carbon wilderness sinks like the Adirondack Park in fighting climate change over carbon capture storage technology.

Mair told the students that the other objective of the program was to de-center the white male from the dominant narrative and center the stories of Black, Indigenous and other people of color by giving them the chance to walk where African Americans who were part of the fight for equality once lived. He said that history often portrays white people as the only ones who fought for abolition, which erases the stories of the Black people who were crucial to those efforts.

He pointed out that John Brown himself didn’t create Timbuctoo and that Brown’s abolitionism was influenced by the journalism of a Black man, Willis Augustus Hodges, through his newspaper “The Ram’s Horn.”

Student Amaya Williams from Brooklyn reads a historical quote at John Brown Farm in Lake Placid during a trip with the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

He encouraged the students to become “scholars” about their history so that they could facilitate change.

“You all just came home to a place where your ancestors fought for the right to vote to be a whole and complete America. This is your part, this is your place, this is your aim,” Mair said.

Hai underscored the importance of understanding the significance of Timbuctoo and the lives of its settlers.

“This story was erased. This story was ignored. This story was downplayed and this story was denigrated. If you read the history of the Adirondacks, it treats Timbuctoo as a failure, and it ignores what was accomplished and it ignores who was here,” he said. “On the maps, the house is not included. In the census, many of the landowners’ names are not included. “Time and again the tools of oppression are to erase history. And that is what happened here.”

King, who previously worked as U.S. Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama, said this event had personal significance to him.

Martha Swan of John Brown Lives directs students in a “choral reading” of a quote by Gerrit Smith during the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute trip to John Brown Farm in Lake Placid on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

King’s mother was Puerto Rican and his father was African American. His paternal great-grandfather was enslaved. Both of King’s parents passed away when he was a child and experiencing the trauma of those losses, King struggled in high school. He said he was kicked out at one point, but there were teachers and a school counselor who didn’t give up on him and helped him finish his education.

King said that being so supported by his educators inspired him to pass on that support to more young people in getting their education. That’s why one of his main goals in coming to the event was encouraging the students to consider going to a SUNY school and to prepare themselves to be active, conscious participants in society, whether in an environmental justice career or not. He said everyone must help “to make a difference on those issues, because they are threats to our quality of life and humanity’s ability to continue to exist.”

It was also important to him to be at John Brown Farm so that he could pay homage to his ancestry. The plantation in Maryland where his great-grandfather was enslaved is still owned by the descendants of the family that enslaved him. The cabin where King’s great-grandfather lived on the property is also still there. King visited and stood inside of that very cabin. He also built a relationship with the family who lived there.

For King, coming to John Brown Farm was about grappling with that history. He said it was inspiring to see the students doing just that themselves.

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Student Jalieh Mallette from Brooklyn speaks during the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute trip to John Brown Farm in Lake Placid on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

Students react

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Student Amaya Williams from Brooklyn, New York said that she thought getting to do the institute program was “really cool.”

“I don’t really get to experience nature too much and I like the environment. I love learning and hearing about climate justice and learning about social justice and how it intertwines, so I think this experience is really great,” she said. “It’s nice to see how (BIPOC) culture is really ingrained in the land. … We saw an African burial ground, we saw people of the Onondaga Nation and we got, like, a very good hands-on experience with nature.”

Grace Kabore from the Bronx, New York was also excited to be learning more about BIPOC history in the North Country.

“This means a lot because I get to learn about my ancestors, about the past,” she said. “I love history. Learning about history, like, out of all the subjects, history stands out to me. So, coming here and learning about Black history actually makes me feel happy and more invested.”

Kabore wants to study history at Princeton University and maybe become a history teacher one day.

Wilkins Edward, who lives in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and will be a junior this fall, felt like doing the program was contributing to his future plans.

“I did this because I already knew, or I already think I know, what I want to major in — computer science,” he said. “Doing this, being out in nature, also helped me, because doing computer science, I’ve done a few projects about climate change and now I’m actually out here doing something.”

Edward said he doesn’t know where he wants to go to college yet, but he’s been checking out SUNY ESF.

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The program

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Mair said that students have to submit an application to be chosen for this trip. Hundreds of students have applied each year from high schools all throughout New York City.

The trip begins with students learning about climate science on a SUNY campus in New York City. From there, they travel to the Climate Action Planning Institute in Newburgh, before coming to the Adirondacks for their final week, where they go paddling and spend the day at John Brown Farm, according to Mair. The program costs the students nothing.

On the last day of the program, students write postcards to themselves that the institute will mail back to them in December. The institute reads these letters, and last year, Hai said that the students “expressed to themselves (that) they didn’t want to forget.”

Last year, between the three sessions, they had 41 students. This year, it’s a total of 48. Hai said that they hope to keep growing the program, adding students from Rochester and Buffalo and expanding in Brooklyn.

This program was conceived of and made possible by a partnership of a variety of organizations, beginning with SUNY, which shared the project with the Adirondack Council and the New York state Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus. The caucus connected them with Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College, which “created the starting point for the project,” Hai said. SUNY ESF has been involved in working on the Timbuctoo Institute program’s structure.

SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. speaks to students from New York City during the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute trip to John Brown Farm in Lake Placid on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

Adirondack Council Forever Adirondacks Director Aaron Mair poses with students at John Brown Farm in Lake Placid during their trip with the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages speaks to students during the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summers Institute trip to John Brown Farm in Lake Placid on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

Students from New York City walk past the Harriet Tubman statue at John Brown Farm in Lake Placid while participating in a trip with the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Careers Summer Institute on July 31.
(Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)