Black History Month and River Years: A Black Gotham Experience

February 1, 2023
New York Harbor and Castle Williams on Governors Island with Lower Manhattan visible in the background. Courtesy of The New York Public Library
New York Harbor and Castle Williams on Governors Island with Lower Manhattan visible in the background. Courtesy of The New York Public Library

This Black History Month, make sure to experience River Years: A Black Gotham Experience. This self-guided audio tour takes Governors Island visitors on a journey exploring the colonial patterns that have informed a centuries-long relationship with what is known today as the East River, the Hudson River, and New York Harbor.

Written and narrated by LMCC's River To River Festival artist Kamau Ware, the tour begins when you disembark the ferry at Soissons Landing and leads you all the way to “Moving Chains” at the base of Outlook Hill (which will reopen later this spring)–pulling out key moments in New York history along the way that ask, what is the transatlantic slave trade to a river?

River Years  was commissioned by Creative Time and Governors Island Arts on the occasion of Charles Gaines’s “Moving Chains” on Governors Island. To access the tour, click here, or scan one of the QR codes on the tour markers located along the Island’s waterfront esplanade.

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