By Lulaine Compere

Morgan Powell has been on a nine-year mission — researching, traveling and interviewing people about the history of African Americans in the Bronx. He estimates, conservatively, that he has spent $8000 to bring this story to life.

In the spring, Powell partnered with the Bronx River Alliance and held a free two-hour walking tour along the Bronx River to highlight certain places and people that are important to the African American history in the area. And two Saturdays ago at the Bronx Library Center, Powell turned his walking tour into a presentation called “The Bronx River’s Afro-American Heritage in 100 Golden Moments.”

“The point of this project was to write African American history into a story people might think they know about the Bronx River,” Powell says, adding: “African Americans are the second biggest ethnic group in the Bronx.”

Powell says the walking tour wasn’t his original idea. But when someone at the Bronx River Alliance suggested it, Powell decided to do it. Currently there are no plans to extend the walking tour or expand it to other parts in the Bronx. In the future, Powell says he wants to publish academic essays about the Bronx’s African American history.

“Pictures and walking tours are good, but they are limited,” he said. “If it is to make history in academics it has to be printed.”

The reaction to the project has been overwhelmingly positive, Powell says.

“The positive responses have been staggering. I must have gotten 40 messages through phone calls, emails and they have been diverse,” he said. “I have gotten messages from African Americans who are happy that African American history in the area is being investigated and people are being challenged to know about it.”

Powell has been involved in many environmental issues and was once manager of a local city park. He hopes more people connect with the Bronx River corridor because he says it will only be a priority if the people make it one.

“It’s all about nursing that relationship,” he says. “People are already paying for the Bronx River corridor. There has not been proportionate interest like for other areas and elected officials will only make it a priority if they believe it is a priority for their constituents.”

Powell also hopes that the tour and the other projects related to the tour will push the knowledge of the civil rights movement African Americans supported in the North, which is not as widely known as the civil rights movement in the South.

“Yes, I definitely see, even in my own education, the portrayal of the civil rights as exclusively in the South,” he says. “The only exception was the limited discussion of Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell in Harlem. I was told nothing about civil rights in the Bronx and I want to help reconnect people with that history and the Bronx River.”

Highlights from Powell’s Tour

— Bronx Park, near Allerton ballfields: The tour stopped here to explain what it was like for slaves to be in this area before trains, telephones and newspapers. Powell explained what it was like to move to the area when the only major road was Boston Road and other small dirt roads.

— Vanished American Revolutionary War fort Site at the intersection of Mosholu Parkway and Grand Concourse, at St. George’s Crescent: This stop on the tour was where freemen of Virginia who were promised their freedom by the British fought Americans from this fort until the Americans captured it.

— Old Train Tracks of the Harlem and New Haven line located at the Metro North’s Williamsbridge station: A mob of men angry about being drafted into the Civil War destroyed the telegraph offices here and ripped up tracks to prevent the operation of the federal draft.

— French Charlie Park’s House and Station: This tour stop illustrated some of the nuances and economic consequences of Bronx slavery before it became illegal in 1827, at which time the Bronx was still part of lower Westchester.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.