The Sag Harbor Cinema and the Plain Sight Project, an initiative that aims to identify all enslaved people, as well as free people of color, who lived and worked on the East End and other Northern towns in America, have together received a $200,000 federal grant sponsored by Senator Charles E. Schumer.
“This is really exciting, and they are great partners,” Donnamarie Barnes, co-director of the Plain Sight Project, said about the Sag Harbor Cinema. The money, along with the collaboration, will allow the Plain Sight organization to “further our research and interpretation of inclusive history of the East End of Long Island and the role it played in the history of the United States.”
In a press release announcing the grant, Senator Schumer said, “This funding will be used to shine a much-needed light on the unknown history and contributions of people of color throughout the East End, an endeavor that is more important now than ever before.”
Ms. Barnes, who is also the curator and archivist at the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm on Shelter Island, shares directorship of the Plain Sight Project with David E. Rattray, editor in chief of The East Hampton Star. Their pioneering initiative was founded five years ago. With the help of community volunteers, who have painstakingly examined primary sources, such as birth and death records, it has uncovered more than 1,000 confirmed enslaved people in Sag Harbor and East Hampton, to date.
Last August, Sag Harbor Cinema launched its Projections program with Forgetting to Remember: Sag Harbor’s Role in Slavery and the Path to Reconciliation. Part of the event featured a panel discussion with Ms. Barnes and Mr. Rattray, and was moderated by Jennifer L. Morgan, a Sag Harbor Cinema board member and a professor and the chairwoman of the department of social and cultural analysis at New York University. She is also the author of “Reckoning With Slavery: Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic,” published in 2020.
The collaboration between the two entities was further cemented after Mr. Rattray serendipitously was introduced to Bill Collage, a fellow parent in his son’s class at the Ross School and the screenwriter of a film called “Emancipation.” Picked up by Apple in 2020, the movie is expected to be released later this year. It is described as a Civil War-era action thriller and stars Will Smith as a runaway slave.
Mr. Rattray explained that a casual conversation about their respective projects turned into a much larger one involving Ms. Barnes and various people at the Sag Harbor Cinema, where Mr. Collage serves as the educational chair.
Mr. Rattray credits Sag Harbor Cinema personnel for not only suggesting that they apply for this grant together, but also for their grant writing expertise and connections in fund-raising.
“But we’re all coming from a similar place, which is that we’re interested in affecting the community,” he said. “They want to have an impact in Sag Harbor more broadly than simply showing movies. They’re trying to reach other constituencies, whether that’s young people or teachers. And so for us on the Plain Sight side, this is an opportunity to really gain some organizational muscle and brain power.”
Both Ms. Barnes and Mr. Rattray spoke eagerly about how the funding will help them achieve the cornerstone of their organization’s goals: to spread the word that slavery existed in the North.
“It existed for nearly 200 years in New York State, in everybody’s hometown or their summer resort town,” said Mr. Rattray. “It’s an American story, not a Southern thing. And now we can prove it because we’ve got the documents. They don’t lie. There’s no interpretation needed. There’s a person’s life documented on a scrap of paper, so deal with it.” As property, slaves were listed in household accounts and therefore itemized in inventories, which makes it possible for initiatives such as these to rectify the airbrushing of history that took place for centuries.
The co-directors also spoke of the possibility of making a documentary film, as well as creating an interactive website that presents “a heat map of slavery.” They hope to spend on social media campaigns to spread the word, and develop outreach programs that would target the education community. They would even like to create a template of their research and documentation methodology, which other communities could emulate.
“We have ambitions to research more areas across Long Island and even reach collaborators in Connecticut, or Massachusetts, or Rhode Island. Being partnered with a big, influential organization like the Sag Harbor Cinema will really help accelerate that process,” said Mr. Rattray.
