frican-American life in Brooklyn dates back to the days when it was an independent city centered on what is today Downtown Brooklyn, but with vast rural and small-town hinterlands devoted to farming. Slavery persisted into the first decades of the 19th century, longer than elsewhere in New York (and in the North more generally). Weeksville, a free Black community, grew up near today's Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy neighborhoods partly in the wake of the devastating Draft Riots of 1863, which drove many Black people from Manhattan. More recently, the movement of a growing African-American community out of overcrowded Harlem after the Second World War led to tremendous growth in Black Brooklyn. By the 1960s and 70s, Bed-Stuy and the surrounding neighborhoods had become a major center of African-American life, culture, and politics, with figures ranging from Shirley Chisholm to Spike Lee to the Notorious B.I.G. all making their mark.