Pinkster Celebration

Prospect Park Alliance presents a Pinkster celebration in the yard of Lefferts Historic House, an 18th century Flatbush farmhouse that serves as the park’s historic house museum, in timing with the completion of a multi-year restoration. Chief Baba Neil Clarke, the Pinkster Players and friends, including long-time Lefferts storyteller Tammy Hall, will lead this family-friendly event, which will feature music, history, performances, storytelling, demonstrations, games and food related to this historic celebration of Africans in New York.

About Pinkster

Africans enslaved in Brooklyn celebrated Pinkster for almost 200 years. Chief Baba Neil Clarke along with other cultural leaders revived this almost forgotten tradition as a way to commemorate the culture and history of Africans in New York. Pinkster is the Dutch word for Pentecost, a spring holiday celebrating the founding of the Christian church. This was the only time each year when Africans enslaved in New York were legally allowed to gather with their families, play music and dance in public, and trade goods. In doing so, enslaved Africans preserved their cultures and built new rituals. Over the years, they transformed Pinkster into a festival of African culture, one of the oldest in what became the United States. However, in 1811 New York began outlawing this important centuries-old holiday, forcing African New Yorkers to preserve its traditions in private. Revivals of Pinkster have been growing in popularity since the 1970s and the Alliance hosted its first Pinkster at Lefferts Historic House in 1990.

Chief Baba Neil Clarke is a master drummer and performer born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant. He has toured the world performing with artists such as Randy Weston, Harry Belafonte, Dianne Reeves and Miriam Makeba. He is also a scholar who researches and teaches the history of percussion, and especially the role of the African drum in the Americas. He has been leading Pinkster celebrations for decades at Philipsburg Manor, Weeksville Heritage Center, and many other sites across the state.