The Spatial Narratives of Black Manhattan: Tours Guides Using Urban Landscapes to Tell Black History

This chapter examines how tour guides utilize the spaces of the city to tell Black stories. The research site is the New York City borough of Manhattan which has had an African and African American presence since 1619, meaning that the borough has embedded more than 400 years of Black history. Tour guides use the spaces of Manhattan to narrate this history. We look at two walking tours: Free Tours by Foot’s Harlem Walking tour and the Tenement Museum’s Reclaiming Black Spaces tour. They reveal Black stories by wrapping them around the city’s spaces and the two tours offer an interesting contrast in how they tell their stories, particularly when the material culture connected to these stories no longer exists.