Created Communities: Segregation and the History of Plural Sites on Eastern Long Island, New York

The making of communities is often treated as a quasi-natural process in which people of similar backgrounds and heritage, or people living in close proximity, form meaningful and mutual ties. Missing here is an appreciation of the ties that bind people to others, that are often beyond their own control. Especially in contexts of inequality, communities form because of shared interests in perpetuating, dismantling, or simply surviving the structures of an unequal distribution of resources. This article investigates the formation of communities of color on eastern Long Island since the 18th century by looking at intersections between race and settlement as evidence for how people of color worked within and against the systems that controlled them. A foundational component of the region’s working class, intersecting patterns in class and race formation that complicate the understanding of these mixed-heritage Native American and African American communities are considered.