Bedford and Stuyvesant were once two different communities with very different stories.

The Dutch established a hamlet called Bedford in 1663. It became a destination for rural southern Blacks and West Indians during the 1800s, and was home to Black institutions like the Brooklyn Howard Colored Orphan Asylum and the Zion Home for the Colored Aged.

Stuyvesant was a fancy community built by the upper middle class. The lavish architecture still remains today. The Masonic Lodge, Boys' High School, the Renaissance and The Alhambra apartments, and Fulton park were all designed to be reminiscent of London's Bloomsbury Square.

During the 1940s, when the Brooklyn Navy Yard expanded, a huge demand for workers created intense housing pressure in both Bedford and Stuyvesant Heights. As more African-American and Caribbean islanders moved in, a syndrome known as "White Flight" began. The white population plummeted as the African-American population rose.

During the 1960s, riots blew out twice, first following the killing of a young Black boy by a white policeman and again after the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Soon after, Robert Kennedy established the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, the nation’s first community development corporation, which still exists today.