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The community of South Jamaica was originally part of Jamaica, one of the oldest of the Greater New York area. Jamaica was a former town and capital of Queens County[1]. It was originally inhabited by the Jameco Indians. In 1655 the first English settlers paid the Native Americans two guns, a coat and some gunpowder for the land lying between the old trail, present day Jamaica Avenue, and “Beaver Pond,” which would later become Baisley Pond[2]. On March 16, 1656, Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherland, granted a charter for the area to fifteen English families. The charter was intended to start a new plantation halfway between Hempstead and Canarsie[3]. The area was named Rustdorp, meaning Quiet Village. In 1664, the area was taken over by the English and renamed Jameco after the areas original inhabitants, the Jameco Indians. In 1680 the area adopted its present day name, Jamaica. On May 17, 1686, New York governor Thomas Dongan issued a charter to the landowners of Jamaica. The Dongan Charter combined the various small settlements into the town of Jamaica and set its boundaries. During these early developments, Jamaica began to grow as a site of recreational and commercial activity. Beaver Pond, located in present day South Jamaica, provided a principle source of revenue, beaver skins. In the early 1700’s, Beaver Pond was a recreational center for skating and horse racing, with a track having been built around the pond. It was considered the playground of British officers.
During the early 1800’s, South Jamaica was inhabited by a large number of black families. These families were originally brought in as slaves to work the tobacco plantations in the area, and they chose to remain after slavery was abolished in New York State in 1820[4]. In 1814, Jamaica was granted a village charter by New York State. By the mid nineteenth century, Jamaica served primarily as a village that served as a rest stop along the major east-west route of Long Island. South Jamaica was primarily a rural area that consisted of an area of scattered farms. Fulton Avenue, present day Jamaica Avenue, was the main highway through Brooklyn to the South Ferry from present day Queens Village. It was during this time newspaper articles and people began referring to the area South of Jamaica Avenue as South Jamaica[5]. In 1844, the construction of, what is known today as, the Long Island Railroad was completed. By the end of the Civil War, Jamaica began to emerge as the commercial and transportation center of Long Island. After the abolition of slavery, blacks from southern communities began to migrate into Jamaica in large numbers[6]. In 1898 Queens became part of the City of New York of which Jamaica was the county seat[7].
At the turn of the century, many families began to move into Jamaica, spurred on by the extension of the trolley to downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. The development of South Jamaica at this time was characterized by speculators who preyed upon people who flocked to South Jamaica to escape to an area that was less dense than the slums in Manhattan and Brooklyn. This led to a concentration of poor and shabby constructions that in turn resulted in a continuation of many of the social problems prevalent in the slums from which they fled. In 1909 the Brooklyn Times, March 7th edition, contrasted the rampant crime, poverty, and filth in South Jamaica with the better conditions characteristic to the rest of Jamaica [8]. German, Irish, and Italian immigrants and their descendants occupied many of the one and two family homes built in South Jamaica at this time[9]. By 1913, South Jamaica became its own entity with the completion of the Long Island Railroad Station. The bulk of South Jamaica’s housing was built during the post-World War I real estate boom. Many of these homes exist even today. The developers did not use regular street patterns and many blocks were small, irregular, and unpaved. Most of the homes were built on minimum sized lots. Many of the streets lacked public sewers and many homes required cesspools.
Between 1922 and 1932, the black population in South Jamaica underwent a rapid growth. It was estimated that there were between twelve and fifteen thousand blacks in Jamaica in 1932[10]. By 1936, the housing situation deteriorated to such a degree that then mayor Fiorello La Guardia formed a commission to make a report of the South Jamaica District[11]. The Special Mayor’s Commission found that of 4,040 buildings surveyed, a majority had substantial structural and other deficiencies. Poverty was rampant among blacks, Polish, Italian, and Jewish residents. Inadequate schools, sewers, recreational activities, and street paving plagued the community.
The black community expanded dramatically after World War II, and in the 1950’s and 60’s, the black population in South Jamaica more than doubled from 21,000 to 43,000. In the late 1950s, at least 25,000 whites moved out of the few remaining mixed areas in South Jamaica[12]. By the early 1960’s, South Jamaica’s population was almost entirely African American. In fact, it had the third largest black neighborhood in the New York City.
During the 1960’s there was a boom in the construction of large-scale housing developments[13]. Rochdale Village, the second largest housing co-operative in the US, was founded in 1965[14]. Though South Jamaica was a predominantly black community, at least 80% of the original families in Rochdale were white. A majority of whom were Jewish. Two smaller complexes, Baisley Park Houses and Cedar Manor Homes, were built soon after. Private developers also built approximately 2,500 units of new housing. These new homes were often placed on blocks with old and more deteriorated structures. Many of the new owners were discouraged by their surroundings and lack of city services.
During the 1980’s, immigrants flocked to South Jamaica with the largest groups coming from Guyana and Jamaica, as well as significant numbers of people from Haiti, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago[15]. Many of these new arrivals found work as public employees. Despite the growth in population, South Jamaica, like most inner-city neighborhoods, suffered a rise in crime and decline in income during the 1970s and '80s. It became one of most impoverished and dangerous areas in the city. Throughout the 80’s, South Jamaica was the center of a crack epidemic. Gangs ran rampant, including the Black Spades and Seven Crowns, and the iron fist with which drug dealers ruled the streets finally came to public attention on the night of Feb. 26, 1988[16]. That is when rookie police officer Edward Byrne was killed while guarding the home of a drug trial witness. The death of officer Edward Byrne lead then Mayor Edward Koch to create the Tactical Narcotics Team to sweep the city's worst drug areas, including South Jamaica, with waves of so-called buy-and-bust operations. In the aftermath of the crack epidemic, the community of South Jamaica was left deeply scarred. Many residents have lost friends and relatives to the drug or the violence it spawned. Many still refuse to speak openly about drug addiction or dealing out of fear of retribution[17].
Present day South Jamaica has the largest African-American population in the borough of Queens[18]. The violence of the 80’s has subsided dramatically in South Jamaica. Drugs and gangs continue to be a problem only in certain areas of South Jamaica[19]. Overall, life has changed for the better since the 1980s. CUNY's York College relocated and expanded its campus to South Jamaica in the 1980s and early 1990s. The AirTrain terminal to JFK was built at Archer and Sutphin, where South Jamaica meets downtown Jamaica. In 1992, an $81 million reconstruction project by the City of New York went under way intended to help improve the infrastructure of southeast Queens, where residents had long been plagued by severe flooding, deteriorating roadways and miles of curbs and sidewalks in major disrepair[20]. The project was completed in 2006. Up until recently, like neighborhoods across New York City, families in South Jamaica had benefited from the real estate boom with rising property values.
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