222 Forgotten Cities: Brownsville
Deep East Oakland documentarian, Brittsense, reflects on six years of life, memory and community in Brownsville, BK
222 FORGOTTEN CITIES
“Cold Summer” Brownsville, Brooklyn, 2015
Cold Summer is a pure example of New York culture in the summertime.
In Brooklyn, drinking water from a fire hydrant is sacred. It is not random. It is a ritual. When the heat rises through the concrete, the hydrant becomes a flowing altar of relief, a public baptism, a reminder that joy is still allowed to exist right here in the middle of everything we have had to survive.
I documented this photograph on a summer day in 2015 while navigating through Brownsville, Brooklyn. During my six years living in New York — and as someone from Deep East Oakland, California — everywhere I document always feels like home because my people are there. I never feel lost, confused, scared or out of touch. It always feels like one big family reunion of my people that I have not seen in a while. That is the energy I enter each community with. Each soul I activate and reflect with carries the energy of remembering.
Summers in Brooklyn are my favorite. The cookouts. The deep laughter. The feeling of being comfortable in our own skin. Being nurtured and held in our culture without having to perform. Being left alone to be in joy and not apologize for it. Dominoes playing. Double dutch ropes hitting pavement. Fish fries. Women braiding hair. Hoop games. Elders sitting and observing. All of this nourishment and returning home to ourselves happens through each spirit interaction. Pure spirit activation.
Brownsville is not just a place defined by headlines. Its history is shaped by community power, cultural vision and grassroots care.
In the late 1960s, Brownsville, especially the Ocean Hill section, became the heart of one of the most important educational liberation movements in New York City. Parents, elders and organizers fought for community-controlled schools, demanding that melanated youth be educated by and for their own communities. This movement was rooted in self determination, cultural pride and the belief that melanated youth deserved to see themselves reflected in what they were taught.
One of the key figures rising from this lineage was Jitu Weusi, a Brooklyn born cultural nationalist, educator and freedom organizer who helped shape African-centered education, language and cultural consciousness throughout Central and East Brooklyn. Through community schools, cultural spaces and organizing circles, Jitu Weusi and those around him worked to re anchor melanated youth in ancestral history, dignity and self knowledge. Brownsville was part of that spiritual and educational corridor of awakening.
At the same time, organizations like The East and the Uhuru Sasa Shule Freedom Now School created African centered learning spaces, cultural hubs and community-run education models that nurtured melanated youth not just academically, but spiritually, artistically and culturally. These were freedom schools before the world had language for what that truly meant.
And that spirit is still alive.
Today, Brownsville continues to heal and build itself through projects like the Brownsville Student Farm Project, where empty lots become living classrooms and melanated youth grow food, leadership and connection to land. Through spaces like the Brownsville Green Community Garden, neighbors gather to nurture food, peace and collective care. These are modern extensions of the same lineage of self determination, stewardship and cultural remembering.
So when I say Brownsville is spirit, I mean it is a lineage site.
A root chakra of Brooklyn.
A place where culture did not just survive. It was protected, shaped and passed down.
Cold Summer is not just a moment in Brownsville.
It is Brownsville remembering itself.
I was filled with that energy when I documented Cold Summer. I felt held by the community, liberated & SEEN, that feeling birthed both me and the moment of this young king. I have always felt a responsibility and accountability to my people once I gained knowledge of self, especially for the children. Their innocence is something I want to protect, and when it has been stripped away, I want to give some of that back in the moment.
When I approached him, I complimented his skin and his crown, something I always do. I love to highlight not only the beauty of melanin, but the importance of it. I call our hair our crown because of the power it holds. I also complimented him on his Jordan 11s, (one of my favorite Jordans!) and the way his socks were pulled high, both deeply cultural expressions in our community. We started talking about how dope Brooklyn felt at that moment, and as we were speaking, he dropped down and got nourishment from the hydrant right on time. Drinking from a water fountain in Brooklyn is deeply cultural. At that moment, I had to document it.
Most people do not know this, but one of my sacred practices is something I created called Spirit Shooting.
I created this because I did not want to conform to standard photography practices rooted in someone else’s rulebook, a rulebook that has historically been written by a Caucasian gaze that dictates our value. Spirit Shooting allows me to document from a lens of love, not trauma. It requires me to be deeply in tune with myself so that spirit activation can happen between me and my people.
The camera becomes a mirror.
In this moment, me and this young king are reflections.
My documentation is a contribution toward changing narratives that have suffocated melanated existence, leaving no room for breath. Seeing melanated kings through my eyes is an acknowledgment of the bravery they embody and the unapologetic revolutionary flame that cannot be extinguished.
Healing your inner child is not soft work.
It is ancestral repair.
It is how cycles of hardness end.
It is how wholeness returns to our bloodlines.
It is how joy becomes safe again.
It is how laughter stops feeling like something we have to earn.
Cold Summer is a reflection of the inner child that still lives within all of us. It is the innocence that has been stolen from melanated youth and melanated kings across the world. It is the visual interpretation of water that heals the flames burning within us.
This Photograph Says:
Liberation is law.
Remembrance is ancestral.
Returning home to self is a BIRTHRIGHT.
Since its release, the limited edition Cold Summer print has been purchased and now lives in the homes of art collectors across the country. Many were drawn to this photograph because of the Brooklyn summertime culture it represents. Many were also moved by the importance of seeing a melanated young king honored and highlighted within their personal spaces. Melanated people are masterpieces, and this work exists to reflect that truth back to the world.
Each time this print is purchased, it is more than an art transaction. It is an act of homage. It is recognition. It is someone choosing to place respect, dignity and melanated presence on their walls in a world that too often withholds acknowledgment from our youth.
If you feel called to anchor this truth in your space, you can become a collector at brittsense.com.
I offer extreme gratitude to every collector who has chosen to hold Cold Summer in their home. Our collectors are living archives of this work. You are the keepers of these moments, the guardians of these stories, and the stewards of remembrance. Because of you, these stories do not fade. They live. They breathe. They are remembered.
Melanated people deserve love without struggle first, because:
We are the gatekeepers of the world.
We are the builders of the world.
We are the wisdom of the world.
We are the principle of the world through every condition.
We are the Light.
We are the Liberation.
We are the Ritual.
We are the SPIRIT.
REACH THE WORLD BUT ALWAYS TOUCH THE HOODS FIRST.
Our neighborhoods and our communities are the Meccas of the world through every condition.
Brittani Sensabaugh, widely known as Brittsense, is a Deep East Oakland–born documentarian whose photography explores place, lineage and cultural remembrance. She is the creator of the 222 Forgotten Cities series.
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