Weeksville Heritage Center Left Waiting For Promised $1M

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — An institution that promised to deliver a $1 million ceremonial check to the Weeksville Heritage Center, which recently announced it would be forced to close without a quick influx of funds, sent a representative Tuesday with just a laminated mock-up of a check and the promise he would find the cash at some point.

The H.R. 1242 Resilience Project — inspired by the federal "400 Years of African-American History Commission Act" program – alerted social media followers Monday it would deliver much-needed funds to the Crown Heights center.

But when H.R. 1242 President Don Victor Mooney arrived at the historic center at St. Marks Place and Buffalo Avenue Tuesday afternoon, he did not have a check, could not specify where the money would come from or when it would be delivered.

Mooney promised simply that his organization would be "galvanizing our donors to just make their contributions to Weeksville" and a check would be presented at a Brooklyn Bridge Park this summer at an event that does not yet have a date.

"We will be reaching out across the United States, Wall Street because they were many supporters of the Transatlantic Slave Trade," Mooney said. "I believe through faith in God that we will materialize this."

Weeksville Heritge Center president Rob Fields said he had not been notified until Monday that the press conference would take place or that the historically landmarked site, which recently raised $200,000 through crowdfunding, had been granted the money.

"This is a mess ... We're very much blind sided by this," Fields said. "I'm just a little surprised by all this and not having the full information before we started this is really discouraging and disheartening."

"It was all kind of shady," he added. "Who is this supposedly?"

Mooney's organization was spurred by the federal 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act, created to support black American heritage on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Dutch slave ships in Virginia in 1619, according to its website.

It aims to promote and support African American historic institutions

Its president, Mooney — a Brooklyn native who rowed across the Atlantic in 2014 — assured Fields and reporters who gathered in Weeksville Tuesday, that H.R. 1242 would come through to support the institution in need.

"When a person is hungry do you give them bread or a stone? " Mooney said. "When we come together there is nothing we can't do. "