Prometheus 6   

Deep roots

Somewhere buried in the archives of the Staten Island Museum is a reel-to-reel Betamax format video tape of a documentary on Sandy Ground. Me and the boys shot it as part of a joint project between the Museum and the NY Public Library some 30 years ago.

There is a certain defiance in the new coat of white paint along the bottom half of the A.M.E. Zion Church in Rossville on Staten Island. All around it, development waits impatiently.

Just past the woods and weeds in the backyard of the church lies a fresh batch of town houses. Opposite the 19th-century church's front door is a row of tightly packed two-year-old homes.

The Rev. Janet Jones, pastor of the church, is undeterred. "We intend to be around for a while," she says.

The church sits in the center of Sandy Ground, a community built by free blacks who came to the southern end of Staten Island in the decades before the Civil War. It is the oldest continuously held settlement established by free blacks in North America, according to local historians.

"Few people know about Sandy Ground, even including some of those who actually live here," said Sylvia Moody D'Alessandro, one of the founders of the Sandy Ground Historical Society, a demure five-room museum down the block from the church.

Indeed, Doreen Cruz, 41 and white, lives across the street from the church but did not know its origins. "I had no idea about the history," said Ms. Cruz, who moved into the neighborhood from Brooklyn two years ago. "I did wonder what was the story with the church, since it sort of stands out in the neighborhood."

Though the church is historically black, less than 1 percent of the neighborhood's population today is black. The oldest Sandy Ground homes, some of them dating back 150 years, stand as remnants of a history tracing to the early 19th century. "There is a sense of responsibility, to keep � as best we can � the heritage alive," said Olivia Moody, 56, a descendant of one of the community's original black families. "There aren't many of us left around here anymore."