Bringing history to life

She’s a renaissance woman in Suffolk County and the broader region.

Georgette Grier-Key, Ph.D., is the executive director and chief curator of the Eastville Community Historical Society of Sag Harbor; president of the Brookhaven Town branch of the NAACP; professor at the City University of New York’s Medgar Evers College; president of the Museum Association of New York; vice president of the Preservation League of New York State; a commissioner of the New York State 250th Commemoration Commission; special projects coordinator at the Southampton African American Museum; and the list goes on and on.

She is cultural partner for Sylvester Manor Educational Farm of Shelter Island.

Ms. Grier-Key identifies herself as “an activist” dedicated to “advocating for voices not often heard.” A title on her website: “Preserve and Protect the Past for the Future.” On it under “Research Interests,” she says: “Reconstructing the Black experience, the historic life and patterns of Africa Diasporas of North America (particularly of Long Island, New York), with a focus on pre- through post-Northern slavery and Free Black communes.”

As Guild Hall in East Hampton — an institution at which she has worked along with the Huntington Arts Council and Parrish Art Museum in Southampton — said in its description of Ms. Grier-Key: “She is one of the most outspoken advocates for the preservation and celebration of Long Island history with an emphasis on African American, Native American and mixed-heritage historical reconstruction.” At 49 years old, Ms. Grier-Key has been — and is — deeply involved in so many activities as historian, educator, curator, administrator, artist, scholar, and yes, activist. Earlier this summer, Ms. Grier Key, who resides in Bellport, was honored at a benefit gala at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. Tracy Mitchell, the theater’s executive director, commented that she is one of the “unseen heroes that really make our community wonderful.”

Ms. Grier-Key was raised in Uniondale in Nassau County. A key influence was her maternal grandfather, the Rev. Dodenhuff Green, who founded Christ Temple Church of God in Christ in Uniondale and became an underbishop with 145 Black churches under his jurisdiction, from Brooklyn to the East End. With her grandfather, she would travel and get to know the island beyond Uniondale.

Her father, George W. Grier, is an electronics engineer who worked at Grumman and other industries on Long Island. He is a proud Army veteran, a former military police officer.

Ms. Grier-Key attended Nassau County Community College earning an Associate Degree in marketing, and then went to the State University of New York at Old Westbury.

I’ve been a journalism professor for 46 years at SUNY Old Westbury, which for its nearly 60 years has been committed to diversity and social justice. “I loved it,” she told me last week about going to SUNY Old Westbury. “I had a great experience.”

She graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor’s Degree in visual arts with a focus on electronic media. On the 50th anniversary of the school’s founding, she was cited as one of its 50 people of distinction.

She went on to the Ruth S. Ammon School of Education at Adelphi University in Garden City and received a Master’s in Education with a concentration on art education and then attended Dowling College in Oakdale from which she received a doctorate in arts education.

At CUNY Medgar Evers College, Ms. Grier-Key teaches history courses, including African American History, Women Leaders in the African American Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., and History of the United States.

“Long Island is still highly segregated,” she was saying last week, and there is a great need to “do something about it.” She cited a variety of studies including those of the Syosset-based organization Erase Racism that determined the island is among the “most segregated” areas in the United States, notably in housingpatterns.

As to becoming executive director and chief curator of Eastville Community Historical Society, Ms. Grier-Key relates that she joined it in 2009 at the suggestion of her godmother, Audrey Gaul, who had a home in Azurest. In 2011 she accepted the executive director and chief curator positions.

Azurest is part of the historic SANS (Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Ninevah Subdivisions) district. “I work,” she has said, “to protect and preserve what was a haven for 19th-century African American and Native American artists like Olivia Ward Bush Banks … and Nathan Cuffee, a Native American author who co-wrote “Lord of the Soil.” Part of my job is to highlight their art but also protect it and teach it. How do we fit their stories into the story of the East End and how do we continue to add to that story thinking of [contemporary] artists like Stanford Biggers and [author] Colson Whitehead is our challenge.”

In recent days, the Eastville Community Historical Society joined with the Southampton African American Museum and Montauk Historical Society in a visit to Montauk of a replica of the slave ship Amistad, and a commemoration, tour and celebration.

Some 49 enslaved Africans rose against their captors in 1839 and took control of the Amistad. It was seized by a Navy ship off Montauk. After a protracted legal battle, the U.S. Supreme Court freed the Amistad Africans.

This is the kind of history Ms. Grier-Key thinks people need to know.