Lizzo is known for making moments, and she did just that at the Global Festival Live concert in New York City over the weekend.
During her set on Saturday, the "Rumors" singer took the liberty to address an array of topics, including homelessness, climate change and institutionalized racism.
AS WE TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, SOLVING HOMELESSNESS, AND MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.. WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM THAT HAPPENS IN THIS COUNTRY ALL THE TIME.
Have you been to a Lizzo show? #Liztalk
pic.twitter.com/43x0XqzIuz— ALL THE RUMORS ARE TRUE (@lizzo) September 26, 2021
In the 0:53 second clip, the Grammy-award-winning artist gave the crowd a history lesson about Seneca Village, which was an affluent Black community in the early 1820s.
"Before it was Central Park it was Seneca Village — and if you don't know what that is, it was an affluent African American community that lived here," she said.
She continued, telling the crowd they were "evicted" and "bulldozed" in order to build the park where the concert was held.
"As we talk about climate change and making the world a better place and solving homelessness, we also have to talk about the institutionalized racism that happens in this country all the time," the BET Award winner added.
The 33-year-old artist encouraged the crowd to "talk about our history constructively" in order to "build a better future."
Before Central Park was created, affluent Black Americans lived and thrived as their own community, living between West 82nd to West 89th Street. The area was seen as an "escape" from the "unhealthy conditions and racism" they endured in downtown Manhattan.
Peacock host Amber Ruffin shared the story with her audience during an episode, and retold the history of progressive Black towns being "hidden underwater."
Ruffin kicked off the history lesson with recounting how what we know as Lake Lanier in Georgia was once a Black town called Oscarville. The town was filled with a church, school district and homes owned by Black Americans until 1912. According to NPR, two Black teenagers and a Black suspect were hung to death after being accused of rape crimes. After the executions, a mob of white men terrorized and killed the rest of the Black people in the surrounding area until the county disappeared. It went from 1,000 residents to zero within an eight-year span.
On NPR's podcast Fresh Air, Patrick Phillips, a former resident of the county when it was an all-white town, spoke about being frightened and recounts when he first heard about the incident.
"And so I asked, you know, other kids on the bus how this — why this was. And, you know, they told me this story and in there, you know — in the kids' version, it was very mythic and kind of legendary. And it just went that a long, long time ago, there was a white girl who was attacked by black men and all the white people in Forsyth banded together and ran out all the black people. So that's really the first version of the story that I heard and that would have been in about 1977," Phillips recalled.
After wiping out the entire community, they decided to make Lake Lanier.
The 42-year-old Nebraska native continued to inform her viewers that while society tried to erase the history of Black towns, people are beginning to conduct research in order to teach other Black Americans about their history.
