Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Brooklyn Brooklyn, IL

Brooklyn is a village in St. Clair County that is recognized as the oldest majority-Black incorporated town in the United States.

According to oral history, Priscilla 'Mother' Baltimore led eleven Black families across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in 1829 to found a freedom village in the American Bottom.

Five white abolitionists platted the townsite in 1837, and Brooklyn was formally incorporated on July 8, 1873, by a unanimous vote of its residents.

Brooklyn's village motto is 'Founded by Chance, Sustained by Courage.'

Quinn Chapel AME Church, founded in Brooklyn in 1836 with the help of missionary William Paul Quinn, is believed to be the first AME church built west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Quinn Chapel and the Antioch Baptist Church, established in 1838, both served as Underground Railroad stations helping enslaved people escape to Canada.

Brooklyn is popularly known as Lovejoy, a name Mayor John Evans gave its post office in 1891 in honor of abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy, and the village's high school later carried the Lovejoy name as well.

John Evans became Brooklyn's first Black mayor in 1886 after African-American residents registered voters and won political control of the village.

Brooklyn's population peaked at 2,568 in the 1950 census, when it was a thriving industrial-era community near East St. Louis.

The 2020 census counted 649 people in Brooklyn, about 93 percent of them Black or African American, spread over just 0.81 square miles.