Esi Lewis: Attorney and Community Activist on Building Black History, Family Legacy, and Joy as Resistance

Esi Lewis grew up on Huguenot Street in New Paltz, in the same house she lives in now with her daughter. It wasn't until later in life that she learned the property sits on a burial ground for enslaved Africans, a discovery that reshaped how she understood the place she'd always called home.Esi is an attorney and the founder of the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Center for Black History and Culture, named for her mother, a pioneering Black Studies professor who chaired the department at SUNY New Paltz for over three decades. In this episode of Dinner Last Night, we follow Esi's path from New Paltz to a decade in New York City, including six years as a prosecutor in Brooklyn's Sex Crimes Bureau, and back home again after her daughter was born. We talk about the Center's work to save the Ann Oliver House, built in 1885 by Jacob Wynkoop, from demolition, the field trips to Huguenot Street that taught Esi about French Protestant settlers but nothing about the Black community that built and worshipped alongside them, and the moment she learned what her own childhood home was built on. We also talk about her podcast We Be Griots, the role of Black churches and song as historic anchors of joy, and the dish that most reminds her of her mother.In this episode:Ribeye, a 10-year-old dancer's protein craving, and why Esi tries never to rush through dinnerGrowing up in the shadow of her mother's legacy, and how Margaret Wade Lewis shaped everything from food to faith to communityJacob Wynkoop, the Ann Oliver House, and why Esi fought to save a piece of New Paltz history from demolitionWhat a griot is, and why Esi's podcast We Be Griots is an act of documented resistanceLiving on Huguenot Street and learning that her family home sits near a burial ground of enslaved AfricansJoy as resistance: how Black communities in the Hudson Valley use celebration, song, and togetherness as a form of healingRaising a daughter with roots, ritual, and a sense of her own place in historyMentioned in this episode:The Margaret Wade Lewis Center for Black History and CultureWe Be Griots podcast (Esi's show)Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz, NYThe Ann Oliver HouseSUNY New Paltz