Conrad Wayne Piggott

Interview Description

Oral History Interview with Conrad Wayne Piggott
Conrad Wayne Piggott was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1950 to parents of mixed ancestry, including African, German Jewish, Taino, and West Indian. His father was a New York City Transit Police Department detective and his mother was a housewife. Piggott lived in the Fort Greene Houses until 1955, when his family moved to the Boulevard Houses in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, where they remained until 1995. He attended PS 273, George Gershwin Junior High School, and Thomas Jefferson High School. After graduating high school, he joined the Marines and served in the Vietnam War. He remained in military service for much of his life. As of 2015, Piggott is a resident of the Ocean Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.

In the interview, Conrad Wayne Piggott discusses moving from the Fort Greene Houses to the Boulevard Houses in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, the rural nature of East New York in the 1950s and 1960s, local businesses, playing in the nearby junkyards and wetlands, joining the Marines and serving in the Vietnam War, his affinity for military life, his love of East New York (especially his time as a youth), his father's work as a New York City Transit Police Department detective, his mother's ancestry, teenagers today, corporal punishment, and his interactions with the police. The interview was conducted by Sarita Daftary-Steel at Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library.

The collection consists of twenty oral history interviews (with nineteen narrators) conducted by Sarita Daftary-Steel with residents (past and present) of the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. The interviews were conducted between January 2014 and February 2015. The project was designed to capture the experiences of East New York residents who lived in the neighborhood during the period when families of color (African American, West Indian, and Puerto Rican) moved in and White families moved out, and the resulting decline of services and quality of life that followed. This process began as early as the 1950s and continued through the rest of the twentieth century. Sarita Daftary-Steel is a community organizer who worked for United Community Centers from 2003 to 2013, most of those years as the East New York Farms! Project Director.

Citation

Piggot, Conrad Wayne, Oral history interview conducted by Sarita Daftary-Steel, January 09, 2015, Sarita Daftary-Steel collection of East New York oral histories, 2015.011.16; Brooklyn Historical Society.