Land of the Blacks (Manhattan)

The Land of the Blacks (also Negro Frontier or Free Negro Lots) was a village settled by people of African descent north of the wall of New Amsterdam from about 1643 to 1716. It represented an economic, legal and military "modus vivendi" reached with the Dutch West India Company in the wake of Kieft's War. This buffer area with the native Lenape is sometimes considered the first free African settlement in North America, although the landowners had half-free status. There were about 30 African-owned farms over about 130 acres centered in the modern neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and SoHo, including all of the area surrounding Washington Square Park. The rights of the Free Negro community gradually eroded after the seizure of New Netherland in 1667 and it's incorporation into the Province of New York. A later neighborhood was called Little Africa, and its legacy is preserved at the African Burial Ground National Monument.
Development.
The area was formerly known as "Noortwyck", where the ousted Dutch governor Wouter van Twiller had owned a large tobacco farm, "Bossen Bouwerie", built on the earlier Lenape "Sapokanikan".
Africans in the area had experienced slavery in New Amsterdam and were controlled by the Dutch West India Company, not by private slaveholders. Having been under the WIC for years, and having military experience and pressing their rights in the courts in a precedessor to freedom suits, they became recognized as part of a new half-free social class of the colony. Africans had largely built the fortifications of New Netherland, including Fort Amsterdam and the northern palisade, and combat veterans among them were given preferential treatment in the assignment of lands. 
The settlement was created as a buffer area (a sort of military march) by the succeeding governor Willem Kieft when white people evacuated the region due to Kieft's War against the native Lenape people. Although their freedom was only partial, it is sometimes considered the first free African settlement in North America, that status being more commonly given to Fort Mose founded a century later in Spanish Florida, also as a military measure. It has been argued by historians that Atlantic Creole populations in both places came from communities in Africa with pre-existing European ties such as the Kingdom of Kongo, that helped them to negotiate improved living conditions.
Landowning families built a common cattle pen that was shared by their community, and later helped to construct the wall of Wall Street that replaced the initial palisade. Half-free status was not supposed to extend to children of the landholders under the Dutch rule, but in practice this seems to have been obviated, and plots were passed on to the next generation.
After the seizure of New Netherland in 1667 and it's incorporation into the Province of New York, the rights of the Free Negro social group were gradually eroded. In 1702, the first of the New York slave codes were passed, which further limited freedom of the African community in New York. African land ownership in the area was effectively ended by anti-Black legislation passed after the New York Slave Revolt of 1712, which included a ban on inheritance of property. 
There was not a municipal government for the village, but a series of land grants. Village Preservation, using a map from "The Iconography of Manhattan Island", has documented 28 land grants, which were mostly contiguous in one area. Three of the land grants were not connected to the main part.
Legacy.
A later neighborhood, after the dispossessions of property, was called Little Africa in Greenwich Village. Its legacy is preserved at the African Burial Ground National Monument.
A 2020 resolution by Manhattan Community Board 2 supported the commemoration of the African landholding community, otherwise publicly unmarked, and pointed to the suitability of a potential momument in Washington Square Park. In 2021, a temporary digital exhibition at the Oculus, in the spaces of Westfield World Trade Center, was put on by artists of Black Gotham Experience.