One small business is changing the game when it comes to classic New York City tourism by putting a spotlight on the moments in history where civil rights were at risk.
Know Your Rights: From the Central Park Five to the Present is a new virtual experience hosted by Inside Out Tours, a full-service DMC and receptive tour operator offering virtual, walking, and bus excursions.
While constructing the tour, president and founder, Stacey Toussaint, accompanied by her fiancé, Derrek Murdock, traveled across the boroughs to sites of unarmed shootings of Black men, false arrests, and miscarriages of justice around the criminal justice system.
To Toussaint, this tour is an opportunity for both public schools to educate students and for parents to have an open conversation with children regarding this history.
This is a tour that's extremely important because what it's meant to be is an insight to what has happened in our city whether we're talking about Sean Bell, Eric Garner, or Amadou Diallo.
Stacey Toussaint
President & Founder, Inside Out Tours
The tour touches upon a range of incidents, going as far back as the Harlem riots during the 1960s.
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Toussaint is excited for the Know Your Right Tour because it addresses what is currently happening in the justice system.
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"What was also very important for me in creating it to not make it a situation where we were talking about villanizing people but rather a situation where we're looking at systems where people may profit over other peoples' misery," Toussaint told NBC New York.
The tour also makes a point to highlight those, whether activists or police officers, who stood up against injustice.
This new addition comes after Inside Out Tours launched the NYC Slavery & the Underground Railroad Tour, which was launched in 2010 but is still one of the company's most popular walking tours.
Next year, Toussaint, who is also an attorney, is hoping to launch a first-of-its-kind in-person Equal Justice Tour talking about the historical development of the criminal justice system in New York.
"I think it's important for us as a society to know, it's not about assigning blame, it's about changing systems," noted Toussaint.
This story is part of a series following small business owners through the pandemic. To view all stories part of NBC Local’s “Rebound” project, click here.
