Blacks in New York

Blacks in New York

Introduction

The development and growth of cities, a process known as urbanization, has played an extraordinary role in the history of the United States. African Americans have participated in this process since the earliest period of the nation's history. Their role has been very significant in the development of New York City. African American history in New York began on the southern tip of Manhattan and gradually moved northward, as did the rest of the population (Katz, 2007).

Prerevolutionary Period

Shortly after the first Dutch settlers arrived on Manhattan Island in the 1620s, eleven enslaved black men—perhaps kidnapped off a Portuguese ship—were brought to New York (then New Netherlands). In 1644, these men sued to gain their freedom. On February 25, 1644, the Dutch began issuing land grants and “half freedom” to some of the petitioners, who began clearing and cultivating the land they received.

These black petitioners became the first colonial landowners of what is now Greenwich Village, then a swampy wilderness. African American ownership of this so-called Land of the Blacks lasted until 1716, when the English established restrictive “slave codes” that prohibited blacks from owning property (Johnson, 2006).

During the colonial period, New York was the major outpost of slavery in the north. In the 1700s, blacks—the majority of them slaves—made up between 10 and 25 percent of New York's population. Scattered throughout the city, blacks lived primarily in the houses of slaveowners, most of whom were artisans such as blacksmiths and chimney sweeps.

Postrevolutionary Period

After the Revolutionary War, poor and working-class Europeans flooded into New York, making labor cheap and abundant. Slavery became less popular, practical, and defensible. In 1799, the state legislature voted for a gradual repeal of slavery, culminating in statewide emancipation in 1827. By the 1790s, small communities of free blacks emerged. One of the largest was in the Five Points area of lower Manhattan, where in 1810, about 12 percent of the population was black (Hansen, 2008).

In 1800, a group of black men and women in lower Manhattan opened the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church. This and other black churches that followed sparked the growth of an African American community in the area of present-day Tribeca. In the early 1800s, part of lower Manhattan's sixth ward contained one of the city's largest black communities, known as “Little Africa.”

For decades, African American businesses and stores dominated Little Africa. It also became home to the Phoenix Society, which black abolitionist Sam Ringgold Ward called “the most progressive and democratic organization in the country.” The interracial society provided adult education, a high school for boys and girls, a library, and a job training and placement center (Dodson, 2008).

Little Africa was also home to Freedom's Journal (1827) and the Colored American (1836), the city's earliest and most influential black newspapers. New York's first public school was started there in 1787, when the New York Manumission Society created the African Free School, intended to help black children prepare for freedom. Eventually, there were seven such schools in lower ...