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African-Americans:
Slavery and Emancipation
Contents
Slavery and Emancipation >>
Segregation in Places
of Worship
Slavery and Emancipation
On September 15, 1655, the ship Witte Paert
docked in what is today New York Harbor with a full cargo of 300
African slaves. Although slaves had appeared in New Amsterdam as
early as 1626, they had previously come in relatively small numbers
from the Dutch West Indies. The Witte Paert's arrival signaled an
increasing role for New Amsterdam as a port of destination in the
Atlantic Slave trade. Many more such voyages would follow as the
Dutch West India Company added slave trading to the colony's myriad
economic pursuits.1
Like the English who followed, the Dutch
first brought African slaves to New Amsterdam to satisfy a growing
demand for labor needed for the growth of the colony. Most slaves
who remained in New Amsterdam worked for the West India Company
as agricultural laborers or in unskilled tasks essential for the
colony's expansion and fortification against Indian or foreign
attacks. The Dutch West India Company provided their slaves with
medical care, food and housing and, as the colony became more
established and the need for slaves diminished, granted some "half
freedom"-- a conditional release from bondage in return for
services on demand and lifelong payments. In addition, New Amsterdam's
slaves had the same standing in court as whites, and could even
testify in cases involving whites. 2
In the years following the English conquest
of 1664, conditions for slaves worsened considerably as a tight
bondage system and heightened restrictions were instituted. In
British New York, slave owners typically possessed two or three
blacks, who usually lived and worked in their masters' homes where
they labored as household domestics. Black slaves also worked
as coopers, tailors, bakers, tanners, sailmakers and masons; some
masters even permitted their slaves to hire out their own labor.
3
In 1827, New York State enacted a law emancipating
all slaves and abolishing the practice of holding men, women and
children in bondage. At that time, the African-American population
of New York City was 13,589 or seven percent of the total. However,
emancipation did not bring immediate equality, nor is there much
evidence of great improvement in the lives of black New Yorkers.
Due to the virulent racism of the 19th century, black New Yorkers
found themselves limited largely to low paying and menial employment.
Under slavery, many had worked as domestic servants, and they
continued to labor at these jobs after emancipation because few
other occupations were open to them. For those few fortunate enough
to learn a trade, chances to practice it were limited.4
Manhattan had no distinct racial ghetto before
the Civil War, and black New Yorkers frequently resided side by
side on the same block and sometimes in the same buildings as
whites. If there was a core area of settlement, it was north of
Chambers Street on the west side of Manhattan between 23rd and
40th Streets. But if blacks did not live in a distinct segregated
neighborhood, they usually occupied the most inferior housing.
Under such crowded and unsanitary conditions it is not surprising
that African-Americans suffered from poor health. Typhus fever,
small pox, pneumonia and bronchitis were all too common among
the city's poor, both black and white, yet the death rate among
African-Americans was probably the highest in the city.
5
On the Lower East Side, the neighborhood's comparatively
few African-Americans lived in tenements alongside immigrant Jews,
Italians and others. Because they would have been relegated to
the most inferior housing in the neighborhood, blacks on the Lower
East Side may have been more concentrated in housing closer to
the waterfront where the worst tenements existed.
Segregation in 19th century
New York City extended outward from the homes of African-Americans
to encompass almost every aspect of their existence. On public
conveyances, blacks were excluded from omnibuses and permitted
only on the outside platform of horsecars. Prisons, workhouses
and almshouses were also segregated. Even in the arena of entertainment
and public amusement, blacks were universally disallowed from
participating with their white co-residents. In churches like
All Saint's on the Lower East Side, free blacks were forced to
worship in spaces separate from the congregation, called slave
galleries.6
1
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First
Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998); Frederick Binder
and David Reimers, All the Nations Under Heaven: An Ethnic and
Racial History of the United States (New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1995); Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham:
A History of New York City to 1898 (New York, NY: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone;
Binder and Reimers, All the Nations Under Heaven; Burrows
and Wallace, Gotham; Ira Rosenwaike, Population History
of New York City (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972).
5 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone;
Binder and Reimers, All the Nations Under Heaven; Burrows
and Wallace, Gotham.
6 Leonard P. Curry, The Free Black
in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of a Dream (Chicago,
MI: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
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