Black gotham Carla Peterson recounts the lives of black elites in new york city in the 19th century. Professor peterson examines a community of black new read more . Recounts the lives of africanamerican elites in new ork. This is about an hour, ten minutes. Um, i want the start out my talk with two quotes. Um, theyre both from the prologue of my book, and ill give a little explanation for them, um, but they introduce why i decided to write book. Write the book. So the first quote is in my own prose from the prologue. We still hold certain truths about africanamericans to be selfevident; that the phrase 19th Century Black americans refers to enslaved people. That the, that new york state before the civil war denotes a place of freedom, that blacks in this new york city esignates harlem, that the black community posits a classless and culturally unified society, that a black elite did not exist until well into the 20th century. The lives of my new york forebearers belies such assumptions. They were born free at a time when slavery was still legal in new york state. They lived in racialtymixed neighborhoods, first in Lower Manhattan and then after the civil war in brooklyn at a time when harlem was a mere village. They were part of new yorks small but Significant Community and, specifically, its elite class. So the first impulse for my writing the book was my desire to overturn these assumptions, assumptions that we live with almost on a daily basis. And, therefore, to point to the significance of the black elite in new york city. So it was a professional impulse, if you will. The second quote is from the end graph of the prologue. And it is from Toni Morrisons beloved. Denver was seeing it now and feeling it through beloved, and the more fine points she made, the more details she provided, the more beloved liked it. So she anticipated the questions by giving blood to the scraps her mother and grandmother told her. And a heartbeat. Denver spoke, beloved listened, and the two did the best they could to create what really happened. How it really was. Something only stephane knew because she alone had the mind for it and the time afterward to shape it. Create what really happened. So this second quote points to one of my great concerns in writing the book, the idea to recover my familys past. Not my mothers, but my great, great grandparents, my great grandparents and realizing that their memories were not my memories. So how could i tell the story of memories that were not my own and that had just come down to me in scraps . Be and how could i then give blood and a heartbeat to these scraps . So that was my second, much more personal motivation for writing the book. And, indeed, i had a hard time trying to give blood and a heartbeat to the scraps i found. Because i started with almost nothing, with really one false story. The false story, partly false story, basically, i was told hat i had a great grandfather, that hed been born in haiti, that his name was philippe, that at the time of the haitian revolution he left haiti, went that hed been born in haiti, to paris, became a pharmacist, then came to new york and an lo sized his name to Phillip Augustus white. The story was half true. There was no haiti in the background, here was no trip to paris. He was born, actually, in this new jersey, in the hoboken, to paris, became a pharmacist, moved very quickly [laughter] moved very quickly to new york city and did become a pharmacist. So i was faced with a real problem there. And as i started my research to find family stories, what i discovered was that there had actually been a real will to commemorate in, among 19th Century Black new yorkers that forgetting was not their way of life. They started off, first of all, in commemorations, for example, of important events like the abolition of the slave trade, january 1, 1808, and commemorated it every, every, um, year after on the same day in ceremonies, in parade. They commemorated the abolition of slavery in the state of new york which was july 4, 1827. They had newspapers, the colored american freedoms journal, where they wrote about themselves in this a desire to commemorate. They tried to erect statues, for example, one to Henry Highland Garnet who i might mention a little later. Hes really not central to this talk, but hed been an mportant black leader. They wanted to create a memorial in his honor. They managed to create but by and large did not manage to preserve. So the problem of preservation they wanted to create a became a tremendous one. When youre an undersourced community, when you dont have fund and resources, how do you preserve . So so much got lost by the wayside. And, of course, the best example i could give that all of you are familiar with is the negroes Burial Ground in downtown, right, new york. How it was the Black Cemetery all the way throughout the 18th century, got destroyed in 1795 because of really speculation, what else in new york . So the cemetery was taken over to make ground for, to lay lay ground for new lots to be sold, houses to be build, et, et. Etc. , etc. And then there was the problem of the archives. The earliest new york archive as established by john pintard, a very well known, white elite man. But black new yorkers had to but black new yorkers had to wait until the 1920s to arturo shone berg to schaumberg to establish the schaumberg center. And yet, basically, the archives were, ultimately, my only resource. Its the only place i had to go to since my family had given me so little and half of a story. So what i do in the book, and i do want to point this out, is the book unfolds on two level t. Own within levels. On one level its the story of my search, how i went through the archives looking for material, finding, not finding, how i put them together. And on the second level, of course, it is the story it. So i started out in the schaumberg, and i was really lucky, lucky to find very early on two scrapbook pages in an archival collection. And in them i found the obituary pasted on the scrapbook of my great grandfather and then my great, great grandfather. So this is the first scrapbook page. It is my great grandfather. And, of course, the name was with Phillip Augustus white, so i recognized him immediately. To give you a really quick thumbnail sketch, he was born in 1823, died in 1891. He was from a fairly poor family. His father died when he was young. He went to one of the public schools, they called them a colored school. He, afterwards, went to train with james mckeon smith whos one of our early doctors and pharmacists and was an apprentice in smiths pharmacy for two years. That then enabled him to enter the college of pharmacy of the city of new york. And he got a degree in 1844. 1844, black man from the college of pharmacy. His great then he established a pharmacy, a drug tore in downtown new york. T is on the corner of what was rankfurt and gold street and part of Pace University is there now. He made quite a bit of money through his drugstore. The money he had he gave back to two causes, one the education of black children and the other his church. St. Phillips Episcopal Church. When he moved to brooklyn in 1870, he settled there. In 1883 seth lowe, who was then mayor of brooklyn, aponted him to the appointed him to the brooklyn board of education. He had the first plaque seat on the brook black seat on the brooklyn board of education. So that is my great grandfather. This is his fatherinlaw, my great, great grandfather. So you can check your family e tree. Phillip white marries elizabeth, and this is elizabeths father. He was the one who no, his parent were haitian. He was born in new york. He was born in 1813, died in the early 1880s. Went to a school that i come back and talk to you, talk about later. Did a variety of odd jobs, married my great, great grandmother who died very young, i know nothing about her. And in his second marriage he married into the ray family. They were a prominent family, and cornelius brother, Peter Williams gray, had a pharmacy. So he was brought into the drugstore as a pharmacist. He had no background the way my great grandfather did, no training, but he could become a pharmacist. He, too, was very devoted to st. Phillips. Um, the other treasuretrove that i found at the schaumberg were the Harry Williamson papers. And, again, if you look down on the family tree, you will see him there. And i wont go into any detail, and maybe that doesnt show up too well. But in the, in doing the family research, the woman on the right here is mary joseph yons, and she is the sister of my great, great grandmother, rebecca marshall. So, and she married this man, lyons. And i bring them up although im not going to talk about them much in this talk tonight, i bring them up because albro lyons said to his daughter so shes on the family tree hat he wanted to write the story, the history of his generation. But he never got further than the title, and the title he had picked was the gentleman in black. So he said to his daughter, i am not going to be able to do it. I want you to do it. So in this same collection of papers we have a typed manuscript about 85 pages, pretty much in draft form, organizeally at least, and what she said was that from the vast output of fugitive scrap she was going to try and write her memoir. And she titled it memory t of yesterdays memories of yesterdays. All of which i saw and part of hich i was, an autobiography. So she wrote the 85 pages but didnt get it published. So i consider my book black gotham, to be the final event, the final publication of this idea of writing the history of the gentleman in black which goes well back into the 19th century. And i just hope if theyre looking down listening, watching, reading that they approve of what i did. [laughter] um, but what i want to say is that the word scrap really stuck with me. The scrapbook pages that i found, and then the daughter saying that she wrote her memoir from the vast output of fugitive scraps. So i see my book very much as a scrapbook. There are parts, i choose an event or a story, i tell it. My chronology, its a chronological story, but there are gaps which i cant possibly fill in, and i dont try to. So think of my book as a scrapbook. I also talk about it as a partial history meaning im not trying to give an entire history, im not even trying to give an objective history. My history is partial. Its partial because its about my family, and its because its only a part of black new york history and because i am partial to it. Its also a chronological history but very much a cyclical one because what it does is traces the ups and downs of black new yorkers. Every time they feel that theyve made social, political, economic progress something happens to slap them in the face and bring them down again. Lastly, though, i also think of it as a spatial history. And thats why i titled the book, black gotham, to show the way in which the degree to which so much of their life was formed by where they lived, the city of gotham and the neighborhoods in it. So im going to name the five, um, spaces. I think of it, the space as concentric circles. And im going to name the five of them now, and then im going to come back, and im only going to talk about a couple of them. If i tried to do the whole thing, wed be here all night. So the first one, then, is what alexander krummel called the wide circle of the leading citizens of new york and the vicinity, basically the black elite. The second is the black community, and im sure thats a term you all hear a lot, the black community this, that and the other. So just to give you a sense of some numbers for those of you who like numbers, n 1840 the number of black inhabitants was about 16,400 out of 313,000. This is all approximate. And then it declines to about 12,500, um, out of 814,000 in 1860. So just some kind of ballpark numbers. The third, which im going to come pack, is the city itself, gotham, where they lived in raciallymixed neighborhoods and had a variety of contact with whites and blacks. So thats something i will definitely come back to. Then beyond goth maam gotham, the contacts that they had with blacks in other cities like philadelphia, boston, so forth. And last weekend if one of my audiences, there was a man from philly, and we can have a real go to because the differences in sensibility and culture in th century 19th Century Black philadelphia and boston were very different from new york, and we can talk about that in q a, if you want to. And finally and not the least important is the sense of being black philadelphia and boston a citizen of the world. That they were cosmopolitan, that they belonged to the entire world, that they were part of the entire world. So let me start by talking a little bit about the elite and this idea of the wide circle of the leading citizens of new york and vicinity. So the first thing that i want to point out is the way in which education was really absolutely foundational to this elite. If nothing else, i could say this is a book about education. Education, education, education. So what ou hear now is not new at all. I mean, turn on new york one, and youre hearing about the school system, etc. , etc. Same issues back then. This is the Famous School of the early 19th century. Its an africanfree school. It was called the mulberry Street School. And that is where my great, great grandfather peter went to school. And he went to school with a bunch of young men who turned out to be leaders, real leaders of the black community both in new york and beyond. And ill just name the ones that im going to come and talk about later. There was George Downing, charles reason and his brother patrick, and james mckeon smith. So the values there were very much the values of a liberal arts egg, what today we would call the Solid Foundation of a liberal arts education. In addition to that, there were development or education in other areas. Character was one. Respectability, another. The acquisition of wealth. This is new york. Basically, work hard, become very skilled in your trade or in your profession and make money in the process. But then give money back to the community. And finally, in this idea of cosmopolitanism. Read shakespeare, read milton, read wordsworth and have a sense of the entire world. So what i think is really important to think of here is the way in which when we say blackamerican or africanamerican, you know, an image immediately comes to mind, and i kind of static. What i want to point out is the very dynamic process of making identity in this period. People have been kidnapped from and brought enslaved to the new world, to the United States, to america, to the United States, to new york. And they didnt become blackamerican or africanamericans overnight, but the the a process of struggle. And that was of trying to forge identity. And thats what the schooling was all about. So to pass on that circle number one, to pass on circle number two is the, um, black community it with all the institutions, literate society, political societies, so forth. And im not going to spend much time talking about these. We can come back in the q a period. I will say theyre mainly male organizations. Women are not members. Theyre definitely not officers. The definitely not officers. Theyre invited as companions to a talk like now, right . But they would never be a member of the Greenwich Village society for historic preservation. [laughter] but they could accompany their spouse to it. And that presented, that was an incredible Research Problem for me which i could talk about later. Um, the other thing, um, so that, basically, is the black community, and im going to pass on. Um, so education schools were one, um, and churches the other. And my familys church was st. Hillips Episcopal Church. It was down here in Lower Manhattan and is now up in harlem. So the third circle, m, is that of gotham, and this is where im going to spend the rest of my time talking. Um, and i have a section in my book titled distance and proximity because what i want to point out is no matter how distant black new yorkers were from their white counterparts, either poor, nativeborn irish immigrants, german immigrants or even wealthier whites, um, they were never, there was still proximity. Because they lived downtown in raciallymixed neighborhoods, um, in ward four and ward fife fife ward five and ward six and ward eight. They were always close to others, people who were not like them. Not necessarily in the same house or the same tenement, but maybe tenements on the street or at least block to block. And what this led to were some really surprising, to me surprising and to them also unpredictable contacts with whites. And im just going to mention a couple of things, um, that i talk about and that i think are, make point. The first is all new yorkers xperience the same indignity of living in new york, the same filth, the same pigs who are running around, right . Rooting eating garbage and knocking people over and biting you in the leg. The same disease like smallpox, like cholera, like yellow fever. Unless you were wealthy and could escape town. But the other thing maybe more important is this idea of what i call whimsy, that theres no real set protocol for race relations. You would think that in the 1840s, 50s, 60s with a city in which racial discrimination, hostility is so intense that every boundary would be tightly drawn, and you would really know what to do. And yet they ncountered what i call whimsy. And i get this from mari texas cha. My new toy. If her memoir says writing for colored folks depended on the whim whims of drivers. She talks about going to school at times she was free to get on the railroad car. At other times she was like, no, you have to wait for the colored car. Another would be going to Crystal Palace which was the great exhibit which was put on in the 1850s modeled after londons Crystal Palace, this great exhibit hall. Nd a comment in a newspaper is that black new yorkers have been casting the horoscope as to whether colored people would be admitted. Um, so one day you could be admitted, another not. That black new yorkers have there were high cultural events, and in a way the black elite hoped that cla