Alexander Macomb, the elder, (1748–1831) was a fur trader, land and currency speculator, and slaveholder who supported the British during the American Revolution and provided the occupying British army with trade goods. [Read more…] about The Two Alexander Macombs: A Slaveholder & A Duplicitous Negotiator
US, NYS Continues To Honor Slavers, Racists, Traitors and Scoundrels
In 2023, the United States Military Academy will remove 13 Confederate symbols on its West Point campus. They include a portrait of Robert E. Lee dressed in a Confederate uniform, a stone bust of Lee, who was superintendent of West Point before the Civil War, and a bronze plaque with an image of a hooded figure and the words “Ku Klux Klan.”
Art displayed in the United States Capitol building in Washington, DC, still includes images of 141 enslavers and 13 Confederates who went to war against the country. A study by the Washington Post found that more than one-third of the statues and portraits in the Capitol building honor enslavers or Confederates and at least six more honor possible enslavers where evidence is disputed. [Read more…] about US, NYS Continues To Honor Slavers, Racists, Traitors and Scoundrels
Sandra Adickes: New York City Teacher and Civil Rights Activist
On June 25, 1964, The New York Times reported that thirty New York City public school teachers, most of them women, young, and white, would travel to rural Mississippi to teach African American children in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades for six weeks. While in Mississippi the teachers would live in the homes of Black families and join the families on Sundays in “Negro churches.”
On June 30, 1964, at the end of the school year, eight New York City teachers boarded a bus bound for Memphis, Tennessee where they would receive training before continuing on to Mississippi. Another 23 New York City teachers were expected to join them. [Read more…] about Sandra Adickes: New York City Teacher and Civil Rights Activist
Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst
In a book dedicated to Wilfred Ferguson, the son of Charles Ferguson, teacher and historian Christopher Verga resurrects the story of two Roosevelt, New York brothers killed by a Freeport police officer in 1946.
Verga opens The Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst (History Press, 2022) with an account of the long history of racism on Long Island and in the Freeport area including Ku Klux Klan activity. The background to the 1946 killings takes up the first third of the book. The book is well researched and referenced with extended quotes from official court documents and newspaper accounts. [Read more…] about Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst
NY-CT Border Disputes & The Kidnapping of Freedom-Seeker Peter John Lee
If you’ve driven on U.S. 684 or Byram Road in Greenwich, CT you see signs notifying you that you are crisscrossing back and forth between New York and Connecticut. The border has been a sore point since the British colonies were founded in the 17th century.
In the 1680s Bedford and Rye were shifted from Connecticut to New York leading to a local taxpayers revolt. In 1857, a report by the New York State Senate noted, “Along the whole distance the greatest uncertainty existed, and a distrust and want of confidence in all the supposed lines.” The border was not finally clarified until 1879. [Read more…] about NY-CT Border Disputes & The Kidnapping of Freedom-Seeker Peter John Lee
The 1883 Civil Rights Cases, the 14th Amendment, and Jim Crow New York
The United States Supreme Court is now poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. In a draft opinion, Justice Samuel Alito described the 1973 7-2 Court decision as an over-extended application of the federal government’s 14th Amendment responsibility to protect the right of citizens to due process and equal protection of the law. He argued “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”
The Supreme Court took a similar position on the 14th Amendment in the 1883 Civil Rights Cases when an earlier conservative majority declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, effectively ending the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and ushering in 100 years of state and local Jim Crow segregation laws.
In the Civil Rights Cases, the Supreme Court consolidated four challenged to the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act. One of the cases, U.S. v. Singleton, involved the refusal by a New York theater to admit an African American patron who had purchased a ticket. [Read more…] about The 1883 Civil Rights Cases, the 14th Amendment, and Jim Crow New York
Documents Reveal Sojourner Truth’s Battle to Free Her Son from Slavery
In February 2022, the New York State Archives announced that archivists had uncovered court records detailing the 1828 legal battle by Sojourner Truth to secure her enslaved son Peter’s freedom. According to archivist Jim Folts, this case was the first time in United States history that a Black woman successfully sued a White man for a family member’s freedom.
After passage of the New York State Gradual Emancipation Act in 1799, some slaveholders illegally sold enslaved Africans to Southern planters for the expanding cotton industry. When Sojourner Truth, then known as Isabella Van Wagenen, escaped from enslavement in 1826, her former “owner,” John J. Dumont of New Paltz, Ulster County, NY, sold her five-year old son Peter to Eleazer Gedney who planned to take the boy with him to England.
When this plan fell through, Eleazer Gedney sold Peter to his brother, Solomon Gedney, who resold Peter to their sister’s husband, a man named Fowler, who was a wealthy Alabama planter. [Read more…] about Documents Reveal Sojourner Truth’s Battle to Free Her Son from Slavery
Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives: A Complete List
According to a Washington Post report in the early years of the American republic over 1,700 Congressional representatives, Senators and Congressmen owned enslaved people. Despite a very clear conflict of interest they voted on the laws governing the country and the enslaved population. Some Representatives served in Congress long after slavery was finally abolished in New York State.
Five of the first seven U.S. Presidents were definitely slaveholders and at least five other later Presidents had family connections to slavery. Five of the Supreme Court Justices who ruled that African Americans had no citizenship rights under the Constitution in the 1857 Dred Scott decision were slaveholders. [Read more…] about Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives: A Complete List
Manhattan Street Names Tied to Slavery Listed from A to Z
There is a nationwide movement to reconsider the names of places and teams and to stop honoring racists and racist symbols. The Cleveland Indians will soon be no more; the baseball team will be known as the Cleveland Guardians. The Washington Redskins are now the Washington Football Team while a new name is being considered. A bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader, a Confederate general responsible for atrocities committed against African American troops serving in the United States army, and a founder of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan, was finally removed from the state capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee. Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced the Reconciliation in Place Names Act to create a special advisory committee to investigate and propose changes to offensive place names. There remain thousands of towns, lakes, streams, creeks and mountains in the United States with racist names.
In New York City, Eric Adams, the Democratic Party candidate for Mayor, pledges to rename streets and buildings named after slave-owners. The name of a Bronx Park was recently changed from Mullaly to Foster. John Mullaly was indicted during the Civil War for inciting a draft riot that led to the murder of African Americans on the streets of Manhattan. The Reverend Wendell Foster was a Bronx community activist who campaigned to have the park restored.
The following Manhattan streets are named for slaveholders and slave traders: [Read more…] about Manhattan Street Names Tied to Slavery Listed from A to Z
How New York’s Suburbs Got So Segregated
Why is the population of Massapequa in New York’s Nassau County 98% percent white? Why do almost no Black families live in suburban Levittown, New York? Are we looking at free choices by families or underlying housing patterns that reflect the impact of past and current racist practices?
Newsday exposed racial channeling by Long Island realtors in an investigation that showed how they steered potential home buyers to particular towns based on their race and ethnicity. [Read more…] about How New York’s Suburbs Got So Segregated