Slavery

Staten Island Boxer Bill Richmond Delivered the Punches

July 12, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

Archaeologists in Central London are involved in a massive undertaking excavating St James’s Gardens, a graveyard close to Euston Station, before a terminus for the controversial High Speed 2 (HS2) railway project is built on the site. Among the 45,000 skeletons due to be dug up it is hoped that the remains of Bill Richmond will be identified.

By the end of the eighteenth century boxing was England’s dominant sport. Confirmation of its repute occurred at the coronation of George IV on 19 July 1821 when eighteen pugilists were invited to guard the entrance to Westminster Abbey. One of the ushers selected for the grand occasion was Bill Richmond, a formerly enslaved man who descended from Richmondtown, a colonial outpost on Staten Island, New York. [Read more…] about Staten Island Boxer Bill Richmond Delivered the Punches

The Origins of Juneteenth (Podcast)

June 16, 2021 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

Juneteenth is a state holiday that commemorates June 19th, 1865, the day slavery ended in Texas. Over the last decade, a push to make Juneteenth a national holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States has gained momentum.

What do we know about Juneteenth and its origins?

In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Annette Gordon-Reed, an award-winning historian at Harvard University and Harvard Law School, is a native Texan and she joins us to discuss the early history of Texas and the origins of the Juneteenth holiday with details from her book, On Juneteenth (Liveright, 2021).

New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York

June 6, 2021 by Alan J. Singer Leave a Comment

The city of New York was at the center of the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade during the 1850s and early 1860 conveying kidnapped and enslaved Africans from the coast of West Africa primarily into Cuba where there was an expanding sugar industry.

In The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (Yale Univ. Press, 2020), John Harris, a professor of history at Erskine College in South Carolina, estimates that between 1853 and 1867, 474 shipments carrying almost 200,000 men women and children were brought to Cuba. Most of this was brokered by transplanted Brazilians and Portuguese known as the Portuguese Company, who shifted their operation to New York because of the decline of the Angola to Brazil slave trade in the 1850s. Harris argues they were supported by the pro-slavery faction of the city’s Democratic Party and its chief financial institutions. [Read more…] about New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York

New Novel Considers Role of Hesitant Utica Abolitionists

May 22, 2021 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.

The new novel The Third Mrs. Galway (Kaylie Jones Books, 2021) by Deirdre Sinnott looks back at Utica in 1835, when newlywed Helen Galway discovers two people who have escaped enslavement are hiding in the shack behind her husband’s house. She must then decide if she should she be a “good wife” and report the fugitives, or if she will defy convention and come to their aid. [Read more…] about New Novel Considers Role of Hesitant Utica Abolitionists

Exchanging New Amsterdam for Paramaribo

May 16, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

In August 1664 four English frigates sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam, demanding the surrender of New Netherland. The colony was provisionally ceded by Peter Stuyvesant. He subsequently sent a delegation to sign the Articles of Capitulation. New Amsterdam was reincorporated under English law as the city of New York. Soon after the Second Anglo-Dutch (Sea) War broke out in which Charles II unsuccessfully tried to end Dutch domination of world trade. [Read more…] about Exchanging New Amsterdam for Paramaribo

Slave To Soldier: George Martin’s Fight For Freedom

February 9, 2021 by Pete Ames 2 Comments

As the Town of Niagara, NY municipal historian I’m researching the lives of those buried in one of our local cemeteries. Witmer Cemetery was originally the burying ground of the Witmer family, who settled here after arriving from Pennsylvania in 1811. The earliest gravestone in the cemetery is from 1828, but it’s estimated that about 200 people have been buried there since.

I began my research at the front row, where a toppled headstone marked the final resting place of George Martin and Jane, his wife. [Read more…] about Slave To Soldier: George Martin’s Fight For Freedom

Female Slaveholding in Jamaica

January 27, 2021 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.

How did Jamaica grow to become the “crown jewel” of the British Atlantic World?

Part of the answer is that Jamaica’s women served as some of the most ardent and best supporters of the island’s practice of slavery.

Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory

December 18, 2020 by Bob Cudmore Leave a Comment

In this episode of The Historians Podcast Purdue University Professor Emeritus Robert May weighs in on whether enslaved people were better treated during the Christmas season in the Old South.

May is author of Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory (2019). He earned his undergraduate degree at Union College in Schenectady. [Read more…] about Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory

NYC Park ‘Spaces’ Recognize African American Contributions, But

December 16, 2020 by Alan J. Singer 3 Comments

A press release from the New York City Parks Department announced “In honor of the 51st anniversary of Black Solidarity Day … 10 park spaces” would be named in “honor of the Black experience in New York City.” This was intended to fulfill a pledge made by the Parks Department “to demonstrate how it stands in solidarity with the Black Community in its fight to combat systemic racism.”

The newly named park spaces recognize national figures like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Elston Howard, and Ella Fitzgerald who all had New York ties and were local community leaders. Baldwin gets a lawn in Harlem. Langston Hughes gets a playground. Elston Howard, a baseball MVP for the Yankees, gets a baseball field near Yankee Stadium. Ella Fitzgerald gets a playground in Queens. [Read more…] about NYC Park ‘Spaces’ Recognize African American Contributions, But

Maroons & The Great Dismal Swamp

December 2, 2020 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

The name “Great Dismal Swamp” doesn’t evoke an image of a pleasant or beautiful place, and yet, it was an important place that offered land speculators the chance to profit and enslaved men and women a chance for freedom in colonial British America and the early United States.