New York City has long held the image as the center of progressive thinking in the United States. In comparison to other parts of the country, this city indeed is considerably more liberal. But such modern-day assessments belie a history as rooted in the ugliest aspects of Americas past as any other.
Slavery was a key institution in the development of New York, from its formative years as a Dutch and British colony to the early days of the United States. New Yorkers traded in slaves, distributed slaves, insured slave ships and owned slaves. At one time, 40 percent of New York Citys households owned slaves. At the time of the Revolution there were more slaves in New York than in any other city except Charleston, South Carolina. For almost 300 years, slavery played a part in every facet of life in New York City.
This Friday, October 7, 2005, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) will open a landmark exhibition on slavery and its impact on the people, landscape, institutions and economy of New York, and the nation. The multi-media exhibit, SLAVERY IN NEW YORK, will reveal history most New Yorkers are unaware of.
The exhibit will show that while the slave trade provided great wealth for the city, New York was, from the start, also a center for efforts to abolish slavery. SLAVERY IN NEW YORK will also tell the story of how Black people began to plant cultural roots, producing a rich legacy of poetry, art, music and literature in the face of adversity while at the same time, actively resisting injustice.
The N-YHS opening will launch an 18-month initiative comprised of two major exhibitions as well as scheduled lectures, walking tours and concerts. SLAVERY IN NEW YORK will draw upon the museums collection of paintings, newspapers, ledger books of slave voyages, ads for runaways, silver, furniture and other objects made by enslaved people, manuscripts of the first abolition society, and the earliest paintings of black New Yorkers as well as treasures from other institutions.
N-YHS has recruited an advisory team of eminent scholars, including Sven Beckert (Harvard), David Blight (Yale), Eric Foner (Columbia), Henry Louis Gates (Harvard), Leslie Harris (Emory), James Horton (George Washington University), Steve Mintz (University of Houston) and Ira Berlin (University of Maryland).
To augment the exhibit, the N-YHS is collaborating the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on public programs and education initiatives. Interactive instructional materials for K-12 students have been developed, teacher workshops have been planned and educator-led tours will be available for students of all ages.
A companion book to SLAVERY IN NEW YORK, edited by Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, and Leslie Harris, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Emory University, has been published to coincide with the exhibit.
1 comment so far ↓
This otherwise excellent exhibit was marred by the complete absence of any references to homosexuality or the persecution of black men who practiced homosexuality. The evidence for this persecution exists. Gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz and African American legal scholar A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. have presented evidence that in 17th and 18th century New York Black men convicted of sodomy were hung and burned at the stake when convicted of sodomy. This information does not appear in either the exhibit or in Ira Berlin’s companion to the exhibit. However, both the exhibit and Berlin’s companion make reference to the regulation of interracial heterosexuality.