Black New York's Struggle for Liberation (1613-1865)
Channel: Samuel Finesurrey, Ph.D.
Date: 2021-03-23

This episode documents the history of Black New Yorker's and their struggle for liberation from times of first contact with Native Americans by people of African and European descent. For many Lenape on the island called Manahatta, in 1613 Jan Rodrigues became their first and only connection to Jan Rodrigues another world. Dutch slavery took hold within a few decades, however, conflict between the Europeans of New Amsterdam and the native communities forced from their lands, created opportunities for enslaved peoples who gained their freedom to serve as a buffer between the two groups. 

With the British takeover in 1664, the black community, both free and slave, saw their limited rights erode. The year after the British set up a slave marked at the foot of Wall Street, black New Yorkers rebelled. Though the insurrection was violently put down, a set of mysterious fires in 1741 was assumed to be a plot by members of city's black community, joined with some Irish New Yorkers to destabilize the structures that allowed slavery and discrimination. 

Slow for a Northern state to achieve emancipation, which was finally secured in 1827, NYC became a center for both slave hunters and black organizers, notably David Ruggles of the Vigilance Committee. The episode then examines the economic and social context that made NYC pro-southern city in the 1850s and 1860s culminating in the Draft Riots of 1863 that forced much of the black community to flee to Brooklyn. 

Throughout the episode, Dr. Finesurrey documents the ways black New Yorkers organized for African-American liberation by operating key stations on the underground railroad, creating autonomous communities likes Weeksville, and NYC's black community's significant contribution to the Union effort in the Civil War.