After Emancipation: Finding Black New Yorkers after 1827

After Emancipation: Finding Black New Yorkers after 1827
By Dr. Adam Arenson
June 20th at 7PM
LINK TO PRESENTATION: dyckmanfarmhou...
The enslavement of African and Native Americans ended less than two hundred years ago, in 1827. And the 1850 census was the first to list every member of a household individually. Since these dates are relatively close together, they help us see the patterns of Black settlement, Black migration, and Black resistance to the racism of U.S. history before, during, and after the Civil War. This presentation will discuss the ongoing research of Dr. Arenson, which has included students as well as descendants of those enslaved in New York, and sites from Seneca Village in Central Park to communities up the Hudson River and into Canada.
Dr. Adam Arenson has taught U.S. History, including the history of slavery in New York, at Manhattan College since 2014. He has earned history degrees from Harvard and Yale, and has published two books and two edited volumes, along with scholarly articles and history for the wider public in the New York Times and other publications. He is completing a book, After the Underground Railroad, with African Canadian public historian Irene Moore Davis.

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I believe I read about the disappointing reality - the complexity of states which banned slavery in Howard Zinn's People's History of the US. It tugs at the heart that some Black people managed to escape being enslaved either to be recaptured, or had to remain enslaved in cities or states which banned the slave trade. And for many former enslaved people the only available jobs in NYC was physical work for white people which did not allow them to escape poverty.