A MOMENT IN THE SUN

Uncovering “something new and surprising about New York City.”

Australian historian White draws on archival sources, primarily 19th-century newspapers and District Attorney’s Indictment papers, to create a richly detailed picture of Black people in antebellum New York. The book is a “a sequel of sorts,” he writes, to Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 (1991). Beginning in the 1810s and continuing into the 1840s, the city, he discovered, attracted “both free African Americans and fleeing enslaved men and women.” Dispelling the idea that the end of slavery meant poverty and destitution for Blacks, White contends that in New York, they created a vibrant culture, transforming city streets into places of “style, performance, and drama.” For example, “the Black stroll,” which took place on Broadway on Sunday afternoons, featured “dandies and dandizettes” who flaunted their freedom by donning fashionable outfits. Cellars and basements became sites for dancing, gambling, “cook shops,” “oyster cellars,” and residences. Although dance cellars were “boisterous dives,” Blacks also staged formal balls, which appealed to a more elite social stratum. White vividly portrays a host of individual New Yorkers, some who became successful entrepreneurs, many who eked out a living as oysterers, street-food sellers, or proprietors of underground eateries. Others took to gambling or confidence schemes, fortune telling, or sex work. Music and theater featured strongly in Black culture: A key figure was the fiddler, White asserts, and New York saw the creation of a Black drama company and the first theater built by and for Blacks. In 1827, the first Black newspaper appeared. As the century wore on, though, the “edgy, vital exuberance” of Black culture fomented “increasingly virulent racism,” leading to calls for segregation. Transformation of the city’s residential patterns, an influx of European immigrants, and willingness on the part of authorities to return fugitive slaves all combined to quash a once-flourishing community.

A fresh perspective on African American history.