The “Slavery in New York” exhibit was featured at the New York Historical Society from October 7 to March 26. It illustrated in a multifaceted way the significant role of slave labor in New York, from the establishment of the Dutch colony in the early 1600s and the British colony from 1664 to 1781, to the development of New York City in the early 19th century as a U.S. center of international commerce.

Far from being “self-congratulatory,” the exhibit presented a wealth of information showing how initial capitalist development of New York was based to a large extent on slave labor and the slave trade. New York was the largest slave-holding state in the North, with 21,000 slaves by 1790. New York slaving ships made more than 150 trips to Africa between 1715 and 1776, as the city became a major center for transporting slaves to the southern states and to the Caribbean. Slave labor was used in agricultural production in what is now Long Island and Queens, supplying the British plantation economies in the Caribbean.

Nimtz voices concern that the message of the exhibit’s “corporate sponsors” was to show that it was the actions of “enlightened elites” that ended slavery in New York in 1827 before it was ended in the South with the 1861-65 Civil War. If that was the intended message (and incidentally, what museums, libraries, or university programs do not rely on corporate sponsors?), it fell on deaf ears for the record numbers of people, particularly Blacks, who viewed the exhibit. On any given day the rooms of the center were packed with families, church and school groups, and others who came to see how Blacks resisted and labored, and what they accomplished despite the brutal conditions under which they toiled.

“Slavery in New York” revealed the little-known role of Black labor in constructing New York City’s early foundations and of the struggles by Blacks against their oppression. It told, for example, of the rebellion by a group of enslaved Africans in New York City in 1712. It illustrated how, when draconian slave codes prohibited more than three slaves from gathering in the same place, Blacks organized meetings around public water wells and other places.

The exhibit also included a section depicting free Blacks who worked as wage laborers on New York’s docks and ships in the 1800s, and how these workers turned to political struggles for voting rights and the abolition of slavery. It displayed a photo of a 114-year-old Black man named Caesar, who outlived three owners. The picture shows him upright, cane in hand, proud and undefeated.

Chattel slavery declined in the industrializing North as it became less profitable than the use of wage labor. The exhibit shows, however, that even after its abolition in the state in 1827, New York’s bankers and merchants played a key role in financing the slave-holding South, profiting from its cotton trade, all the way up to the Civil War. The Democratic Party machine that ran New York, in fact, was an ally of the Southern slavocracy.

In response to the exhibit’s popularity, the New York Historical Society extended it by three weeks. Afterwards, the Society announced that it has created a smaller version of the “Slavery in New York” exhibit for permanent display on the center’s fourth floor, and is planning a follow-up exhibit on “New York’s Long Civil War, 1815-1870,” starting in November.

For those who missed it at the Historical Society, a panel exhibition of “Slavery in New York” can now be seen at the Queens Central Library in Jamaica, New York, from April 6 to June 27.  
 
 
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