Harlem: People, Power and Politics 1900-1950

Chapter I

Well, son, I'll tell you:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

— Langston Hughes

CAPITAL OF BLACK AMERICA

HARLEM, a bite off Manhattan Island, is called the Negro capital. But it is more — it is the nerve center of advancing Black America. It is the fountainhead of mass movements. From it flows the progressive vitality of Negro life. Harlem is, as well, a cross-section of life in Black America — a little from here, there, and everywhere. It is at once the capital of clowns, cults, and cabarets, and the cultural and intellectual hub of the Negro world. By turns Harlem is provincial, worldly, cosmopolitan, and naïve — sometimes cynical. From here, though, the Negro looks upon the world with audacious eyes.

To grasp the inner meanings of life in Black America, one must put his finger on the pulse of Harlem. To begin with, the Negro community is a vibrant, bristling black metropolis. All lights and shadows, it is a place of curious extremes. Huge granite buildings tower over squat leantos. Thousands exist in basement dungeons, while others bask in Sugar Hill penthouses. Millions of dollars are invested in brick buildings of worship, and people huddle in ramshackle tenements. The Negro community is a great slum, but situated in a beautiful area of broad highways and wooded parks, surrounded by swift-moving rivers.

Harlem! The word itself signifies a vast, crowded area teeming with black men. Its population is pushing hard toward a million, and is crammed into two square miles. Some are foreign-born and come from diverse racial, religious, and national origins. Though their skins may be black, brown, yellow, or white, they all are seeking a way out of the impasse of Negro life. To this end, the Negro community is a big forum of soapbox oratory. Day-to-day living seems to be an endless vigil of picket lines, strikes, boycotts, mammoth mass meetings, as well as a series of colorful parades, jazzy picnics, and easy stomping at the Savoy Ballroom. But comes Sunday, everybody praises God—faithfully, noisily.

There is a loud Rotarian pride in Harlem.

Yet the panorama of Negro life passes before a backdrop of tenements. This life is often crude and sinister, with muggers flashing switchblades in the darkened corners. The streets are crowded with shabby loiterers, ragged urchins, and over-dressed strollers. Long flashy-looking automobiles park at the curbs, monuments of showy splendor. Bosomy women drape the tenement windows, as the rising smell of cooking mingles with the mustiness of dark dank hallways. Juke boxes grind incessantly. Heard, too, are the distinctive calls of the street vendors, a transplanted institution of the Old South. Trundling little wagons, they happily hurl their musical cries to the topmost windows, urging housewives to buy deviled crabs, fish cakes, corn pone, and sweet potatoes.

‘Hurry, hurry, hurry, ’cause I saved it jes’ for you!’

‘Why, it ain’t nothin’ but the same old thing,’ comes the indignant retort.

Life in Harlem is bizarre, but always pointed, intense, and vivid. The inhabitants eat, sleep, work and play, bear children, and die. But these characteristics, human and prosaic as they may be, are scorched beyond normal recognition in the crucible of a segregated life. Negroes become slum-shocked. They get distorted perspectives, and become hardened or callous. War is sometimes an intangible peril that is dwarfed by the stern realities of living. Yet, this great dark mass of people of unknown potentialities is loudly assertive of its aspirations. The unbounded optimism once reflected in the popular chant, ‘Jesus will lead me, and the Welfare will feed me,’ has given way to a surging, compelling movement, set into motion by the war and daily gaining momentum, demanding a place in the sun.

The black man knows what he wants....

Today, his problem can’t be swept under the carpet....

Even-handed injustice has done things to him....

He knows the tyranny of white faces.

Negroes may quarrel among themselves about minor issues, but on the question of their rights—moral, economic, and political—which to them mean the right to integration in American life, they form a solid bloc, each member of it being fiercely group-conscious. They have learned, and learned well, the lesson taught that no individual can rise far above the condition of his race—the lash of color prejudice cuts deeply, equally.

So, with this quick glimpse of a vast, baffling phenomenon, we enter the Negro metropolis to get a first-hand view of the intimate pattern of life in Black America. First, let’s find out why Negroes came to Harlem anyhow and the circumstances of that arrival.

Chapter II

Whereas, Our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil, which their blood and sweat manured...

— Resolution Adopted by Free Negroes in 1817

PASSAGE TO UTOPIA

NEW YORK was nothing more than a Dutch outpost called New Amsterdam, with thirty white families and a few horses and cattle, when eleven Negroes were imported sometime in 1626. When these first black men to arrive in this part of the New World were assigned living quarters in a row of clay houses on the fringe of the Bowery, not only had New York’s first Negro neighborhood come into being, but also a way of life—and indeed the beginnings of Black America. Within its rude confines a separate group life evolved; here strong feelings of solidarity developed, and here the black man formed patterns of living different from the white community.

Each morning, from their homes in the Bowery, Negroes went forth to cut timber, clear roads, erect dwellings, and bring the rich soil under cultivation. After several years of arduous labor, they succeeded in tearing through the tangled forests and in building a wagon road to ‘Haarlem,’ an area that was to become the Black Metropolis, on an Indian path known today as Broadway. Beyond their labors, they gained reputations for predicting the weather, an African heritage which served to reduce farming hazards. Although the Dutch complained that as domestics Negroes were ‘lazy and useless trash,’ they nevertheless profited by the slaves’ introduction of deep-fat cooking, a characteristic of American cuisine today, by their skill in making baskets, pottery, and cutlery, and by their domestication of animals.

Hard work was a prime necessity, but there were white men who seemed little disposed to exert themselves. If pressed too strongly, they were apt to run off to adjacent territories under English rule, where they might engage in the lucrative fur trade. Consequently Negro labor was much in demand, a fact which was illustrated rather curiously in 1641 when a Negro was alleged to have been killed by one of his own race. Torture, the common expedient, was used as a threat to force statements identifying the murderer. Six Negroes came forward and declared that they, as a group, had committed the crime. Confronted with the loss of six laborers by hanging, the old Dutch magistrates turned to an ancient solution, ordering lots to be drawn to determine which of the Negroes should die. The marked one was drawn by a giant of a fellow named Manuel de Gerritt. He was placed on a ladder in the fort with two ropes about his neck and, at a signal from an official, the hangman pulled the ladder from under him — but both ropes broke and he tumbled to the ground. The whole community, which had turned out to witness the execution, clamored so loudly for his pardon that his life was spared.

Under Dutch rule, Negroes were not ‘slaves’ as the term is understood today: ownership was of labor, not person, and this was lodged in the hands of the West India Company, a Dutch corporation that virtually owned New Amsterdam. Eighteen years after their arrival, the eleven Negro pioneers, albeit in bondage, boldly demanded freedom! Official tempers flared. But the rank-and-file of colonists recalled the early labors of these black men and supported the petition.

The authorities finally settled the question by liberating the eleven men (who by now had wives), granting each man land on the edge of the settlement, in a tangled swamp known today as Greenwich Village. This status won, free Negroes were considered on equal footing with other free people.

Naturally slaves who sought escape from the neighboring English colonies turned toward liberal New Amsterdam — beginning the passage to utopia. This traffic, together with the continued importations of slaves, quickly increased the Negro population, and, in time, the congested Negro neighborhood became one of the colorful attractions of the Dutch metropolis. White folks living in the rural areas often made sallies to the Bowery, where the bulk of black men still lived, to witness newly arrived Africans perform exciting dances done to the rhythms of sheepskin-covered eelpots and three-stringed fiddles, and to enjoy the contagious peals of broad-mouthed laughter which punctuated the noisy merry-making.

When the British flag was hoisted over New Amsterdam in 1664, and the province became New York, Negroes entered upon a period of sustained cruelty. The English introduced chattel slavery: children of slaves were compelled to follow the state and condition of the mother for life. Besides, Negroes were not permitted on the streets at night without a lantern, or to gather in groups of more than three under the penalty of flogging; they were forbidden to own property; separate education for the race was instituted, and blacks were set apart from whites on the theory that to permit them to mingle freely would endanger keeping them enslaved. Incensed by these restrictions, a Negro named Prince angrily assaulted the mayor. He was stripped to the waist, tied to a cart, and drawn through the streets, and at each corner was given eleven lashes on his naked back.

When the small shopkeepers, artisans, and farmers started to emulate the landowning class by having slaves, the demand for Negro labor doubled, and, significantly, brought a new class to support the continued enslavement of blacks. To facilitate trading, the Common Council designated a popular meeting point, Wall Street, as the ‘place where Negroes and Indians could be bought, sold, or hired.’ Here, not only Negroes but indentured white persons were put on the auction block! Thus the New York Gazette of September 4, 1738, was able to carry an advertisement offering for sale ‘Englishmen, Cheshire cheese, Negro men, a Negro girl, and a few Welshmen.’ By the turn of the eighteenth century, out of a population of some fifteen thousand under the English, there were three thousand Negroes in the province—as against some five hundred under Dutch rule.

Along the current of the city’s rapid development, the Negro center moved from the Bowery uptown to Catherine Market, site of the present Chatham Square. Here, despite the restrictions, Negroes met to play and gossip, and not infrequently to plot insurrections. Away from their labors, on stolen time, they sold roots, berries, and herbs for pocket change. Fish was a staple item, too, for most Negroes lived within easy distance of waterways where sturgeon, bass, shad, porgies, clams, or oysters were plentiful. Peddling these wares in baskets balanced on their heads, they became picturesque figures in a city that had become used to the sight of pirates in bizarre costumes gleaming with daggers.

Those slaves who came from households that had large staffs of domestic servants dressed somewhat elaborately, and like the gentlemen of the period, wore powdered wigs and embroidered waistcoats with white ruffles. The women dressed in the handsome hand-me-downs of their white mistresses. Not so lucky were their country cousins—those from Harlem, Brooklyn, Long Island, and New Jersey. They usually wore homespun jackets and shirts, flowered handkerchiefs instead of hats, and, in mild weather, went barefoot. Slaves of the city tradesmen cut even less of a figure, attired in cast-off coats, red flannel shirts, and sometimes old black silk hats.

At Catherine Market Negro dancing and singing was first performed much in the manner as we know it today. The dancers brought along boards, called shingles, upon which they performed. These were usually about five or six feet square, and were kept in place during the dance by four of the dancer’s companions. Rarely in his deft ‘turning and shying off’ did the dancer step from the board. Rhythm was provided by members of the party, who sang and beat time on their thighs, or sometimes on tom-toms. After the country slaves had disposed of their wares, they would hasten to the market to compete with the city Negroes, while amused bystanders stimulated the rivalry by tossing them coins.

Harmless as these goings-on appeared, the colonists nevertheless were apprehensive. Negroes already had fired dwellings, attacked public officials, and one night in a bloody foray swept out of a Maiden Lane orchard and killed a number of white persons. The city awoke uneasily one morning (in 1741) to hear cries that another slave plot had been discovered! Excited business people closed their shops, anxious mothers kept their children from school, and worried preachers prayed for deliverance. The citizenry trembled at the terrifying feeling of a nightmare becoming a reality.

The arrest of a Negro slave named Caesar, who allegedly robbed a prominent merchant, brought the plot to light. It involved a white woman, Mary Burton, who was found with the loot in her possession, and Caesar’s white mistress, Peggy Kerry, who was described by court records as the ‘Irish beauty.’ She had borne him a child and was dependent upon him for her support. Perhaps it was the disclosure of this relationship that caused the Burton woman to expose the plot. In any case she testified that Caesar and thirty other slaves had met nightly and planned the uprising at Hughson’s tavern, where, in defiance of the law, free mingling of the races was common. The conspirators, supposedly thousands of them, ‘tying themselves to secrecy by sucking ye blood of each other’s hands,’ were to start a fire in the center of the town—a calamity more dread than hostile Indians. The slaves would attack from ambush when the white people ran out to extinguish the flames. Afterward Caesar was to be made ‘governor.’ Even while this testimony was being heard, terrible fires broke out in various parts of the city, and shouts went up that the blacks were rising. The upshot was that one hundred and fifty blacks and twenty-five whites, who in one way or another had become involved, were arrested and tried. Eighteen were hanged, fourteen burned alive, and more than seventy deported.

Whether this was a major stroke for freedom or whether Negroes began to fire houses only under provocation of widespread arrests, is impossible to tell—for little slaves’ testimony exists. At any rate it was the last slave outbreak in New York. The North’s commercial and industrial growth was making slavery increasingly unprofitable, and so the rigid restrictions against slaves were relaxed somewhat. Their occupations became more varied and their movements freer. Some, indeed, were utilized in General Braddock’s ill-fated expedition against Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War.

The issue of who should bear the expense of fighting the French—the colonies or England—started white men talking about freedom from oppression. Negroes, concerned with their own bondage, were stirred by such talk. It was the Quakers, however, who began organized opposition to slavery, and drew into the antislavery ranks such public-spirited citizens as John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. Later, the Declaration of Independence, with its engaging slogans of liberty, equality, and the rights of man, accelerated the movement.

The Revolutionary War set implacably into motion those elements (and forces) which were to bring about the end of Northern slavery, and which were eventually to reach into the South. Free talk of liberty led the black population to believe that freedom would be extended to them, especially since the colonies had agreed to halt the slave trade. I can well imagine how they felt when, only by a hair’s breadth, Jefferson’s proposal to outlaw slavery altogether was defeated. The status of Negroes under the existing order being the lowest, they were, if anything, more ready than whites for a change. But, upon the outbreak of the Revolution, the authorities ordered detachments of soldiers ‘to guard against the insurrection of slaves.’ To capitalize on the unrest, the commander of the British forces occupying New York, Sir Henry Clinton, issued a proclamation promising complete freedom to runaway slaves. No precise records exist, as far as I can find, of the numbers who went over to the invaders, but Jefferson’s estimate of thirty thousand (from all sections) is sufficiently indicative of the extent of the defection. Alarmed, the colonials countered by also promising freedom to all slaves who would serve three years in the Continental Army. Five thousand were in this way induced to join—after they had procured their masters’ consent as provided by law—and two regiments of black men were sent against the British.

Events of the Revolution aroused a fresh wave of antislavery sentiment. A growing number of people felt increasingly the inconsistency between talk of universal equality and freedom, and the glaring fact of slavery. Such a group met in the New York tavern of a Quaker and formed a ‘Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting such of them as have been or may be Liberated,’ with John Jay as its president. Hamilton, Duane, and Clinton, among other members, set forth principles which, I believe, should be of contemporary interest.

They declared it their duty ‘to enable them [Negroes] to Share, equally with us, in that civil and religious liberty with which an indulgent Providence has blessed these States, and to which these, our Brethren, are, by Nature, as much entitled as ourselves.’ This statement proved to be no mere high-minded abstraction. For the Manumission Society, as the organization was commonly called, with branches in other Northern cities, launched a program designed to end slavery, protect Negroes from kidnapping, and provide education for Negro children. Through its efforts a bill was passed in 1799, beginning the gradual emancipation of slaves in New York State—more than a half-century before Lincoln’s proclamation.

The first independent act of Negroes was to sever all connections with the white churches, which had assigned them to sections marked ‘B. M.,’ meaning black members. The movement, extending to every denomination, began when Negroes broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church and started the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. To the Negro his church was more than sectarianism, more indeed than religion—although outwardly it tended to follow the austere pattern of white churches. It was in reality the center and stronghold of his independent existence; a refuge and a shelter for runaway slaves; a meeting place and platform; it cared for the sick, and gave food and succor to the destitute. Above all, it developed strong and intelligent leaders through whom Negroes learned to stand with self-confidence, united in a common understanding of their destiny.

This destiny, as they saw it, was tied to that of the nation. When the call for volunteers was made during the War of 1812, an unnamed ‘citizen of colour,’ according to the records of the Common Council, called upon his people to work on the Brooklyn fortifications, because it ‘becomes the duty of every coloured man to volunteer.’ The response was gratifying. More than a thousand black men worked without pay until the project was completed. The legislature then authorized the raising of two Negro regiments of a thousand men. Privates were paid an enlistment bonus of twenty-five dollars, the same as that given white men. Slaves who enlisted received their freedom upon discharge. It is evident that there was a military band, for provisions were made for Negro musicians. These activities apparently extended to the Navy. For at a fête in his honor, Commander James Lawrence said that ‘a full half of his sailors in the victorious battle over the English warship Hornet had been Negroes; later, Perry made some laudatory remarks about the Negro sailors under his command.

With the resumption of normal living, Negroes made determined efforts to move into the stream of American life. The black population of the city had grown to seven thousand and was now concentrated in the neighborhood of Bleecker and Mercer Streets on the lower East Side. On the whole, they were industrious and thrifty. In checking the membership list of the African Society for Mutual Relief, an organization formed in 1810 and still in existence, there is evidence of a small business and professional class. Foreign visitors remarked that these Negroes were ‘as decently dressed and as well-behaved as their skin-proud countrymen.’ Yet the great bulk of the male population were laborers, seamen, coachmen, caterers, hairdressers, butlers, waiters, and cooks; and the females were domestics and seamstresses; and there were those ‘ragging and boning’ on their own. Somehow, Negroes managed to open a Broadway theater in 1821, presenting legitimate drama. The playhouse, known as the African Grove (sometimes as the Hotel), was situated ‘in Mercer Street, in the rear of the one-mile stone on Broadway.’ From all accounts, the performances were well attended by whites as well as Negroes.

Emancipation of Negroes everywhere in the country now became the goal of free black men in the North. In this matter their philosophy was simple: slavery was wrong, any effort to end it was right. Hundreds, like Harriet Tubman, sometimes called ‘General Tubman,’ whose amazing exploits made enraged slaveholders offer a reward of forty thousand dollars for her capture, ventured into the South and urged and assisted slaves to escape. Secrecy and ingenuity characterized these operations, for agents of the slave-owners prowled everywhere. An additional danger were the Blackbirders, a gang of cut-throats engaged in the bootleg business of kidnapping and selling Negroes, slave or free. Thousands of slaves nevertheless made their escape to freedom, helped along by Negro and white persons. Runaways hid by day and traveled by night, often guided only by the North Star. Sometimes it was necessary for them to hide for weeks in the woods, waiting for friendly voices to raise the signal,

Steal away, steal away,

Steal away to Jesus....

This informal, cooperative effort became known as the Underground Railroad, and took concrete form in New York with the organization of the Committee of Vigilance, at a meeting held in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. It became one of the most fearless of the antislavery groups, and carried on the serious business of spiriting runaway slaves from place to place along the Underground route. Its members were called ‘practical abolitionists.’ Fugitives were referred to as ‘parcels,’ intermediary stops as ‘stations,’ and the committee’s agents as ‘conductors.’ In New York, for example, runaways were concealed in such ‘stations’ as the basement of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and its pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, was a ‘conductor.’ In this manner, we are told, ‘the best blood of the South drifted this way in search of freedom.’

This wholly surreptitious migration, which white and black men risked their lives to advance, added considerably to the city’s population. But inability to provide for the thousands of runaways, or even provide for the unemployed already here, drove many into the infamous Five Points Neighborhood, hangout of the city’s criminal element. Charles Dickens, after a visit accompanied by two policemen, made no bones about saying that here all was ‘loathsome, drooping, and decayed.’ To fight off Blackbirders, fugitive slaves were compelled to band together, and in time became a pretty vicious lot themselves. Black men also formed a controlling part of the Five Points population, it was said, and ‘retained more consistency and force of character than whites’—despite their similar condition. Some blacks associated upon equal terms with whites, and many of them either had white wives or mistresses, sometimes both.

The hangout of this crowd was the boisterous Dickens’ Place, a joint named after the famous author and run by a Negro named Pete Williams. Forerunner of modern black-and-tan cabarets, it was a basement dive with whitewashed walls situated in Cow Bay Alley, a deadend where Negroes and the police often fought. In the cabaret a Negro band played while a show performed on a rough platform without curtain or scenery. Customers—both white and Negro—were served at little tables by waitresses who doubled as singers and dancers, and often as taxi dancers. When business was exceptionally brisk, women were brought in from the streets. The bawdy entertainment, the rowdy singing and dancing, and the frequent brawls that overflowed into the neighborhoods where respectable Negroes lived occasioned much complaint. But Dickens’ Place carried on at full blast, for it also catered to a slumming trade.

Uncertainty of life in New York—to return to the underground movement—was discouraging, perhaps, but the abolitionists went on working with undiminished effort. A heartening display of courage was exhibited when the Vigilance Committee daringly called a convention of fugitive slaves. It was held in Cazenovia, about twenty miles southeast of Syracuse, New York, and was attended by a spirited body of more than thirty ex-slaves. Chief among the business transacted was the preparation of a public letter addressed ‘To the American Slaves—from those who have fled American Slavery’:

Afflicted and Beloved Brothers!... The chief object [of this letter] is to tell you what circumstances we find ourselves in.... We get wages for our labor. We have schools for our children. Some of us take part in the election of civil rulers....

Numerous as are the escapes from slavery, they would be far more so, were you not embarrassed by your misinterpretation of the rights of property. You hesitate to take even the dullest of your masters’ horses—whereas it is your duty to take the fleetest.... You are taught to respect the rights of property. But no such rights belong to a slaveholder. His right to property is but the robber-right....

We are happy to say that every year is multiplying the facilities for leaving the Southern prison house.... Companies of individuals in various parts of the country are doing all they can, and it is much, to afford you a safe and a cheap passage from slavery to liberty.

The director of the Vigilance Committee in this city was a Negro, David Ruggles, who operated from 67 Lispenard Street. He was frequently denounced by the proslavery newspapers as an ‘insolent inveigler’ and on one occasion at least an attempt was made to kidnap him. He watched for the arrival and departure of vessels suspected as being slavers, through the committee furnished legal aid for alleged fugitives, and provided transportation for runaways whose usual destination was Canada.

Many slaves made their way to his door, including a young, half-starved runaway lad, who was later to become known as Frederick Douglass, the most famous fugitive in the annals of the Underground Railroad. He later grew to be a powerful, militant, and fearless orator and writer, attracting the attention of William Lloyd Garrison. In pursuing his fight against slavery, Douglass was forced to flee to Europe, where he learned much from the great liberals. His lectures and publications in England played a part in arousing British sentiment against the recognition of the Confederacy. He later returned to continue his antislavery struggles. His newspaper, the North Star, published from Rochester, where he made his home, had wide influence, and he became the confidant of Garrison, friend and adviser to Lincoln, and acknowledged leader of his people.

Most of the other Negro leaders were former slaves, too, who had somehow escaped, or were brought North by fugitive parents. Many became clergymen and a few managed to secure footholds in other professions. James McCune Smith earned a medical degree at Glasgow University. J. W. G. Pennington, the ‘fugitive blacksmith,’ succeeded in becoming a minister, as did the ex-slaves Theodore S. Wright, Charles Bennett Ray, and Alexander Crummell, a graduate of Cambridge University. Samuel Ringgold Ward, said to be ‘as black as night,’ taught school. There was the excitable Henry Highland Garnet, who became a minister, but like others of the church gave most of his time to the emancipation struggle. His one-legged figure became a familiar one on abolitionist platforms. Samuel E. Cornish, another fugitive figure, became coeditor of Freedom's Journal, the first Negro newspaper published in the United States.

Much inspiration was gathered from Sojourner Truth, called the ‘Libyan Sibyl’ because of her alleged gift of prophecy. As a young girl she had experienced the ignominy of being sold three times. After gaining her freedom she came to New York, and one night in a religious meeting she rose suddenly and announced herself to be ‘Sojourner Truth.’ The Lord had commanded her, she said, to travel throughout the land to declare Truth! She became one of the most effective antislavery speakers, and, later, she took a large part in the movement for women’s suffrage.

White people were slow in taking up the struggle to end slavery nationally. One reason was that white abolitionists were not free from prejudice, and differences arose as to methods by which the Negro’s problems were to be solved. But shortly after William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator carried the famous antislavery Manifesto, white men went into action. A call was issued in the New York press to ‘Friends of Immediate Abolition’ for a meeting on October 5, 1833, at Clinton Hall. Garrison was scheduled as a speaker. The proslavery Courier and Enquirer promptly demanded: ‘Are we tamely to look on, and see this most dangerous species of fanaticism extending itself through society? ... Or shall we, by promptly and fearlessly crushing this many-headed Hydra in the bud, expose the weakness as well as the folly, madness and mischief of these bold and dangerous men?’

Editorials, equally vigorous if less mixed in metaphor, appeared in other papers. When inflammatory posters appeared in barrooms and brothels, the abolitionists warily passed the word that the meeting place had been changed to the Chatham Street Chapel. As expected, a belligerent mob descended on Clinton Hall but found the place dark. After shouting noisily for Garrison, its members stormed through the streets to Tammany Hall, where a tumultuous meeting was held until word arrived that the abolitionists were gathered instead in the Chatham Street Chapel. Meanwhile the New York Anti-Slavery Society was peacefully and expeditiously organized, resolutions passed, and other necessary business transacted. Its members were on the point of adjourning when the mob caught up with them. The abolitionists quickly left through the rear of the building, as the front door was broken in by the mob. Disappointed upon finding the place empty, the hoodlums seized an old Negro who was passing outside, dragged him to the rostrum, and jeeringly called for a speech.

‘I am called upon to make a speech,’ the old man began. ‘You doubtless know that I am a poor, ignorant man, not accustomed to make speeches. But I have heard of the Declaration of Independence, and I have read the Bible. The Declaration says all men are created equal, and the Bible says God has made us all of one blood. I think, therefore, we are entitled to good treatment, that it is wrong to hold men in slavery, and that—’ Interrupting him by yells and curses, the crowd broke up. As it happened, Garrison was not present at the abolitionist meeting. He had chosen instead to witness the mob at close hand. For hours he roamed the streets in the midst of the howling mob while they searched for him.

Two months later a convention was held in Philadelphia, and a national body was formed, the American Anti-Slavery Society. Sixty Negro and white delegates, representing ten Northern states, adopted a resolution demanding ‘immediate and unconditional abolishment’ of slavery. New York was elected as headquarters, consequently the city leaped into prominence in the abolitionist movement. The strong proslavery sentiment and close commercial connections with the South, as well as the presence of a militant and articulate Negro population—evidenced by an aggressive press and pulpit—made the metropolis a strategic point from which to direct the fight. The society’s formal attack on slavery aroused the expected opposition. Abolitionists were denounced as being fanatics and traitors; some, indeed, were the victims of violence. In spite of such manifestations, the society, from its offices in Nassau Street, continued to pour out pamphlets, letters, and newspapers. The famous ‘seventy’ abolitionist agents were sent on missions throughout the country, and in time the whole nation became abolition-conscious. By 1835 the American Anti-Slavery Society had nearly two thousand branches scattered about the country.

As the stream of runaway slaves grew, ominous rumblings came from Washington. In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law—and things began to happen thick and fast. Unlike the others, this law had firm teeth for enforcement. It denied jury trial to an alleged fugitive, denied him the right to testify or summon witnesses in his own behalf, and provided heavy penalties for anyone helping runaways. When taken before a federal commissioner, five dollars was paid that official for a decision in favor of the Negro and ten for one in favor of the ‘owner,’ or his agent.

This law brought the slavery question to a furious boiling point in New York as elsewhere. The passion which accompanied division of opinion was illustrated in a riot which occurred in Purdy’s National Theatre during the performance of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin. The play was well started on a long run when a section of the theater was set apart for colored patrons. Proslavery hecklers in the audience cheered Simon Legree and hooted Uncle Tom. The abolitionists were resentful, and bitter fighting broke out. Gentlemen