Emeritus professor at the University of Sidney, White has spent more than a half-century researching and writing about Black New York. His prize-winning 2015 work Prince of Darkness<\/em> told the story of Jeremiah Hamilton, the city\u2019s enigmatic first Black millionaire, who makes multiple appearances in A Moment in the Sun<\/em>. In addition to ruthless businessmen like Hamilton, the current work is filled with performing artists, confidence men, and many African American men and women who liked to strut around the Battery on Sundays wearing colorful latest fashions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Indypendent<\/em> recently chatted with White about the book.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n TH: In order to show patterns of everyday experience during the decades before and after 1827, you rely heavily on newspapers. Explain what you gathered from your extensive reading of the Penny Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n SW: It\u2019s difficult to find historical sources that illustrate patterns of daily life among Black New Yorkers in the 18th<\/sup> century. But in the 1820s and 1830s, there was an explosion of material full of fascinating stories. In part, that\u2019s because the newspapers were changing, and the Penny Press now covered court battles and conflicts of all kinds. Black residents of the city started behaving in a different fashion than ever before. There was an incredible proliferation of dance and Black parades, theater companies, and newspapers\u2014as well as Black-owned oyster houses and other businesses. This was an incredibly vibrant period, and my aim is to show how Blacks helped make New York City such a lively place in the first half of the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0<\/p>\n There was an incredible proliferation of dance and Black parades, theater companies, and newspapers\u2014as well as Black-owned oyster houses and other businesses.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n TH: You frequently refer to the \u201camalgamated city,\u201d in which there was extensive racial interaction. At one point you state that there was less residential segregation during the 1820s-30s than in any subsequent period in the city\u2019s history.\u00a0<\/p>\n SW: The term \u201camalgamation\u201d was the predecessor for \u201cmiscegenation.\u201d The former has broader meaning, because miscegenation referred primarily to sexual reproduction. Amalgamation includes sex, but it also refers to racial mixing of all kinds. Charles Dickens and other white observers came to watch Black dancers. There were Black and white con artists who worked together. The term \u201camalgamated\u201d was often used to describe such interactions in popular accounts from the period. Meanwhile, as the city grew rapidly during the first half of the 19th<\/sup> century, there was an acute housing shortage. Blacks found accommodation wherever they could, and there weren\u2019t segregated districts. Many residential buildings in the Five Points and elsewhere had whites living on the main floors, with Blacks occupying the cellar and attic. Through the 1830s white households in the city were no more than 20 or 30 yards from a Black household. This meant that there was constant racial interaction on the streets and in the corner stores.\u00a0<\/p>\n TH: You\u2019ve spent decades sifting through the court records of the New York District Attorney\u2019s office held at the Municipal Archives. Given that during the 1820s-30s, the city\u2019s top judge\u2014Richard Riker\u2014was adamantly pro-slavery, one might expect the courts to have been the site of racist hostility. But you show that this wasn\u2019t always the pattern. Tell us about John Inverness, a Black business owner accused by a member of the street patrol known as \u201cthe watch.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n SW: The watch consisted of white men, and in March 1833, one of its members, Charles Sloane, accused Inverness of running an after-hours establishment that disturbed the peace. Inverness retained a white lawyer to fight the charge and he ended up turning the case upside down. Sloane claimed that he had never ate or drank alcohol when he visited Inverness\u2019 place. The defense called a Black waiter who worked there, and he testified that he had served Sloane oyster soup, but the customer was so drunk that \u201chis cap could not stay upon his head,\u201d a wonderful phrase that made Sloane look foolish. A jury of white men acquitted Inverness, which suggests that racist hostility could be challenged. In general, there was a willingness among African Americans during this era to use the courts to solve problems, including their own domestic disputes. At the same time, Riker viewed the courts as a mechanism of social control. He knew how to generate stories in the newspapers by delivering racist denunciations from the bench. There are hundreds of thousands of case files. No other U.S. city has a similar set of court records from the era.\u00a0<\/p>\n Through the 1830s white households in the city were no more than 20 or 30 yards from a Black household.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n TH: You write extensively about confidence men, fortune tellers, and \u201cgambling hells,\u201d a great term for the cellar locations that I had never heard before. Tell us about the tricksters and their significance.\u00a0<\/p>\n SW: I kept coming across this term \u201cburning,\u201d which was a con that Black men developed, often working with a white accomplice. Two or three Black guys and a white guy would approach an obvious country bumpkin visiting New York City with a bulging wallet. The scammers would convince the tourist to help them \u201csettle a bet\u201d in an alley, then take the dupe\u2019s money. \u201cBurn\u201d started appearing in the newspapers in the mid-1830s and by 1838, the newspapers said it was happening every day. This, too, was part of what freedom meant. The success stories aside, life was extremely difficult economically for Blacks, so the underground economy provided a way to make a living. And some notorious figures, like \u201cButcher Joe\u201d Morrison, made a lot of money. I\u2019ve been talking about con men for the past two decades, and there\u2019s a certain unease on the part of museum curators who don\u2019t want to include them in exhibitions because their stories are not about Black uplift. But I think they\u2019re precisely the sort of people that history should be about. I want to write the history of ordinary African Americans and street life, which includes con artists of all shapes and kinds.\u00a0<\/p>\n TH: The book concludes with a portrayal of Thomas Downing, a prominent Black businessman in the decades before the Civil War. You show how he both reinforced racism and challenged it.\u00a0<\/p>\n SW: Downing was born as a free person in Virginia in 1791 and came to New York City around 1819. He soon became the dominant oyster seller in the city. When Charles Dickens visited Manhattan in the winter of 1842, he went to Downing\u2019s oyster house on Broad Street near the corner of Wall Street. Because of the restaurant\u2019s location, newspaper editors, bankers, and politicians all would go to Downing\u2019s place, which had Black waiters but did not allow African American customers. On the other hand, Downing liberally wrote checks for civil rights causes, and in both 1840-41 and 1855 he challenged discrimination that he experienced on railroads and buses in the city. He was beaten up the first time and resisted being beaten up on the second occasion. When the census taker spoke to him in 1860, Downing initially answered the questions but then refused to say how much money he was worth. He referred to the Supreme Court\u2019s infamous Dred Scott<\/em> decision three years earlier and said, \u201cI\u2019m property\u2014I can\u2019t own property.\u201d The census entry for Downing thus did not state how much property he owned because he refused point blank to answer the question. He was a fascinating guy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Theodore Hamm will discuss Frederick Douglass\u2019 experience in Brooklyn at<\/em> Plymouth Church<\/em><\/a> on Tuesday, September 29. Admission is free.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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