The enslavement of Africans in the region that became the State of New York began under the Dutch West India Company as part of the Atlantic slave trade. The Dutch West India Company brought eleven enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam in 1626, with the first slave auction held in New Amsterdam in 1655, making the beginning of institutionalized slavery in what would become New York City. With the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies (after Charleston, South Carolina), more than 42% of New York City households enslaved African people by 1703, often as domestic servants and laborers. Others worked as artisans or in shipping and various trades in the city. Enslaved Africans were also used in farming on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, as well as the Mohawk Valley region. Despite Northern geography, New York developed one of the largest enslaved populations outside the South, and the legacy of slavery remained visible in the city's social and economic hierarchies well into the 19th century.
During the American Revolutionary War, British troops occupied New York City in 1776. The Philipsburg Proclamation promised freedom to enslaved persons who left rebel masters, and thousands moved to the city for refuge with the British. By 1780, around 10,000 black people lived in New York. They created vibrant communities within the city, supporting one another through churches, mutual-aid networks, and informal economies. Many had escaped from their enslavers who lived in both northern and southern colonies. After the war, the British evacuated about 3,000 enslaved people from New York, taking most of them to resettle as free people in Nova Scotia, where they are known as Black Loyalists.
After the American Revolution, the New York Manumission Society was founded in 1785 to work for the abolition of slavery and to aid free Black people. The state passed a 1799 law for gradual abolition, a law which freed no living slave. After that date, children born to enslaved mothers were required to work for the mother's enslaver as indentured servants until age 28 (men) and 25 (women). The last enslaved persons were freed of this obligation 28 years later, on July 4, 1827. African Americans celebrated with the Emancipation Day parade on July 5, marching in organized groups with music, banners, and church leaders, followed by speeches, prayers, and community celebrations throughout New York City.
Upstate New York, in contrast with New York City, was an anti-slavery leader. The first meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society opened in Utica, although local hostility caused the meeting to be moved to the home of Gerrit Smith, in nearby Peterboro. The disruption underscored both the strength of abolitionist organizing in the region and the intense opposition such efforts continued to face. The Oneida Institute, near Utica, briefly the center of American abolitionism, accepted both Black and white male enrollees on an equal basis, as did for women the Young Ladies' Domestic Seminary in nearby Clinton. New-York Central College, near Cortland, was an abolitionist institution of higher learning founded by Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor, that accepted all students without prejudice: male and female, white, Black, and Native American, the first college in the United States to do so from the day its doors opened. It was also the first college to have Black professors teaching white students. However, when a Black male faculty member, William G. Allen, married a white student, they had to flee the country for England, never to return.
Dutch rule
Initial group of slaves In 1613, Juan (Jan) Rodriguez from Santo Domingo became the first non-indigenous person to settle in what was then known as New Amsterdam. Of Portuguese and West African descent, he was a free man. Juan Rodriguez played a pivotal role in the early trading and cultural exchanges between European settlers and local Indigenous communities.
Systematic slavery began in 1626, when eleven captive Africans arrived on a Dutch West India Company ship in the New Amsterdam harbor. Historian Ira Berlin called them Atlantic Creoles who had European and African ancestry and spoke many languages. In some cases, they attained their European heritage in Africa when European traders conceived children with African women. Some were Africans who were crew members on ships and some came from ports of the Americas. Their first names—like Paul, Simon, and John—indicated if they had European heritage. Their last names indicated where they came from, like Portuguese, d'Congo, or d'Angola. People from the Congo or Angola were known for their mechanical skills and docile manners. Six slaves had names that indicated a connection with New Amsterdam, such as Manuel Gerritsen, which he likely received after their arrival in New Amsterdam and to differentiate from repeated first names. Men were laborers who worked the fields, built forts and roads, and performed other forms of labor. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem adopted from southern colonies, children born to enslaved women were considered born into slavery, regardless of the ethnicity or status of the father.
In February 1644, the eleven slaves petitioned Willem Kieft, the director general for the colony, for their freedom. This was a time when there were skirmishes with Native American people and the Dutch wanted blacks to help protect their settlements and did not want the slaves to join the Native Americans. These eleven slaves and their spousesincluding Reytory Angola – were granted partial freedom, where they could buy land and a home and earn a wage from their master, and later full freedom. Their children remained in slavery. By 1664, the original eleven slaves, as well as other slaves who had attained half-freedom, for a total of at least 30 black landowners, lived on Manhattan near the Fresh Water Pond.
Slave trade For more than two decades after the first shipment, the Dutch West India Company was dominant in the importation of slaves from the coasts of Africa. A number of slaves were imported directly from the company's stations in Angola to New Netherland. This trade supplied the colony with the enslaved labor that underpinned much of its early agricultural and urban development. Members of the prominent Philipse family were among the leading slave traders and slaveholders.
Due to a lack of workers in the colony, it relied upon on African slaves, who were described by the Dutch as "proud and treacherous", a stereotype for African-born slaves. The Dutch West India Company allowed New Netherlanders to trade slaves from Angola for "seasoned" African slaves from the Dutch West Indies, particularly Curaçao, who sold for more than other slaves. They also bought slaves that came from privateers of Spanish slave ships. For instance, La Garce a French privateer, arrived in New Amsterdam in 1642 with Spanish Negroes that were captured from a Spanish ship. Although they claimed to be free, and not African, the Dutch sold them as slaves due to their skin color.
Unlike slaves from other colonies, slaves in New Amsterdam could sue another person whether white or black. Early instances included suits filed for lost wages and damages when a slave's pig was injured by a white man's dog. Slaves could also be sued.
Partial and full freedom
By 1644, some slaves had earned partial freedom, or half-freedom, in New Amsterdam and were able to earn wages. Under Roman-Dutch law they had other rights in the commercial economy, and intermarriage with working-class whites was frequent. Land grant records show that Land of the Blacks was located just north of New Amsterdam. During the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, the Dutch freed about 40 men and women who had been granted half-slave status. The new freemen had their original land grants finalized and all grants were officially marked as owned by the new freemen.Peter R. Christoph, "Freedmen of New Amsterdam" , Selected Rensselaerwicjk Papers, New York State Library, 1991
English rule
Following the English conquest of New Netherland, which was renamed New York, slaves continued to imported to the colony. Enslaved Africans performed a wide variety of skilled and unskilled jobs, mostly in the burgeoning port city and surrounding agricultural areas. In 1703, more than 42% of New York City's households held slaves, a percentage higher than in the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, and second only to Charleston in the South. It is one of the highest slavery rates in any of the original North American colonies.
In 1708, the New York Colonial Assembly passed a law entitled "Act for Preventing the Conspiracy of Slaves" which prescribed a death sentence for any slave who murdered or attempted to murder his or her master. This law, one of the first of its kind in Colonial America, was in part a reaction to the murder of William Hallet III and his family in Newtown (Queens).Wolfe, Missy. Insubordinate Spirit: A True Story of Life and Loss in Earliest America 1610-1665. Guilford CT, 2012, pp. 192–194.
New York became a hub for the trading of enslaved people. Auctions were typically held in the Meal Market and later the Fly Market and in 1711, a formal slave market was established at the end of Wall Street on the East River, and it operated until 1762. The institution remained fully entrenched until the state passed the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799, and even after the emancipation of slaves in New York State, the economic and social legacies of slavery bled into society and continued to shape New York's racial dynamics throughout the 19th century.Philip, Abby. "A permanent reminder of Wall Street’s hidden slave-trading past is coming soon" , Washington Post, April 15, 2015, retrieved February 10, 2017.
An act of the New York General Assembly, passed in 1730, the last of a series of New York slave codes, provided that: Forasmuch as the number of slaves in the cities of New York and Albany, as also within the several counties, towns and manors within this colony, doth daily increase, and that they have oftentimes been guilty of confederating together in running away, and of other ill and dangerous practices, be it therefore unlawful for above three slaves to meet together at any time, nor at any other place, than when it shall happen they meet in some servile employment for their masters' or mistresses' profit, and by their masters' or mistresses' consent, upon penalty of being whipped upon the naked back, at the discretion of any one justice of the peace, not exceeding forty lashes for each offense.
Manors and towns could appoint a common whipper at no more than three shillings per person. Blacks were given the lowest status jobs, the ones the Dutch did not want to perform, like meting out corporal punishment and executions. In 1753, the Assembly provided there should be paid "for every negro, mulatto or other slave, of four years old and upwards, imported directly from Africa, five ounces of Sevil[le] Pillar or Mexico plate [silver], or forty shillings in bills of credit made current in this colony."
As in other slaveholding societies, the city was swept by periodic fears of slave revolt. Incidents were misinterpreted under such conditions. In what was called the New York Conspiracy of 1741, city officials believed a revolt had started. Over weeks, they arrested more than 150 slaves and 20 white men, trying and executing several, in the belief they had planned a revolt. Historian Jill Lepore believes whites unjustly accused and executed many blacks in this event.Lepore, Jill, New York Burning; Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan, 2005.