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HALF A MAN
THE STATUS OF THE NEGRO
IN NEW YORK
BY
MARY WHITE OVINGTON
_WITH A FOREWORD BY DR. FRANZ BOAS
OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1911
_Copyright, 1911, by_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
THE . PLIMPTON . PRESS
[W . D . O]
NORWOOD . MASS . U . S . A
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER
THEODORE TWEEDY
OVINGTON
FOREWORD
Miss Ovington's description of the status of the Negro in New York City
is based on a most painstaking inquiry into his social and economic
conditions, and brings out in the most forceful way the difficulties
under which the race is laboring, even in the large cosmopolitan
population of New York. It is a refutation of the claims that the Negro
has equal opportunity with the whites, and that his failure to advance
more rapidly than he has, is due to innate inability.
Many students of anthropology recognize that no proof can be given of
any material inferiority of the Negro race; that without doubt the bulk
of the individuals composing the race are equal in mental aptitude to
the bulk of our own people; that, although their hereditary aptitudes
may lie in slightly different directions, it is very improbable that the
majority of individuals composing the white race should possess greater
ability than the Negro race.
The anthropological argument is invariably met by the objection that the
achievements of the two races are unequal, while their opportunities are
the same. Every demonstration of the inequality of opportunity will
therefore help to dissipate prejudices that prevent the best possible
development of a large number of our citizens.
The Negro of our times carries even more heavily the burden of his
racial descent than did the Jew of an earlier period; and the
intellectual and moral qualities required to insure success to the Negro
are infinitely greater than those demanded from the white, and will be
the greater, the stricter the segregation of the Negro community.
The strong development of racial consciousness, which has been
increasing during the last century and is just beginning to show the
first signs of waning, is the gravest obstacle to the progress of the
Negro race, as it is an obstacle to the progress of all strongly
individualized social groups. The simple presentation of observations,
like those given by Miss Ovington, may help us to overcome more quickly
that self-centred attitude which can see progress only in the domination
of a single type.
This investigation was carried on by Miss Ovington under the auspices of
the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations, of which she was
a Fellow.[1]
FRANZ BOAS.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations is composed
of Edwin R. A. Seligman, Chairman, Franz Boas, Edward T. Devine,
Livingston Farrand, Franklin H. Giddings, Henry R. Seager, Vladimir G.
Simkhovitch, Secretary.
Miss Ovington's is the second publication of the Committee, the first
being Mrs. Louise Bolard More's "Wage-Earners' Budgets," published by
Henry Holt & Co.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I "UP FROM SLAVERY" 5
II WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 31
III THE CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 52
IV EARNING A LIVING--MANUAL LABOR AND THE TRADES 75
V EARNING A LIVING--BUSINESS AND THE PROFESSIONS 106
VI THE COLORED WOMAN AS A BREAD WINNER 138
VII RICH AND POOR 170
VIII THE NEGRO AND THE MUNICIPALITY 195
IX CONCLUSION 218
APPENDIX 229
INDEX 233
HALF A MAN
INTRODUCTION
Six years ago I met a young colored man, a college student recently
returned from Germany where he had been engaged in graduate work. He was
born, he told me, in one of the Gulf States, and I questioned him as to
whether he intended going back to the South to teach. His answer was in
the negative. "My father has attained success in his native state," he
said, "but when I ceased to be a boy, he advised me to live in the North
where my manhood would be respected. He himself cannot continually
endure the position in which he is placed, and in the summer he comes
North to be a man. No," correcting himself, "to be half a man. A Negro
is wholly a man only in Europe."
Half a man! During the six years that I have been in touch with the
problem of the Negro in New York this characterization has grown in
significance to me. I have endeavored to know the life of the Negro as I
know the life of the white American, and I have learned that while New
York at times gives full recognition to his manhood, again, its race
prejudice arrests his development as certainly as severe poverty arrests
the development of the tenement child. Perhaps a study of this shifting
attitude on the part of the dominant race, and of the Negro's reaction
under it, may not be unimportant; for the color question cannot be
ignored in America, nor should the position taken by her largest city be
overlooked. And those who love their fellows may be glad, among New
York's four millions--its Slavs and Italians, its Russians and
Asiatics--to meet these dark people who speak our language and who for
many generations have made this country their home.
CHAPTER I
"UP FROM SLAVERY"
The status of the Negro in New Amsterdam, a slave in a pioneer
community, differed fundamentally from his position today in New York.
His history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century contains many
exciting incidents, but those only need be considered here that show a
progress or a retardation in his attainment to manhood. What were his
struggles in the past to secure his rights as a man?
Slavery in the early days of the colonies was more brutal than at the
time of final emancipation. Savages recently arrived from Africa lacked
the docility of blacks reared in bondage, and burning and torturing, as
well as whipping, were recognized modes of punishment. Masters looked
upon their Negroes, bought at the Wall Street market from among the
cargo of a recently arrived slaver, with some suspicion and fear. Nor
were their apprehensions entirely without reason. In 1712 some of the
discontented among the New York slaves met in an orchard in Maiden Lane
and set fire to an outhouse. Defending themselves against the citizens
who ran to put out the flames, they fired, killing nine men and wounding
six. Retribution soon followed. They were pursued when they attempted
flight, captured and executed--some hanged, some burned at the stake,
some left suspended in chains to starve to death.
Perhaps it was the memory of this small revolt that caused the people of
New York in 1741 to lay the blame for a series of conflagrations upon
their slaves. Nine fires that seemed to be incendiary came one upon
another, and a robbery was committed. To escape death herself, a
worthless white servant girl gave testimony against the Negroes who
frequented a tavern where she was employed, declaring that a plot had
been conceived whereby the slaves would kill all the white men and take
control of the city. New York was aflame with fear, and evidence that at
another time would have been rejected, was listened to by the judges
with grave attention. The slaves were allowed no defence, and before the
city had recovered from its fright, it had burned fourteen Negroes,
hanged eighteen, and transported seventy-one.[1]
Historians today think that the slaves were in no way concerned in this
so-called "plot." The two thousand blacks in the city might have done
much mischief to the ten thousand whites, but their servile condition
made an organized movement among them impossible. We may infer, however,
from the fear which they provoked, that they were not all docile
servants. In a letter written at the port of New York in 1756, an
English naval officer says of the city, "The laborious people in general
are Guinea Negroes who lie under particular restraints from the attempts
they have made to massacre the inhabitants for their liberty."[2]
Janvier in his "Old New York" thinks, "that the alarm bred by the
so-called Negro plot of 1741 was most effective in checking the growth
of slavery in that city." Probably the restlessness of the slaves, their
efforts toward manhood, in a community where there was little economic
justification for slavery, contributed to the movement for emancipation
that began in 1777.
Emancipation came gradually to the New York Negro. Gouverneur Morris at
the state constitutional convention of 1776-1777 recommended that "the
future legislature of the state of New York take the most effectual
measures consistent with the public safety and the private property of
individuals for abolishing domestic slavery within the same, so that in
future ages every human being who breathes the air of this state shall
enjoy the privileges of a freeman." The postponement of action to a
future legislature was keenly regretted by John Jay, who was absent from
the convention when the slavery question arose, but who had hoped that
New York might be a leader in emancipation. The state's initial measure
for abolishing slavery was in 1785, when it prohibited the sale of
slaves in New York. This was followed in 1799 by an act giving freedom
to the children of slaves, and in 1817 by a further act providing for
the abolition of slavery throughout the state in 1827. This law went
into effect July 4, 1827, the emancipation day of the Negroes in New
York.
With gradual emancipation and the cessation of the sale of slaves, the
Negroes numerically became unimportant in the city. In 1800 they
constituted ten and a half per cent of the population. Half a century
later, while they had doubled their numbers, the immense influx of
foreign immigrants brought their proportion down to two and seven-tenths
per cent. In 1850 and 1860 their positive as well as their relative
number decreased, and it was not until twenty years ago that they began
to show some gain. The last census returns of 1900 give Greater New York
(including Brooklyn) 60,666 Negroes in a population of 3,437,202, one
and eight-tenths per cent. It seems probable that the census of 1910
will show a large positive and a slight relative Negro increase.[3]
The relative decrease in the number of Negroes did not, however, produce
a decrease in the agitation upon their presence and position in the
city. Their political status was a subject for heated discussion even
before their complete emancipation. The first state constitution,
drafted in 1777, was without color discrimination, since it based the
suffrage upon a property qualification requiring voters for governor and
senators to be freeholders owning property worth L100. A Negro with such
a holding was a phenomenon, a curiosity. But by 1821, when the framing
of the second constitution was in progress, Negroes of some education
were an appreciable element in the population, and with them ignorant,
recently emancipated slaves. Should they be admitted to the full manhood
suffrage contemplated for the whites? Those who favored the new
democratic movement were doubtful of its applicability to colored
people. Livingston, a champion of universal white manhood suffrage, was
against giving the black man the vote. On the other hand, the
conservative Chancellor Kent, apprehending in the new constitution "a
disposition to encroach on private rights,--to disturb chartered
privileges and to weaken, degrade, and overawe the administration of
justice," would yet have made no color discrimination, and Peter A. Jay,
who did not believe in universal white manhood suffrage, urged that
colored men, natives of the country, should derive from its institutions
the same privileges as white persons. The second constitution when
adopted enfranchised practically all white men, but gave the Negroes a
property qualification of $250. The issue of the revolution, however,
was not far from men's thoughts, and "taxation without representation"
was not permitted; for while no colored man might vote without a
freehold estate valued at 250 dollars, _no person of color was subject
to direct taxation unless he should be possessed of such real estate_.
In 1846 a third constitutional convention was held, and the same matter
came up for debate. John L. Russell of St. Lawrence declared that "the
Almighty had created the black man inferior to the white man," while
Daniel S. Waterbury of Delaware County believed that "the argument that
because a race of men is marked by a peculiarity of color and crooked
hair they are not endowed with a mind equal to another class who have
other peculiarities is unworthy of men of sense." John H. Hunt of New
York City proclaimed that "We want no masters, least of all no Negro
masters.... Negroes are aliens." And he predicted that the practical
effect of their admission to the suffrage would be their exclusion from
Manhattan Island. A delegation of colored men appeared at Albany before
the suffrage committee, but their arguments and those of their friends
produced no effect. The new constitution contained the same Negro
property qualification, and it was not until 1874, after the passage of
the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that
legislation placed the Negro voter of New York upon the same footing as
the white.[4]
Had New York sincerely desired to keep the Negro in an inferior
position, it could have accomplished this by refusing him an education.
This it never did, though it suffered much tribulation regarding the
place and manner of his instruction. Before the establishment of a
public school system, the Manumission society, an association composed
largely of Friends, though including in its membership John Jay, De Witt
Clinton, and Alexander Hamilton, undertook the education of the Negro.
In 1787 it opened a school for Africans on Cliff Street. One of the
early teachers was Charles C. Andrews, whose little book on "The African
Free Schools," published in 1830, shows a kindly tolerance for the black
race. "As a result of forty years' experience," he writes, "the idea
respecting the capacity of the African race to receive a respectable and
even a liberal education has not been visionary." And he recites the
names of some of his pupils: "Rev. Theodore S. Wright, graduate of
Princeton Theological Seminary; John B. Russworm, graduate of Bowdoin;
Edward Jones, graduate of Amherst; William Brown and William G. Smith,
students of the medical department, Columbia College: all of them
persons of color." Describing an annual exhibition of his school on May
12, 1824, he quotes from the _Commercial Advertiser_ of the same date:
"We never beheld a white school, of the same age (of and under the age
of fifteen), in which, without exception, there was more order and
neatness of dress and cleanliness of person. And the exercises were
performed with a degree of promptness and accuracy which was
surprising."
In 1834 the public school association took over the schools of the
Manumission society, but before this time the Negroes had begun to
assert themselves regarding the method and place of instruction for
their children. They clamored for colored teachers and succeeded in
displacing Charles Andrews himself. In 1838, at their desire, the word
African was changed to colored in describing the race; but of chief
importance to their educational future, they began a protest, only to
end in 1900, against segregation.
Removed from the care of the Manumission society, the colored schools
deteriorated. Their grade was reduced,[5] and owing to the growth of the
city, their attendance was very irregular, the severe winter weather
often keeping children who lived at a distance at home. A Brooklyn man
tells me that, when a boy, he used to walk from his home at East New
York to Fulton Ferry, passing inferior Brooklyn colored schools, and
after crossing the river, on up to Mulberry Street to be instructed by
the popular colored teacher, John Peterson. Here he received a good
education; but few boys would have endured a daily trip of fourteen
miles. Increasingly parents, if the colored school of their neighborhood
was not of the best, sent their boys and girls to be instructed with the
white boys and girls of their district.
The state law declared that any city or incorporated village might
establish separate schools for the instruction of African youths,
provided the facilities were equal to those of white schools, and when,
in 1862, a colored parent brought a case against the city for forcing
her child to go to a colored school, the case was lost.[6] Nevertheless,
during the nineteenth century Negroes in some numbers attended white
schools in both Brooklyn and New York, and Negro parents continued in
their quiet but persistent efforts against segregation. Then again, New
York grew too rapidly to segregate any race. The Negro boys and girls
were scattered through many districts, and the attendance at colored
schools fell off; in 1879 it was less than in 1878, and in 1880 less
than in 1879; so that the Board of Education in 1883 decided to
disestablish three colored schools.
But this involved another factor. If the colored schools were
disestablished, what would become of the colored teachers? The Negroes
met this issue by delaying disestablishment for a year, while the
teachers went about among the parents of the ward, making friends and
urging that children, _white or colored_, be sent to their schools.
Numbers of new pupils of both races were brought in within the year, and
at the end of the time, after a hearing before the governor, then Grover
Cleveland, a bill was passed prohibiting the abolition of two of the
three colored schools, but also making them open to all children
regardless of color.[7]
Occasionally a colored girl graduated from the normal college of the
city, but if there was no vacancy for her in the four colored schools
she received no appointment. In 1896, however, a normal graduate, Miss
S. E. Frazier, insisted upon her right to be appointed as teacher in any
school in which there was a vacancy. She visited the ward trustees and
the members of the Board of Education, and represented to them the
injustice done her and her race in refusing her the chance to prove her
ability as a teacher in the first school that should need a normal
graduate. She was finally appointed to a position in a white school. Her
success with her pupils was immediate, and since then the question of
race or color has not been considered in the appointment of teachers in
New York.
Until 1900, the state law permitted the establishment of separate
colored schools. In that year, however, on the initiative of Theodore
Roosevelt, then governor, the legislature passed a bill providing that
no person should be refused admission or be excluded from any public
school in the state on account of race or color.[8] This closed the
question of compulsory segregation in the state, though before this it
had ceased in New York. Public education was thus democratized for the
New York Negroes, their persistent efforts bringing at the end complete
success.
While the colored people in New York started with segregated schools and
attained to mixed schools, the movement in the churches was the reverse.
At first the Negroes were attendants of white churches, sitting in the
gallery or on the rear seats, and waiting until the white people were
through before partaking of the communion; but as their number increased
they chafed under their position. Why should they be placed apart to
hear the doctrine of Christ, and why, too, should they not have full
opportunity to preach that doctrine? The desire for self-expression was
perhaps the greatest factor in leading them to separate from the white
church. In 1796 about thirty Negroes, under the leadership of James
Varick,[9] withdrew from the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church,
and formed the first colored church of New York. Varick had been denied
a license to preach, but now as pastor of his own people, he was
recognized by the whites and helped by some of them. He was the founder
of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
The Abyssinian Baptist Church was organized in 1800 by a few colored
members who withdrew from the First Baptist Church, then in Gold Street,
to establish themselves on Worth Street,[10] and in 1818 the colored
Episcopalians organized St. Philip's Church. In 1820 one of their race,
Peter Williams, for six years deacon, became their preacher.
Another prominent church was the colored Congregational, situated, in
1854, on Sixth Street; and it was the determined effort of its woman
organist to reach the church in time to perform her part in the Sunday
morning service that led to an important Negro advance in citizenship.
In the middle of the last century the right of the Negro to ride in car
or omnibus depended on the sufferance of driver, conductor, and
passenger. Sometimes a car stopped at a Negro's signal, again the driver
whipped up his horses, while the conductor yelled to the "nigger" to
wait for the next car. Entrance might always be effected if in the
company of a white person, and the small child of a kindly white
household would be delegated to accompany the homeward bound black
visitor into her car where, after a few minutes, conductor and
passengers having become accustomed to her presence, the young
protector might slip away. Such a situation was very galling to the
self-respecting negro.
In July, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings, a colored school-teacher and organist
at the Congregational Church, attempted to board a Third Avenue car at
Pearl and Chatham Streets. She was hurrying to reach the church to
perform her part in the service. The conductor stopped, but as Miss
Jennings mounted the platform, he told her that she must wait for the
next car, which was reserved for her people. "I have no people," Miss
Jennings said. "I wish to go to church as I have for six months past,
and I do not wish to be detained." The altercation continued until the
car behind came up, and the driver there declaring that he had less room
than the car in front, the woman was grudgingly allowed to enter the
car. "Remember," the conductor said, "if any passenger objects, you
shall go out, whether or no, or I'll put you out."
"I am a respectable person, born and brought up in New York," said Miss
Jennings, "and I was never insulted so before."
This again aroused the conductor. "I was born in Ireland," he said, "and
you've got to get out of this car."
He attempted to drag her out. The woman clung to the window, the
conductor called in the driver to help him, and together they dragged
and pulled and at last threw her into the street. Badly hurt, she
nevertheless jumped back into the car. The driver galloped his horses
down the street, passing every one until a policeman was found who
pushed the woman out, not, however, until she had taken the number of
the car. She then made her way home.
Elizabeth Jennings took the case into court, and it came before the
Supreme Court of the State in February, 1855, Chester A. Arthur,
afterwards President of the United States, being one of the lawyers for
the plaintiff. The judge's charge was clear on the point that common
carriers were bound to carry all respectable people, white or colored,
and the plaintiff was given $225 damages, to which the court added ten
per cent and costs; and to quote the New York _Tribune's_ comment on the
case,[11] "Railroads, steamboats, omnibuses, and ferryboats will be
admonished from this as to the rights of respectable colored
people."[12]
When you talk with the elderly educated colored people of New York
today, they tell you that before the War were "dark days." The
responsibility felt by the thoughtful Negroes was very great. They had
not only their own battles to wage, but there were the fugitives who
were entering the city by the Underground Railroad, whom they must
assist though it cost them their own liberty. In 1835 a Vigilance
Committee was formed in New York City to take charge of all escaping
slaves, and also to prevent the arrest and return to slavery of free men
of color. Colored men served on this Committee, and its secretary was
the minister of the church to which Elizabeth Jennings was endeavoring
to make her way that Sunday morning, the Reverend Charles B. Ray. In
1850 the New York State Vigilance Committee was formed with Gerritt
Smith as President and Ray as Secretary. Ray's home was frequently used
to shelter fugitives.[13] Once a young man, stepping up to the door and
learning that it was Charles Ray's house, whistled to his companions in
the darkness, and fourteen black men made their appearance and received
shelter. There would also come the task of negotiating for the purchase
of a slave, or this proving impossible, for the careful working out of
a means for his escape. Dark days, indeed, but made memorable to the
Negro by heroic work and the friendship of great men. Perhaps the two
races have never worked together in such fine companionship as at the
unlawful and thrilling task of protecting and aiding the fugitive.
The hardest year of the century for the Negro was 1863, when the draft
riot imperilled every dark face. Many Negroes fled from the city.
Colored homes were fired, the Orphan Asylum for colored children on
Fifth Avenue was burned, and even the dead might not be buried save at
the peril of undertaker and priest. Elizabeth Jennings, now Mrs. Graham,
lost a child when the rioting was at its height. An undertaker named
Winterbottom, a white man, was brave enough to give his services,
winning the lasting gratitude and patronage of the colored people. With
the danger of violence about them, the father and mother went to
Greenwood Cemetery, where the Reverend Morgan Dix of Trinity Church read
the burial service at the grave.
With the end of the War and the passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments came a revulsion of feeling for the race. "I remember," an
old time friend of the Negro tells me, "when the fifteenth amendment was
passed. The colored people stood in great numbers on the streets, and on
their faces was a look of gratitude and thanksgiving that I shall never
forget." Following the amendment came the State Civil Rights Bill in
1873, declaring that all persons should be entitled to full and equal
accommodations in all public places; and discrimination for a time
largely ceased.
While the colored people were winning citizenship, their progress in
industry was also considerable. Until 1860 the race was infrequently
segregated, and black and white were neighbors, not only in their homes,
but in business. Samuel R. Scottron, a careful Negro writer, compiled a
long list of the trades in which Negroes engaged before the War. Besides
the various lines of domestic service, in which they were more
frequently seen than today--coachmen, cooks, waitresses, seamstresses,
barbers--there were many craftsmen, ship-builders, trimmers, riggers,
coopers, caulkers, printers, tailors, carpenters. "Second-hand clothing
shops were everywhere kept by colored men. All the caterers and
restaurant keepers of the high order, as well as small places, were kept
by colored men.... Varick and Peters kept about the most pretentious
barber shop in the city. Patrick Reason was one of the most capable
engravers. The greatest among the restaurateurs was Thomas Downing, who
kept a restaurant under what is now the Drexel Building, corner of Wall
and Broad Streets. The drug stores of Dr. James McCune Smith on West
Broadway, and Dr. Philip A. White on Frankfort Street, were not
outclassed by any kept by white men in their day."[14]
And so the list goes on. It is perhaps somewhat exaggerated in the
importance in the city's business life which it gives to the colored
race. Charles Andrews, in 1837, says of the pupil who graduates from his
school, "He leaves with every avenue closed against him--doomed to
encounter as much prejudice and contempt as if he were not only
destitute of that education which distinguishes the civilized from the
savage, but as if he were incapable of receiving it." And he goes on to
tell of those few who have been able to learn trades, and their
subsequent difficulties in finding employment in good shops. White
journeymen object to working in the same shop with them, and many of the
best lads go to sea or become waiters, barbers, coachmen, servants,
laborers. But he is writing of an early date, and the opinion of the
colored people seems to be that, before our large foreign immigration,
the Negro was more needed in New York than today and received a large
share of satisfactory employment. His chief competitor was the Irish
immigrant, like himself an agricultural laborer, without previous
training in business, and he was frequently able to hold his own in his
shop. His long experience in domestic service, moreover, made him a
better caterer than the representatives of any other nationality that
had yet entered the city. His churches were flourishing, thus securing a
profession for which he had natural ability, and as we have seen,
colored men and women taught in the New York schools.
The city grew rapidly after 1875, and the colored society, the little
group that had attained to modest means and education, bought homes,
chiefly in Brooklyn, where land was easier to secure than in Manhattan,
and strove to enlarge the opportunities for those who were to come after
them. Color prejudice had waned, and they often met with especial
consideration because of their race. Had they been white they would have
slipped into the population and been lost, as happened to the Germans
and the Irish, who had been their competitors. As it was, they formed a
society apart from the rest of the city, meeting it occasionally in work
or through the friendship of children, who, left to themselves, know no
race. They had battled against prejudice and had won their rights as
citizens.
As we look at the life of a segregated people, however, we see that we
tend always to regard not the individual but the group. The Negro is a
man in Europe, because there he is an individual, standing or falling
by his own merits. But in America, even in so cosmopolitan a city as New
York, he is judged, not by his own achievements, but by the achievements
of every other New York black man. So we will leave these able colored
Americans, who won much both for themselves and for their race, and turn
to the mass of the Negroes, the toiling poor, who dwell in our tenements
today.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Daniel Horsmanden, "New York Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro
Plot."
[2] James Grant Wilson, "History of New York," Vol. II, p. 314.
[3]
POPULATION OF NEW YORK FROM 1800 TO 1900: TOTAL AND NEGRO.
BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN
Percentage
Total Negro of Negroes
1800 60,515 6,382 10.5
1810 96,373 9,823 10.2
1820 123,706 10,886 8.8
1830 202,589 13,976 6.9
1840 312,710 16,358 5.2
1850 515,547 13,815 2.7
1860 805,658 12,574 1.6
1870 942,292 13,072 1.5
BOROUGHS OF MANHATTAN AND BRONX
1880 1,206,299 19,663 1.6
1890 1,515,301 23,601 1.6
1900 2,050,600 38,616 1.9
GREATER NEW YORK
1900 3,437,202 60,666 1.8
[4] For a full account of the Negro's political status in New York
consult Charles Z. Lincoln's "Constitutional History of New York."
[5] Thomas Boese's "Public Education in the City of New York," p. 227.
[6] King _v._ Gallagher, 1882.
[7] A. Emerson Palmer, "The New York Public School."
[8] Laws of New York, Chapter 492.
[9] B. F. Wheeler, D.D., "The Varick Family."
[10] Geo. H. Hansell, "Reminiscences of New York Baptists."
[11] _New York Tribune_, February 23, 1855.
[12] "The Story of an Old Wrong," in _The American Woman's Journal_,
July, 1895.
[13] Life of the Reverend Charles B. Ray.
[14] _Colored American Magazine_, October, 1907.