[inaudible conversations] >> welcome to c-span2's booktv. we bring you 48 hours on history, biography and public affairs by nonfiction authors. >> this weekend on booktv on c-span2, gaithersburg book festival on wall street, the universe, america's largest slave revolt leader in india and the middle east and a panel discussion on the book industry and the former ambassador to yemen on the u. s

counterterrorism efforts. .. >> under the constant threat of racial violence. this is about an hour and ten minutes. >> um, i want to start out my talk with two quotes. they're both from are the prologue of my book, and i'll give a little explanation for them, but they introduce why i decided to write the book. so the first quote is in my own prose from the prologue. we still hold certain truths

about african-americans to be self-evident; that the phrase 19th century black americans refers to enslaved people, that new york state before the civil war denotes a place of freedom, that blacks in new york city designates harlem, that the black community posits a classless and culturally-unified society, that a black elite did not exist until well into the 20th century. the lives of my new york forebearers belies such senses. they were born free at a time when slavery was still legal in new york state. they lived first in lower manhattan and then in brooklyn at a time when harlem was a mere village. they were part of new york's small but significant community and, specifically, its elite class. so the first impulse for my writing the book was my desire to overturn these assumptions,

assumptions that we live with almost on a daily basis and, therefore, to point to the significance of the black elite in new york city. so it was a professional imus, if you -- impulse, if you will. the second quote is from the end graph of the prologue, and it is from toni morrison's "beloved." denver was seeing it through beloved, and the more fine points she made, the more details she provided, the more beloved liked it. so she anticipated the questions by giving blood to the scraps her or mother and grandmother told her and a heartbeat. denver spoke, beloved listened, and the two did the best they could to create what really happened. how it really was. something only stephane knew because she alone had the time afterward to shape it. so this second quote points to one of my great concerns in writing the book; the idea to

recover my family's past. not my mother's, but my great, great grandparents and so forth. and realizing they were their memories and not my memories. so how could i tell the story of memories that were not my own and that had just come down to me in scraps? and how could i then give blood and a heartbeat to these scraps? so that was my second, much more personal motivation for writing the book. and, indeed, i had a hard time trying to give blood and a heartbeat to the scraps i found because i started with almost nothing, with really one full story. the full story -- partly full story. basically, i was told i had a great grandfather, that he'd been born in haiti, that his name was philippe.

at the time of the haitian revolution he left haiti, went to paris, became a pharmacist, then came to new york and anglicized his name to phillip augustus white. there was no haiti in the background, there was no trip to paris. he was born, actually, in new jersey in hoboken, moved very quickly -- [laughter] moved very quickly to new york city and did become a pharmacist. so i was faced with a real problem there. and as i started my research to find family stories, what i discovered was that there had actually been a real will to commemorate in, among 9th century -- 19th century black new yorkers, that forgetting was not their way of life. they started off, first of all, in commemorations, for example, of important events like the abolition of the slave trade, january 1, 1808, and commemorated it every year after

on the same day in ceremonies, in parades. they commemorated the abolition of slavery in the state of new york which was july 4, 1827. they had newspapers, the colored american freedoms journal, where they wrote about themselves in a desire to commemorate. they tried to erect statues, for example, one to henly highland -- henry highland garnet who i might mention a little later. he's really not central to this talk, but he was an important black leader. they wanted to create a memorial in his honor. um, they managed to create but, by the large, did not manage to preserve. so the problem of preservation became a tremendous one when you're an undersourced community, when you don't have funds and resources, how do you preserve? so so much got lost by the wayside. and, of course, the best example that i could give that all of

you are familiar with is the negroes' burial ground in downtown, right, new york. how it was the black cemetery all the way throughout the 18th century, got destroyed in 1795 because of real estate speculation, what else in new york? so the cemetery was taken over to make ground for, to lay, lay ground for new lots to be sold, houses to be built, etc., etc. and then there was the problem of the archives, the earliest new york archive was established by john pintard, very well-known, white elite man. in 1804 the new york historical society. but black new yorkers had to wait until the 1920s to, for arturo schaumberg to establish the schaumberg center. and yet, basically, the archives were ultimately my only

resource. it's the only place i had to go to since my family had begin me so little and half of a story. so what i do in the book, and i do want to point this out, is the book unfolds on two levels. on one level the story of my search, how i went through the archives looking for material, finding, not finding how i put them together. and on the second level, of course, it is the story itself. so i started out in the schaumberg, and i was really lucky to find very early on two scrapbook pages in an archival collection. and in them i found the obituary pasted on a scrapbook of my great grandfather and then my great, great grandfather. so this is the first scrapbook page, it is my great grandfather. and, of course, the name was phillip augustus white, so i recognized him immediately.

to give you a quick thumbnail sketch, he was born in 123, died in 1891. he was from a fairly poor family. his father died when he was young. he went to one of the public schools, they called them a colored school. he aftera wards went to -- afterwards went to train with james smith who was one of our early doctors and pharmacists and was an apprentice in smith's pharmacy for two years. that enabled him to enter the college of pharmacy of the city of new york. and he got a degree in 1844. 1844, black man from the college of pharmacy. his great -- so then he established a pharmacy, a drugstore in downtown new york. it is on the corner of what was frankfurt and gold street, and part of pace university is there now. he made quite a bit of money through his drugstore. the money he had he gave back to

two causes; one, the education of black children, and the other his church, st. phillip's episcopal church. when he moved to brooklyn in 1870, he settled there. in 1883 seth lowe, who was then mayor of brooklyn, appointed him to the brooklyn board of education. he had the first black seat on the brooklyn board of education. so that is my great grandfather. this is his father-in-law, my great, great grandfather, so you can check your family tree. phillip white marries elizabeth, and be this is elizabeth's father. he, he was the one who was -- no. his parents were haitian. he was born in new york, he was born in 1813, died in the early 1880s. went to a school that i will come back and talk to you, talk about later. did a variety of odd jobs, married my great, great grandmother who died very young, i know nothing about her. and in his second marriage he

married into the ray family. they were a prominent family, and cornelia's brother, peter williams ray, was also a doctor and had a pharmacy, a drugstore. so he was brought into the drugstore as a pharmacist. he had no background the way my great grandfather did, no training, but he could become a pharmacist. he, too, was very devoted to st. phillips. um, the other treasure-trove that i found at the schaumberg were the harry williamson papers. and if you look down on the family tree, you will see him there. and i won't go into any detail, and maybe that doesn't show up too well. but in the, in doing the family research the woman on the right here is mary joseph lyons, and she is the sister of my great, great grandmother, rebecca

marshall. so, and she married this man, lyons. and i bring them up although i'm not going to talk about them much in this talk tonight. i bring them up because albro lyons said to his daughter -- she's on the family tree -- that he wanted to write the story, the history of his generation. but he never got further than the title. and the title he had picked was the gentlemen in black. so he said to his daughter, i am not going to be able to do it, i want you to do it. so in this same collection of papers we have a typed manuscript, about 85 pages -- pretty much in draft form. organizationally, at least, in draft form. and what marisa said from the vast output of fugitive scraps, she was going to try and write her memoir.

she titled it, "memories of yesterday." so she wrote the 85 pages but didn't get it published. so i consider my book, "black gotham," to be the final event, the final publication of this idea of writing the history of the gentlemen in black which goes well back into the 19th century, and i just hope if they're looking down, listening, watching, reading, that they approve of what i did. [laughter] but what i want to say is that the word scrap really stuck with me. the scrapbook pages that i found, and then marisa saying that she wrote the, her memoir from the vast output of fugitive scraps. so i see my book very much as a scrapbook. there are parts -- i choose an event or a story, i tell it. my chronology, it's a chronological story, but there

are gaps which i can't possibly fill in, and i don't try to. so i think of my book as a scrapbook. i also talk about it as a partial history meaning i'm not trying to give an entire history, i'm not even trying to give an objective history. my history's partial. it's partial because it's about my family, and it's because it's only a part of black new york history and because i am partial to it. it's also a chronological history but very much a cyclical one because what it does is it traces the ups and downs of black new yorkers. every time that they feel they've made social, political, economic progress something happens to slap them in the face and bring them down again. lastly, though, i also think of it as a spatial history, and that's why i titled the book "black gotham," to show the way to which -- the degree to which so much of their life was formed by where they lived; the city of

gotham and the neighborhoods in it. so i'm going to name the five spaces. i think of it, the spaces, as concentric circles. and i'm going to name the five of them now, and then i'm going to come back, and i'm only going to talk about a couple of them. if i tried to do the whole thing, we'd be here all night. so, the first one, then, is what one of the members of the black elite called the wide circle of the leading citizens of new york and vicinity, basically, the black elite. the second is the black community, and i'm sure that's a term that you all hear a lot, the black community this, that and the other. so just to give you a sense of some numbers for those of you who like numbers, in 1840 the number of black inhabitants was about 16,400 out of 313,000. this is all approximate. and then it declines to about 12,500 out of 814,000 in 1860.

so just some kind of ballpark numbers. the third, which i'm going to come back, is the city itself, gotham. um, where they lived in racially-mixed neighborhoods and had a variety of contact with whites and blacks. so that's something i will definitely come pack to. then -- come back to. then beyond gotham, the contacts they had with blacks in other cities like philadelphia, boston, so forth. and last weekend one of my audiences, there was a man from philly, and we can have a real go to because the differences in sensibility and culture in 19th century black philadelphia and boston were very different from new york, and we can talk about that in q&a if you want to. and finally and not the least important is the sense of being a citizen of the world, that they were cosmopolitan, that they belonged to the entire world, that they were part of the entire world. so let me start by talking a

little bit about the elite and this idea of the wide circle of the leading citizens of new york and be vicinity. so the first thing that i want to point out is the way in, um, in which education was really absolutely foundational to this elite. if nothing else, i could say this is a book about education. education, education, education. so what you hear now is not new at all, um, i mean, turn on new york one, and you're hearing about the school system, etc., etc. same issues back then. this is the most famous school of the early 19th century. it's an african free school, it was called the mulberry street school. and that is where my great, great grandfather, peter, went to school. and he went to school with a bunch of young men who turned out to be leaders, real leaders of the black community both in new york and beyond. and i'll just name the ones that

i'm going to come and talk about later. there was george downing, charles reason and his brother patrick, and james mcewan smith. what today we would call the solid foundation of a liberal arts education. in addition to that, there were development or education in other areas; character was one, respectability another, the acquisition of wealth. this is new york. basically, work hard, become very skilled in your trade or in your profession and be make money in the process -- and make money in the process, but then give money back to the community. and finally, this idea of cosmopolitanism, read shakespeare, read milton, read wordsworth and have a sense of the entire world. so what i think is really important to think of here is the way in which when we say black american or

african-american, you know, an image immediately comes to mind, and i -- kind of static. what i want to point out is the dynamic process of making identity in this period. people had been kidnapped from and brought enslaved to the new world, to the united states, to america, to the united states, to new york, and they didn't become black-americans or african-americans overnight, but it was a process of struggle. and that was of trying to forge identity, and that was the schooling was all about. so to pass on -- that's circle number one. to pass on circle number two is the black community itself with all the institutions, literary society, political societies, so forth. and i'm not going to spend much time talking about these. we can come back in the q&a period. i will say they're mainly male organizations. women are not members. they're definitely not officers.

they're invited as companions to a talk like now, right? but they would never be a member of the greenwich village society for historic preservation. [laughter] but they could accompany their spouse to it. and that presented, that was an incredible research problem for me which i could talk about later. um, the other thing, um, so that, basically, is the black community, and i'm going to pass on. so education/schools were one, and church is the other. and my family's church, st. phillips, was down here in upper manhattan and now in harlem. so the third circle is that of gotham, and this is where i'm going to spend the rest of my time talking. and i have a section in my book titled distance and proximity. what i want to point out is no matter how distant black new yorkers were from their white

counterparts, either poor, native-born irish immigrants, german immigrants or even wealthier white, they were never -- there was still proximity. because they lived downtown in racially-mixed neighborhoods in ward four and ward five and ward six and ward eight. they were always close to others, people who were not like them. not necessarily in the same house or the same tenement, but maybe tenements on the street or at least block to block. and what this led to were some really surprising, to me surprising -- and to them, also -- unpredictable contacts with whites. and i'm just going to mention a couple of things, um, that i talk about and that i think make this point. the first is all new yorkers experience the same indignity of living in new york, the same filth, the same pigs who are

running around, right? rooting -- eating garbage and knocking people over and biting you in the leg. the same disease like smallpox, like cholera, like yellow fever. if you were wealthy, you could escape town. but the other thing, maybe more important, is this idea of what i call whimsy, that there's no real, set protocol for race relations. you would think that in the 1840s, '50s, '60s with a city in which racial discrimination hostility is so intense that every boundary would be tightly drawn, and you would really know what to do. and yet they encountered what i call whimsy, and i get this from marisa. my new toy. okay. who in her memoir says writing for colored folks depended on the whims of respected, safe

drivers. and she goes on to talk about how going to school, how at times she was free to get on the railroad car, no problem. at other times she was, like, no, you have to wait for the colored car. that was, that would be one example. another would be going to the crystal palace which was the great exhibit that was put on in the 1850s modeled after london's crystal palace, this great exhibit hall. and a comment in the newspaper that black new yorkers have been casting the horoscope as to whether colored people would be admitted. so one day you could be admitted, another not. then there were high cultural events, and in a way the black elite hoped that class would trump race, that if they had education, understood kind of high culture, that they would be free to go. and that was true, a lot of times they went to opera, plays,

they went to the bookstore, the art gallery. but in one instance they were forbidden to enter. and this is when one of their own, um, an opera singer named elizabeth taylor greenfield, came up from philadelphia, black singer, to sing. and the hall in which she was to sing did not have a segregated section. and so the black elite were turned away and told that they couldn't enter. so they raised a brouhaha and were finally allowed to get in. um, so that is to show the confusion, the real whimsy that operated in new york for the black elite and for all black new yorkers. so, um, for the remainder, for my next half of the talk i'm going to focus on this area which is something that dana asked me to do, and i'm going to be focusing specifically on three sites. one is broadway, another is lawrence street which was

parallel to thompson street north of houseton, and the third is -- and that's the lawrence street school -- and the third is the african grove theater which was located on mercer street. and i want to show two things. one, the way in which distance and proximity still obtained in this area, and the other is i think i see a way to, also, point out while i'm talking about place and what happened in certain places to point out, um, some of the moral values underlying the happenings. um, so what happens, i'm going to talk a little bit about the white elite first. l the white elite, of course, started downtown like everybody did, and they gradually start to move up. they're trying to flee the very thing they were creating, right? commercialization, brouhaha in the city. so they come up to, um, the village, to st. johns park and up broadway. and then at a certain point, of course, they move north of bleaker street.

and so there was that phrase, you know, above bleaker street, and that's where the upper tendom, as they called, lived. and they were also in the bond street/lafayette place area. so i want to read, now, a little, um, passage, um, from my book in which i talk about george foster and way in which he captures broadway in that, um, in that period. so going, um, all the way up, um, broadway starting maybe a little bit below houseton going up. what was -- so i talk about the way in which the, um, bond street/lafayette place area is very nice and quiet. what was not quiet was broadway, an avenue marked by contrast writer george foster well captured it flavor in his most recent book, "new york in slices." there was the contrast of

morning and afternoon. at daybreak broadway was hushed and solitary. the few who were about could amuse themselves watching the awakened swine glop furiously downward to have the first cut at the new garbage. later in the day, however, a mass of people would surge through the street, a human river in a freshet roaring and foaming toward the sea. among some of the truly fine buildings, others had sprung up haphazardly. a brick schoolhouse here, a penitentiary or pound there. finally what caught your eye depended on where you looked. down, a rotten cellar door. straight ahead, a plate glass window stuffed with gaudy cashmeres and mildewed muslims. above, an interminable line of clotheslines. what foster failed to mention was the contrast between day and night because come nightfall the

area around houseton street would be overrun with people. customers in search of good food, good drink, good entertainment and, yes, good sex. the area had become a center of the city's sex trade. prostitutes were everywhere, in hotels, in the private supper rooms of restaurants, in upstairs drinking rooms and saloons, in the brothels. walt whitman was certain that in no other place could vice show itself so impudently. so that is broadway. then i want to move on to my second place which is the lawrence street school, um, for colored children located a few blocks north of houseton. and i do not, unfortunately, i don't have an image of it. um, and this is where my great grandfather, so my great, great grandfather goes to the, um, mulberry street school, and my great, great grandfather goes

to, um, the lawrence street school. and i know a lot about my great grandfather because of the, um, very lengthy eulogy that this man, george downing, wrote and published in the brooklyn citizen at the time of my great grandfather's death. and so what he says is that my great grandfather, that phillip's wife's father was named thomas white, that he was a white man from northern england. he says absolutely nothing about phillip's mother, but from looking at the, um, at phillip's death certificate it says that she comes from jamaica. her name was elizabeth steele, she was undoubtedly black. she's the one who, because of her my great grandfather is labeled, was labeled colored or mulatto. um, i don't know where they met. i don't know whether she was slave or free. i don't know whether they actually married. i don't know how they ended up in the united states. but thomas dies in 1835, and

then it's up to elizabeth steele white to give her children an education. and she gets, um, phillip goes to the, um, lawrence street school. and in one of these other, another serendipitous moment of, um, of research, i was at the new york historical society and looking through the public school society records. so 90 volumes of handwriting. and i come across this note that says that the, um, public school society twice paid my great grandfather on january 25 and then on april 28, 1840, $3 for making fires in african public school number two for a period of three months. so the building was cold, and he was paid to keep the building warm by making fires. i also found out that on june 11, 1841, the public school society paid elizabeth white $15

for cleaning and whitewashing primary school number seven. so, you see, what hard times they were and how they really had to scramble. so, um, phillip went to this school, and the boys' principal was charles reason. and he was the one who had gone to school with my great grandfather in, um, at the mulberry street school in the 1820s. so what i think is so significant here is that at the mulberry street school, white teachers had taught these men. george doing, charles reason, etc., etc. and now at the lawrence street school black teachers are teaching black youth. and so this, this active mentorship was so incredibly important, um, for the elite. um, phillip took, um, many different kinds of courses.

he studied latin and history, both ancient and modern. and marisa lyons, then, 25 years later has charles reason as a teacher, the same teacher. and this is what she says about him. professor reason, cultured, refined, ip kleined to be a little supercilious was quite intolerant of mediocrity. he instinctively shunned the ordinary and common place and kept himself aloof from all that was awkward and unseemly. he could and would teach but only if allowed the right choice in the selection of his pupils. those willing and able to submit to his processes found compensation far in excess of exaction. he taught how to study, developed a love of study for study's sake to those mentally alert, aspiring and diligent, he disclosed vistas of interest, satisfaction and wonder.

whoever could be trained to enjoy what he enjoy inside the way it pleased him had measureless content. so i don't know whether you'd like to have him as your teacher, but that's what he was. [laughter] so phillip was, according to george downing, a very good student, worked very, um, hard. and did very well at the lawrence street school. so on graduation he needed to learn a trade, so his mother, elizabeth, with the help of george downing placed him first with patrick reason. so patrick is charles' older brother, i think. um, and he had become an engraver. he had worked, he'd apprenticed with an engraver from britain, stephen i think, and had become quite well known, and he took phillip into his shop as an apprentice. it didn't work out. so downing said three months probation satisfied parent and

master that apprentice had not the slightest aptitude for the work. so then phillip came forward with his own idea and pronounced that he wanted to be a pharmacist. so that's when he was sent to, um, aparen he's with -- apprentice with james mcewan smith in his pharmacy on west broadway. and he was able to go to the college of pharmacy and you know the rest of the story. um, so what i want to point out not only that these men mentored, um, phillip, but also that they were businessmen in their own right. and i want to emphasize the degree to which entrepreneurship was so important in the black community. hard work, to show that you were working hard, the satisfaction of doing really well, of becoming really skilled in your trade or in your profession, and finally, as i said, making money in order to buy property, become

a property owner, be able to vote because there was a $250 minimum to vote, and in order to give pack to the community. -- give back to the community. so, um, george downing had a store on broadway, um, right i think it's north of bleaker. yeah, right above bleaker. and he placed ads in the new york daily tribune that boasted of such specialties as pickled oysters and bone turkey. and he was appealing, then, to both white and black customers. patrick reason's engraving shop was on bond street and was patronized by the families on bond street. the white elite with last names like ward, shimmerhorn, lowe, etc. so these men were doing very well. wealth was not the only important thing for, um, the black elite as i said before.

one was respect -- another was respectability. you had to behave in a respectable, um, way. um, and as well as character. so character is the formation, the moral formation, right, um, of the self, and respectability is its outward manifestation. if you're an upright, moral person, if you work hard, if you go to church, if you treat your family well and so forth, then it would automatically show on the outside in proper behavior, proper forms of dress, um, and so forth. um, so respectability was as important if not -- probably more important than wealth, um, in acquiring, in becoming part of the black elite. to give you a seven of -- a sense of, um -- oh, let me see. i want to show you -- there. let me see. so that's my great grandfather, phillip white. so he is, think of him as the

image of respectability, okay? so he has this drugstore, he makes quite a bit of money, he promotes black education, he's, um, the pillar of st. phillips episcopal church. he is mr. respectability himself. so i now want to go on to the disrespectful because we get an idea about disrespectability -- about respectability by looking at disrespectability. [laughter] so here he is. um, and you can turn to my family tree. this is my great, great grandparents, joseph marshall and elizabeth hewlett marshall. this is elizabeth's brother, so he's my great, great, great grand uncle. yeah. and his name is james hewlett, and the only way i could really give you a flavor of what he was like is to read the passage from my book, so i'm going to do a little reading now. the details of hewlett's career are fascinating but incomplete.

he was a member of the african grove theater formed by william brown in 821. so this is a location on mercer street, so this is my third place. i gave you broadway, i gave you lawrence street, and now this is, um, mercer street. um, so the african grove theater formed by william brown in 1821. initially, the african grove was simply a tea garden in brown's backyard where black new yorkers congregated for musical events and sowcial activities. once the theater company was formed, it played in different represented downtown locations until brown opened his own space on mercer street in 1822. from then until the early 1830s, hewlett performed with brown's company and also in many other venues close to home at the military garden in brooklyn, somewhat farther afield in philadelphia, saratoga and alexandria, virginia, and even across the seas in london and south america.

hewlett aspired to be a pure shakespearean actor. he played the lead role in richard iii and also gave solo performances of scenes from othello. much like other budding actors of the day, he honed his craft by imitating famous shakespearean performers like edmund keane. some of hewlett's other roles were more explicitly subversive, however, indirectly hinting at the subordination and resistance of black americans. the warrior native chief in the ballet pantomime osama, the rebel leader of king shod way, the anticolonial lyrics of national scottish ballads. black new yorkers flocked to performances at the african grove theater. so it might not have been hewlett's acting or even his politics that his family found so offensive. they might well have -- and because of that, they drummed him out of the family.

so there's a note in, um, in harry williamson's papers saying he was a play actor in his day and was drummed out of the family. um, so it's not necessarily his acting or even his politics that his family found so offensive. they mile well have enjoyed watching him in roles, but races make theater going a dangerous activity. white new yorkers were hostile to brown's enterprise. they complained about noise from the tea garden, they objected to the theater staging of shakespeare's most popular play of the day, and they resented brown's aggressive recruitment of white customers. in 1822 conflict burst out into the open. the police raided the theater during a january performance and arrested the actors, a group of rowdy whites followed suit in august storming the theater and causing a riot.

hewlett seems to have escaped bodily harm although brown was severely beaten. it's also true that hewlett could single-handedly stir up plenty of bad publicity that must have made his family cringe. first, there were uncomplimentary reports -- possibly true, possibly not -- about his performances that smacked of the stereotype of the child like permittive black. simon snipes insisted that when hewlett sang ballads, he translated the lyrics into black dialect, reciting lines like is dar a hart -- is there a heart that never loved, for example. british actor charles matthews, who had befriended hewlett while touring the united states, also satirized him in public. returning to london, matthews create add show base -- created a show based on his american trip in which he mocked hewlett's strange and ludicrous alterations to hamlet which

included his singing of a real negro melody at the end of the performance. hewlett responded by publishing a rebuttal in the local newspaper defending his own acting abilities as well as the right of blacks to perform shakespeare. although a laudable act of self-defense, the letter also opened hewlett up to more bad publicity. then there were hewlett's repeated problems with the law. in some cases he was a victim or mere bystander. when he decided to open a scouring shop which was a dry cleaners in 1823 to make ends meet a competitor named cox beat him up. in 1825 hewlett took a position at steward onboard a ship but was obliged to testify in court after a passenger was accused of repeatedly assaulting the only other passenger onboard. but in later years hewlett turned perpetrator. in 1835 he again signed up as a

ship steward. while still in port he was arrested and convicted of stealing various articles from the ship including several bottles of wine and porter and served a six month sentence. in 1837 he was accused of seducing and abandoning a white woman and was sentenced to one month hard labor. later that same year he was caught stealing a watch from the house of the man who had just died and was returned to prison. despite his pleas, gentlemen, don't put me in the newspapers, it will hurt my character, his misdeeds were widely reported in the press. after this episode hewlett disappears from plunge view. so i did -- public view. so i did my best to try and trace him down, but with no luck. so that gives you an example of disrespect about, the kinds of things that the black elite and that my family shunned and wanted to have no part of. is i want to come back and say a

little bit about women, um, and what i can say, i can talk more about what they actually did in the q&a. but here i just want to point out the way in which women as part of the black elite helped to police, right, the norms of respectable behavior. so they were the ones who, um, were very prominent in defining norms of respectability. marisa's memoir offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the social lives of the black elite. it tells of the pleasures and sheer fun they enjoyed despite the harsh conditions under which they labored. among the friends of our family, marisa wrote, were two circles founded on personal preference. these were led respectively by mrs. california reese reason -- that's charles reason's wife -- and mrs. elizabeth west bowers. the former gathered about her the studious and the conservative and kept open house for all visitor of note.

the latter was surrounded by the mirth of loving folks, young and old. in this coterie not to have a good time was impossible. to mrs. reason belonged the honor of being able to hold a salon. her strain of french blood made her queen of entertainers and covered her with a taste in social funks that werer re-- functions that werer reproach bl. marisa added a third woman, her mother. so if i can go back, that's mary joseph lyons. her mother to the list. mother was the life of a minor group of single, of young, single and married folks who found in her a social woman whose company was as agreeable as when she was a maiden. with her it was possible to have a good time without fuss and feathers. her guests were frequent, they danced, played or sung, played games or sewed for charity, and

all alike found many an opportunity to pass many delightful hours with her in the home where courtesy, sociability and trendiliness -- friendliness reigned supreme. it was permissible to move from one circle to another. no hard and fast lines were drawn, however, the same persons could be met now in one circle, now in the other. so you can understand how somebody like james hewlett with his play acting career, with his brushes with the law, with his time spent in prison, with his hard labor, so forth, would not have been welcome in these salons where courtesy, sociability and friendliness reigns supreme. um, the other thing i can point out about this passage, i think it gives you a glimpse into something that i tried but really had a very hard time talking about in my book which was pleasure. because we're so used to talking

about oppressed, subordinated people as oppressed and subordinated. [laughter] and being victims, having a downtrodden life and always having a sense of obligation, of duty and so forth. and one of the things i tried to capture here in their social life but also in if their participation in st. louis phillips -- st. phillips e diskohl pal church was their -- episcopal church was the ability to enjoy beauty and to enjoy aesthetic experience. so i'm going to close now. um, if you read my book, we go from lower manhattan over to brooklyn in 1870, um and the book goes up to about 1895. so we have a kind of scattering of the black population and, of course, later on they go up to

harlem, right? in about, um, after 1910 or whatever. so the conclusion rather than talk about scattering, i want to talk about coming back together. on a windy october day last fall, i took a trip to cypress hill cemetery in brooklyn armed with a map provided by the front office. i went searching for the graves of my forebearers and their friends who had left lower manhattan and later brooklyn for their final resting place. the white family plot lay on a flat land surrounded by tall, leafy trees. buried there were phillip's mother elizabeth, two of their sisters and their families, and phillip and his family. alexander crumb el, charles ray and their families lay nearby, so i didn't have a chance to talk about them in this talk, but they figure prominently in the book. right next to phillip's grave lays that of james mcewan

smith. i was astonished to discover all these men had bought their plots at the same time, between january and may of 1850, determined that not even death would separate them. crossing the path and walking up a hill, i found the land that st. phillips church had bought for its parishioners in the late 1850s. the ray family plot was notable for a tall obelisk that jutted skyward. in the waning days of the 19th century, new york's black elite reunite inside this burial ground. their graves are physical reminders of their lives and commemorations of their deaths. they serve as an archive, a place of safekeeping. a place for storing memories of the past that are simply waiting to be brought back to light and life in the rightness of time. thank you. pleasure. [applause]

>> [inaudible] >> thank you for your presentation. >> thank you. >> what did it feel like when you had this aha moment of finding a puzzle piece? and also discovering that you were missing other pieces? in your putting together these threads that you, also, did you ask any of the sources how they came to have this information? like the schaumberg or the new york historical society. >> yeah, yeah. so the first time -- thing i'll point out, and it's not exactly what you asked me, but i want to make this clear. i had nobody living to ask. i had a couple of leads, a woman who contacted me afceeing something -- after seeing

something that i wrote on the web, and i was so excited that day. i remember going -- i teach at the university of maryland in the english department, and i remember running into work and saying, oh, later this afternoon i'm going to call this woman, she's going to fill in the gaps. and, no, she wanted information from me. [laughter] so i was so disappointed. um, then the second question is finding the manuscript material. i mean, i would just shake. i would just shake and quiver. so finding the first ones, um, finding that when least expected, there were 12 shoe boxes, you know, about like that. remember in the old days? [laughter] and i got to box eight, and there's a moment which weariness sets in, and you like how can i do this? i go hot and cold, and i just shake. and, of course, you're in a manuscript room. and you've left everything outside, and you're wearing gloves and, um, the book is

open, you're facing the archivist to be sure that you don't run away with anything. and that you have something called a shake to put down to hold -- a snake to put down to hold things down, and then you've got your magnifying glass, so you've got all this paraphernalia around you. and it's so hard. i mean, you feel the emotions, but it's so hard to express them. so when i found the one at the new york historical society -- and that was days and days of just going through these written records, and i was, like, what is, why am i doing this? and the young man there, his name was fernando. and i went and told him, and he said to me -- he got really excited. this was the one excitement. he said, i can give you this book. i'm like, yeah, yeah. he's like, you know i can't. so that's number two. and your third question was about when i -- >> [inaudible] >> yes. okay. um, so at the schaumberg a woman

had written a book called "the free negro in antebellum, new york." it was a columbia dissertation from the 1970s, and she'd died before publishing it. her name was rhoda goldman freeman. and her husband had gotten it published as a book and then gave the manuscript collection to the schaumberg. and i, the book is old, and everybody says, you know, oh, go to the recent scholarship. but she had really, really done her homework. i mean, there's -- she's with -- she did everything. and i ended up just repeating what she did just for verifying. but everything she had panned out. so he had given it to the schaumberg, and so the material that i saw in her book i kind of expected to find there, you know, as primary source, not just as a footnote. but i was really stunned to find, um, to find that.

and nobody knows where the scrapbook page comes from. i mean, that's another one of the, i mean, the gaps i can't fill in, where does it come from? somebody had cared enough. so there are poems next to the obituary, and each poem i realize is a poem about something significant in my great grandfather's life. so there's to trinity, the mother church of st. phillips. there's why johnny can't read about education. references is about dying and going to heaven and god saying, um, you know, so why do you deserve to be here? and he says, ask my wife and daughters three. um, and so the person really knew phillip and really loved him and, i mean, that's a whole commemoration right there. but i don't know.

>> hi. my name is andrea coyle with the lower east side history project. want to thank you so much for this wonderful presentation. it gives me goose bumps that one of your rell tyes is actually -- relatives is actually james hewlett. [laughter] that's amazing because i just gave the walking tour a few weeks a and i did mention him. [laughter] so my question is, where was that lawrence street school located? >> it was on lawrence street which was one block parallel to thompson. >> [inaudible] >> oh, it's laguardia now. oh, thank you, joyce. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> and patrick reason's engraving shop on bond street -- >> yeah. >> do you have an address for that? >> it's in my book. >> oh, okay. >> i think it's 50 something? yeah. yeah, yeah. >> and that would have been

approximately what year? >> um, i -- that would have been the '50s. and, again, it's in the book. he moves to cleveland after, and i'm not sure whether he ever comes back. he's in cleveland in the 1860s. he comes back to visit but not to live. so i would say the shop was in the 1850s. i'm pretty sure it's in the 1850s, yeah. >> great. thank you so much. >> yeah. >> i don't remember if you mentioned how long it took you from the day you decided to do this until the actual book came out, but i'm sure you went through such a up and down escalator of emotions. how did you know when you were

all done, and how did you feel when you were finished with it? i would wonder. >> that's a really good question. [laughter] um, because nobody else knew, and i'm not sure i did. um, i just, i was tenacious, and i would just dig and dig, and i could not give it a rest. and after about two or three years my husband said, well, why don't you start writing. and i said, i don't have anything to write. and he said, well, you've been working at this for two and three years, and i said, well, i have an outline, i have the bare bones of it, but i know that it's the detail that will make the book sizzle. it's all going to be in the detail. so getting the -- i think it's 56 bond street. i think, you know, getting that stuff right is going to make all the difference in the world. so i would say to him, why start writing if i'm just going to have to go over and do it? so i really wanted the detail,

and i dug and dug and dug long before -- long after people told me to stop, especially historians. and i'm a literary critic by training. i teach in an english department. i am not a historian. but people were laughing and saying, give it a rest, you know? so i'll give you one example. i, an independent scholar i knew had said about, um, phillip's obituary where it said he apprenticed with james mcewan smith, and this somewhat crank si independent scholar said, well, how do you know? it's just in the obit. how do you know? i'm like, well, it's in the obit. [laughter] he's like, you don't know. so i decided i should track it down. and i started looking for the apprenticeship and then his going to the college of pharmacy of the city of new york which is also in the obit.

and i found out that the college of pharmacy had become part of columbia in 1903 or '04, i think, and then was part of the college of -- or the school of pharmacy, and it's been disbanded in the 1970s. so i called up the archivist at columbia and started pestering him. and he said, no, we don't have it, we probably threw it out which i was, like, i don't believe you. so i decided i was going to keep on looking. so i started calling historians of american pharmacy around the country, and i called here and there and elsewhere. and i finally said, this was my last phone call, and i reached a man someplace, i think it was ohio state, it was in ohio. and he said to me, well, you know the best, um, cache of pharmacy papers are at the wisconsin historical society. i was, like, i didn't know that. [laughter] and he said, yeah, because

wisconsin, the university of wisconsin was the first school to establish a graduate department in the pharmacy sometime back in the 9th sent -- 19th century. so i booked a plane ticket and went out. and that's when my historian friends were just really, really laughing. but i found it. [laughter] i went through the minutes, and i found the record of when, of his entrance, of his graduation. and then 30 years later, of his admission to the college as a member of the college which is like being, like having a professional membership. ..

how stuff about them in the 70s and 80s. i am wondering about the 1860s and civil war and what happened with your family that if you have any scraps. >> that was my talk from last week. i have a great story. at the time -- i will talk about the draft riots. the draft riots were the week of july 15th, 1863. it is possible the black league thought that class would from race and they would be saved and they weren't. they were attacked. their homes were destroyed just because they were black. the big story is that of the

colored or asylum. away it was run by white women and seen as an illegitimate act on the part of women towards undeserving black children. that was destroyed. the home of william powell was destroyed. the home of albert lions was destroyed. there's an amazing account of -- on the third assault it was successful and burned to the ground. in harry albert williams and's papers i came across a note. i won't bother to read it. a sergeant says that i am going

to try to fix -- hope you. i don't know what today will bring. meet me at said drug store at 3:00 p.m. and i will conduct you to safety. so the -- it was just a few -- a few doors from one another. phillips pharmacy was right around the corner. i speculate that that is as far -- it is amazing to think that the sergeant thought that was a safe enough place. to take the family. so i started reading through williamson's papers and obituaries and found the story of the preservation of philip wright's pharmacy. so he bought the pharmacy in 1847 at the corner of frankfurt and bold and stayed there until his death and established deep roots in the neighborhood.

the neighborhood when he went in was mixed. time went on and it became more irish. because of all the accounts that i read, he was a good neighbor. he made up medications and sold them and they didn't have money. he gave the medications away for free. gave away money and clothes so when the draft riots happened they didn't want to see the drug store demolished. they didn't want to see philips's wife harvard. so there was a dialogue. who knows how accurate it is? when the business men of the neighborhood, the area was called the swamp. business men of the swamp said you need to run away and he said no i don't because as many riders as come down upon me, as

many neighbors i have will protect me and the drug store was not disturbed. that was a real goose bump moment. >> i am shannon. >> hi. >> i would wondering what made you write about the history of intrigue. i am trying to do such things and find it to be very hard, very difficult to find things that go past the 1800s. i was wondering if you could give me any advice and tell me how you found your exactly. >> you have to have the passion. without the passion -- it took me 11 years so you have to be prepared to put aside a bunch of time. you have to have the passion and the determination and the

willingness to look and look and find nothing and all of a sudden find something. one reason i took the tack that i did is there are so many ways i could have written the history of black new yorkers but it was exactly for that reason to encourage people to look for their family histories. people say you are so lucky you at the family to write about. you found material. i can't do that. have you tried? they say no. i encourage people to go try. maybe i was indeed lucky because i found enough material about them, but do i wish that my 4 father had been james smith for george downing. i would have found a lot more material. you take what you have. that scrapped.

you try to embroider without going into fiction or making applies. but to look around and give the scrap context. that is the way you have to do it but don't give up. >> we have discovered an underground rail road site in our neighborhood on 20 ninth street. instead of feeling satisfied, we are even more sense for research. i recognize the phrase looking for a needle in a haystack. emma coming to a question? what sources have you turned to?

have you started research? >> i was lucky. my cochaired a lot of the research of the quaker abolitionists who lived in the building which was the story during the draft riots. i kept resurging more letters of a given family and was sent with a hot tip by a historian who said look at columbia university. i went up there and found a record of fugitives 1855 by sidney howard gates. that set me off onto a real search because i found the most extraordinary thing. sera more was married to her husband in the gibbons's previous home so now i am trying to find sarah more. i found her listed in newhaven,

connecticut. but that has taken me two years to find that. i am going to go back to schaumburg but i should say on the record, there's one staff member who terrified me. he was so mean. i will get my courage and go back. >> i had experience with that too. i will talk to you later. i will talk to you later and give names of somebody who is really wonderful and who will help you and i just saw her a couple nights ago. >> i just bought your book. >> let me tell you, the african-american vigilant societies, you could look around

for that. david ruggles is one name to research and graham hy this has one to look at. >> i do have a question. have you heard of louis napoleon? i am trying to find him too because he helped rescue this woman and was working with sidney howard gates who was editor and secretary and knew everything of the anti slavery society. now i know nothing. >> charles ray's daughter put out a memoir of his life after he died in 1986. you can look at that and he was also a member of the vigilant society. i don't do very much with the vigilance society because i

couldn't find a relationship between that and my family. i would say charles ray's memoir, what about henry ford beecher? >> i started to scratch the surface with that. louis napoleon worked with him too. two afternoons in the brooklyn historical society. and i realized as helpful as they were, i was searching in the wrong collection. >> that happened to me too. a woman named -- [talking over each other]

>> thank you. [applause] >> author carlo peterson describing african-americans with upper-class society and the civil war. search black gotham. this weekend on american history tv on c-span3 from lectures of history, regina williams of the music of duke ellington on american art affects. look at the smithsonian's efforts to preserve an exhibit with jefferson bobble and live from jackson, mississippi the 50th anniversary of the free ride where 13 men and women boarded two buses from new orleans. their goal to integrate southern bus stops. get the complete schedule at c-span.org/history worse press the c-span alert button to get

your schedule e-mail directly to you. >> that a 1984 new jersey rally looking to cement his lead over the democratic presidential candidate walter mondale and enhance his legitimacy and an industrial state, ronald reagan grass that the star power. america's future rests on 1,000 dreams in your heart of the president exhorted. a message of hope and songs of a man so many americans admire, new jersey's own bruce springsteen. in a warm gesture of ingratiation, in helping you make those dreams come true is what this was all about. then segwayed into a love fest with the audience and to the palest of his administration's achievements supporters were prompted to reply usa. to untrained eyes and ears this

resembles krickstein's own legendary lives with impassioned rituals of audience participation. more savvy onlookers recognize the irony in the president's attempt to quote himself in the popular straw for's refutation. why should republicans cold warrior and conservative try to ride the coattails of a working class hero or a rock star since they laid off vietnam veterans. so i go on to talk about 1984 was the year bruce springsteen's born in usa album was released with the best selling single born in the usa and there was the juncture between the chorus and the versus in that