february for about an hour 10 minute. >> i want to start up my talk with two quotes. they are both from the prologue of our book cannot have a little explanation for them, but they introduce why i decided to write the book. so the first quote is in my prose from the prologue. we still hold certain truths about african-americans to be self-evident, that the freeze 19th century black americans refers to enslaved people, that new york state before the civil word denotes a place of freedom, that? in new york city designates heartland, that the black community positive a classic and

unify society that a black elite did not exist until well into the 20th century. lives in a new york forbears polite such assumptions. they were born free at a time when slavery was still legal in new york city. they lived in racially mixed neighborhood, first in lower manhattan after the civil war in brooklyn at a time when harlem is a mere village. they were part of new york's small but significant communities 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 was a professional and post if you appear the second quote is from the epigraph of the prologue and it is from toni morrison's beloved. denver with the unit now and feeling it through beloved and

the more fine points she made, the more details she provided, the more beloved like 10. so she anticipated the questions by giving blood to describes her mother and grandmother told her in a heartbeat. denver spoke to love that listened in the two took the best they could to create what really happened, how it really was something only staff the new because she alone had the mind for it and the time afterward to shape it. so the second quote points to one of my great concerns in writing the book, the ati to recover my family's past, not my mother, but my great, great grandparents, great grandparents and so forth and realizing they were at their memories and not memories. so how could i tell the story of memories that were not my own and that it just come down to me and scraps? and how could i then give blood and heart he to the scraps?

so that was my second much more personal motivation for writing the book. and indeed, i have a hard time trying to give blood in a heartbeat to the scraps they found because they started with almost nothing, which was a wonderful story. the full story would be a poly false story. basically i was told they had a great grandfather that had been born in haiti, whose name is phoebe the goose by anne at the time of the haitian revolution he left haiti, went to paris, became a farmer says them and then to new york and anglicized his name to fill up the. the story of his half-truth. there was no haiti in the background, no trip to paris. he was born actually in new jersey and hoboken, moved very quickly to new york city and did become a farmer says.

so i was faced with a real problem they are. and as i started my research to find family stories, what i discovered is there and actually been a real will to commemorate among 19th century black new yorkers that forget name was not her way of life. they started first of all in commemorations, for example, the important events like the abolition of the slave trade, january 11808 and commemorated every year after on the same day and ceremonies and parades. they commemorated the abolition of slavery in the state of fear, which which was july 41827. they have newspapers are colored american freedom struggle where they read about themselves and the desire to commemorate. they try to erect statues, for example, henry helen kurnit win

might mention a little later is really not essential to this talk, but he would've been a very important black leader. they wanted to create a memorial in his honor. they manage to create, but by and large did not manage to preserve. so the problem of preservation became a tremendous fun. when you are an under source community comunidad tests on and resources, how do you preserve? is so much, last by the wayside. of course the best example i can give that all of you are familiar with this burial ground in downtown new york, how it was the black cemetery all the way through it the 18th century got destroyed in 1795 because of real estate speculation, would also new york. so the cemetery was taken over to playground for new lots to be

sold, houses to be built, better outcome et cetera appeared and then there was the problem of the archives. the earliest new york archive was established by john penn tired, a very well-known white elite men. in 1804 the new york historical society. black new yorkers had to wait until the 1920s for arturo schomburg to establish the schomburg center. and yet, basically the archives were ultimately my only resource. the only place i had to go to since my family had given me so little. 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 it's the story of my search, however to the archives looking for materials, finding how i put them together in the second level of courses

the story itself. so i started out in the schomburg and i was really lucky to find very early on to scrap the pages in an archival connection. and then then i found the obituary in a scrapbook of my great-grandfather and then my great, great grandfather. so this is the first scrap book page. it is my great-grandfather and of course her name was philip augustus brey. i recognized him immediately. to give you a quick thumbnail sketch, was born in 1823, 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 afterwards went to train with james mcewen smith who is

whenever early doctors and pharmacists and was an apprentice in smith's pharmacy years. that's been enabled him to mentor the college of pharmacy at the city of new york and he got a degree in 1844, black man from the college of pharmacy. then he established a pharmacy -- a drugstore and downtown new york. it is on the corner but was frankfurt and gold street and part of pace university as they are now. she made quite a bit of money through his drugstore. the money he had he gave back to two causes. one, education of black children and the other is church. when he moved to brooklyn in 1878, he settled there. in 1883, set low who has been mayor of oakland appointed him to the berkeley board of education. yet 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. you can check your family tree. philip white marries elizabeth king -- guignon. his parents were haitian. he was born in new york in 1813, died in the early 1880s, went to school that i will come back and talk about later, did a variety of odd jobs come and married my great, great grandmother died very young. i know nothing about her. in his second marriage he married into the race family. they were prominent family and cornelia spread fire, peter williams granik was a doctor and had as find a seat come a drugstore. said he was batting to the trickster is a pharmacist. he had no training, but it could become a pharmacist. he too was very devoted to saint

phillips. as the other treasure trove that i found at the schomburg, with the kerry williamson papers and if you look down on the family tree, you will see him there. i won't go into any detail and maybe that doesn't show up too well, but in doing the family research, the women on the right is mary joseph lyons and she is the sister of my great, great grandmother, rebecca marshall. and she married this man, albert lyons. and i bring them that because i'm not going to talk about them much in this talk tonight. i bring them that he cares albro lyons said to his daughter, marie chef, she's on the family tree, that he wanted to write the story, the history of this

generation, but he never got further than the title. and the title he picked was the gentleman in black. so we said to his daughter, i am not going to be able to do it. i want you to do it. so in the same collection of papers, we have a type manuscript of about 85 pages, pretty much in draft form that organizationally attract foreign. and what the riches that they spend a vast output she was going to try and return a more and she titled it, memories of yesterday, all of which i sought an part of i was, and not a biography. 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 gentleman in black, which goes well back into the 19th century. and i just hope they are looking

now listening, watching reading, that they approve of what i did. but what i want to say is that the words really stuck with me. the scrapbook pages that i found and then saying that she wrote her memoir from the vast output of fugitive scraps. so i see matt furyk very much as a scrapbook. i choose an event or a story, and tell it. it's a chronological story, but they are at i can't possibly fill in and i don't try to. so i think of my book is a scrapbook. they also talk about it as a partial history, meaning i'm not going to give an entire history. i'm not even trained to give an objective history. my history is partial because it's about my family and it's because it's only a part of blackbeard history and because i am partial to it.

it's also a chronological history, but very much a cyclical one because what it is his traces the ups and downs of black new yorkers. every time 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 is a spatial history and that's why he titled the book, "black gotham," to show the way in which -- the degree to which so much of their life was formed by where they lived, does video got some in the neighborhood event. so i'm going to name the five spaces. i think of 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 talk about a couple of them. if i try to do the whole thing will be here all night. the first one that is what alexander crummell, one of the members of the black elite

called the leading citizens of new york and vicinity, basically the black elite. the second is the black community and i'm sure that if they turn you off your lap, the black community, this, that and the other. so just give you a sense of members for those of you who like numbers, in 1840, the number of black inhabitants was about 16,400 out of 330,000. and decline to about 12,500 added 5,014,000 in 1860. so just some kind of ballpark numbers. the third which i'm going to come back as the city itself, gotham, where they lived in racially mixed neighborhoods and had a variety of contact with whites and blacks. so that is sent and it will definitely come back to.