Abolitionist Brooklyn (1828 – 1849)

…nhattan’s agricultural neighbor to a flourishing urban center with a city charter. Land speculation fueled this change. Plots of farmland previously owned by slaveholders were systemically parceled and sold off to investors. Brooklyn was a city on the rise. A new set of political activists fled to the emerging city. The abolitionists were a radical minority who had established the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833 with headqua…

Abolitionist Biographies

…slavery newspaper the Independent. At the end of the War, he was invited to speak at the raising of the flag at Fort Sumter based on his national reputation. His later life was overshadowed by the Beecher-Tilton scandal in which he was accused of infidelity. COUSINS, Robert H Robert H. Cousins Anti-Slavery Activist, homeowner, businessman, downtown Brooklyn resident. Robert Cousins was born in Virginia around 1800 and moved to Brooklyn in 1840. T…

Crisis Decade (1850 – 1860)

…aw, Saxton’s arrest without a trial was illegal. Moreover, no police court had the authority to issue a warrant for the arrest of suspected fugitive. Sadly Saxton, presumably under duress, pleaded guilty and was re-enslaved under Alabama law. The abolitionist newspaper the Liberator reported that Brooklyn police were notorious for making illegal arrests and sending free African Americans into slavery. The Fugitive slave bill its history and uncon…

Civil War & Beyond (1861 – 1867)

On April 12, 1861, the attack on Fort Sumter marked the start of the Civil War. But conflict was not confined to the battlefields alone. By 1860, Brooklyn was the third largest city in the United States. It was home to a culturally diverse society including people of Dutch, English and African. There were also increasing numbers of German and Irish immigrants. The Irish and Black communities were among the most marginalized in American society….

Timeline

…rooklyn’s oldest churches, and its congregation included people of European descent, African descent and Native Americans. But when African Americans were segregated to an end gallery for which they had to pay and forced to listen to the pro-slavery sermons of its Irish pastor Alexander M’Caine, they renounced their membership. The Brooklyn AME Church became central to the lives of ordinary people. Not only a place of worship, it served as a venu…

Games

…eople engaged in to resist their bondage. A risky road to freedom, slaveholders regularly placed advertisements for the capture of “runaways” in local newspapers. From the early 1800s on, African-Americans built strong communities with the intention of combating slavery and its legacy. A group of political reformers, known as abolitionists and anti-slavery activists, worked together to agitate for the end of slavery. These men and women, both bla…

For Educators

…understanding of the history of abolitionism and anti-slavery activism in Brooklyn. These documents are in PDF format and require Acrobat Reader. In Pursuit of Freedom outlines the development of the abolition movement in Brooklyn, a city on the rise, from the end of the American Revolution to the early days of Reconstruction. Three of Brooklyn’s leading cultural and educational institutions—Brooklyn Historical Society, Weeksville Heritage Cente…

US Department of Education Resources

…n Brooklyn; walking tours of Brooklyn’s abolitionists’ and URR sites; and a series of public programs scheduled for the next five years. Legacy of Slavery in Maryland preserves and promotes experiences that have shaped the lives of Maryland’s African American population. From the day that Mathias de Sousa and Francisco landed in St. Mary’s County aboard the Ark and the Dove in 1634, black Marylanders have made significant contribution…

A Gradual Emancipation (1783 – 1827)

…free black communities expanded across the North. The constitutions of Vermont (1777) and Massachusetts (1783) forbade slavery, and Pennsylvania (1780) Rhode Island (1784), and Connecticut (1784) all passed gradual emancipation laws. This was not the case in Brooklyn or Kings County, NY, a slaveholding capital. Following the American Revolution, slavery actually strengthened in Kings County, unlike neighboring Manhattan, Philadelphia, and Boston…