Abolitionist Brooklyn (1828 – 1849)

Prominent white men founded the American Colonization Society in 1816. The society received support from James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Brooklyn Savings Bank President Adrian Van Sinderen.

Their aim was to send free people of color, born in the United States, to a colony on the west coast of Africa. Many white members argued that racism and slavery were so deeply embedded in American society, relocation was more humane. In fact, the removal of the country’s free black community only strengthened slaveholding interests and avoided the question of equality regardless of race in a democratic society.

From 1817, free black communities across the North protested the white-led colonization movement. Anti-colonization meetings were held in Philadelphia, Manhattan, Baltimore, and Brooklyn.

On June 3, 1831, a group of Brooklyn’s anti-slavery activists met at the African Hall on Nassau Street to discuss colonization. The meeting was led by Henry C. Thompson (future Weeksville founder), George Hogarth (pastor of the AME Church and educator at the African School), and Pennington (a recent arrival in Brooklyn). Insisting on their right to remain on U.S. soil, they argued:

The colored citizens of this village have, with friendly feelings, taken into consideration the objects of the American Colonization Society, together with all of its auxiliary movements, preparatory for our removal to the coast of Africa; and we view them as wholly gratuitous, not called for by us, and not essential to the real welfare of our race.
Read more...Close

In the 1830s, the abolitionists, a group of humanitarian reformers, burst onto the political scene in the United States.

On December 4, 1833, sixty-two reformers met in Philadelphia to form the American Anti-Slavery Society, establishing their headquarters in Manhattan. Abolitionism resulted from two political impulses – black activism and white evangelical perfection. As a result, the movement attracted men and women, black and white, from different social classes. It was the first time in U.S. history that activists crossed racial and gender lines to work together with mutual purpose.
Read more...Close

Six months after forming the American Anti-Slavery Society, the abolitionist battle against racism and slavery was firmly entrenched in the city of New York.

But the city’s deep economic ties to the South made the situation volatile. In July 1834, the tension erupted. Mobs attacked black and white abolitionist homes and places of worship. They also targeted scores of ordinary black New Yorkers. In the immediate aftermath of these riots, white abolitionists sought to clarify they were radical activists but not anarchists. Two white abolitionists who founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, Arthur Tappan and John Rankin, signed and posted handbills across New York and placed notices in a variety of newspapers including the Long Island Star.
Read more...Close

In May 1835, less than a year after the anti-abolition riots, the American Anti-Slavery Society reported that it had published over 1 million pieces of printed material. The sophisticated print propaganda campaign furthered their anti-slavery agenda. It took advantage of newer print technologies that allowed for materials to be cheaply mass-produced. Anti-slavery propaganda included illustrated periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides.

The abolitionists bombarded the federal postal service with anti-slavery materials. Lewis Tappan led the postal campaign despite threats of violence. Thousands of anti-slavery publications were sent to post offices in the North and South intended to persuade readers that slavery was a sin through moral suasion. But the avalanche of materials incited violence in Charleston, South Carolina. On July 29, 1835, a mob descended on the post office, and burned both the bags and mock effigies of Lewis Tappan and William Lloyd Garrison.

In 1839, the Amistad, a Spanish schooner from Cuba containing 59 enslaved Africans was found shipwrecked off the coast of Long Island. Joseph Cinque, a Sierra Leonean, and others had overthrown the crew and demanded to be taken back to Africa. Instead the Spanish crew commandeered the schooner towards the American coast and asked for government protection. The African survivors were taken to New London, CT, imprisoned and charged with piracy and murder.

Brooklyn abolitionists Simeon Jocelyn, a Williamsburg resident, and Lewis Tappan, a Brooklyn Heights resident, worked closely with the African prisoners, and after a high-profile court case, they were freed.

Later, Jocelyn and others, formed the American Missionary Association, an organization dedicated to abolitionism through evangelicalism. During Reconstruction, they concentrated on educational activities.

African Americans began to acquire land in the city’s ninth ward, the most distant and secluded of Brooklyn’s wards from the bustling downtown area as early as 1832.

Three years later, Henry C. Thompson purchased 32 lots in the area indirectly from John Lefferts’ estate. In 1838, James Weeks, an African American longshoreman, purchased two lots. He was the only original land investor to reside in the area and for whom Weeksville was named.

The Hunterfly Road Houses are the last remnant structures of the once thriving community of Weeksville. It was the second largest free black community in antebellum America.

Historian Judith Wellman’s research shows that it boasted high levels of homeownership and it was the only free black community with an urban rather than rural economic base. By 1855, it had 521 residents.

“[It is] my opinion that the people of color have to leave the crowded cities and town of New York, Brooklyn, Syracuse, Albany, Troy, Utica and the rest and move into country and small growing villages like Williamsburg, and grow up with a small town. I believe in that way they would overcome much of the prejudice against them, for, as a rule, there is a fraternal feeling between the people of small towns or places (even in the South) that is unknown in the large cities.”
Willis Hodges, A Free Man of Color.

In 1839, at the height of Williamsburg’s land speculation, William Hodges, a free man from Norfolk, VA, bought his first plot of land there. He erected his home at the corner of 4th Street (modern day Bedford) and South 8th Street, a highly desirable location, and a short walk to the Peck Slip Ferry with views of the city. His brother Willis moved nearby to South 7th Street where he lived with his wife Sarah Ann Corprew, whose parents lived in Weeksville.
Read more...Close

Until 1855, Williamsburg was separate from the city of Brooklyn. It was part of the town of Bushwick, one of Kings County’s original six towns and remained distinctly rural until its incorporation as a village in 1827. During Williamsburg’s early growth, the village council opened and improved streets, dug wells, and established a district school.

In 1841, Williamsburg activists opened an African School after the village school refused admission to approximately 40 students of color aged 5 to 16.

Willis Hodges, William Hodges, Samuel Ricks, Lewis H. Nelson, Thomas Wilson, and Henry Davis raised funds and formed the school committee. William Hodges was elected to act as both teacher and principal. When the Brooklyn Board of Education took over the management of all public schools, the African School in Williamsburg was renamed Colored School #3. Abolitionist Maria Stewart and Weeksville founder Sylavnus Smith’s daughter Sarah J. Tompkins Garnet were among its many educators.

In 1841, Williamsburg’s black and white voters used new and old tactics to fight slavery. They showed support for the newly formed Liberty Party which reflected their anti-slavery stance. But they also used the decade old strategy used by abolitionists of petitioning Congress.

Beginning in the early 1830s, abolitionists advocated for the end of slavery by petitioning state legislatures and the House of Representatives. It is estimated that the American Anti-Slavery Society sent more than 600,000 anti-slavery petitions containing over 2 million signatures in total. Congress responded to the onslaught of these petitions by passing a series of resolutions between 1836 and 1844 that tabled them, known as the gag rule.

This petition asks Congress to remove the gag rule placed on anti-slavery petitions. Signatures came from James Warner, his son James H. Warner, Taylor C. Warner, Samuel Shapter, William Hodges, and Willis Hodges. These men knew each other through their Liberty Party activities.