The abolition movement, from its emergence in the 1830s, allowed women to seize expanded opportunities outside of the traditional roles of mother, daughter, and wife.

Female abolitionists in Brooklyn and beyond ran mutual-aid, anti-slavery, and literary societies to improve their local communities.

In particular, black women across Brooklyn and New York worked to fund Manhattan’s Colored Orphan Asylum. Founded in 1835 by Anna Shotwell and Mary Murray, two white Quaker women, the Colored Orphan Asylum provided an essential service in antebellum New York. For African Americans living in poverty, the Asylum offered a temporary refuge. Parents could send the children to the asylum to receive better care – often an agonizing decision –while they improved their own economic circumstances at home.

On February 22, 1860, organizers held a four-day fair at Montague Hall, next to Brooklyn’s City Hall. The fundraiser “brought together all the elite and fashion of this portion of the Anglo-African world, and much of the Anglo-American in the bargain.”
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On May 15, 1863, Frederick Douglass appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Montague Street, where he spoke to a packed house. In a fiery speech, Douglass argued that black men had been “regarded only as the means of putting money in the white man’s pocket, like a bale of cotton, but hereafter he must be regarded as a man.”

Douglass and other abolitionists, including James W.C. Pennington, believed that African Americans would be central to a Union Army victory despite the fact that they were initially banned from serving. He concluded his speech by praising the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first black regiment raised in the North, and hoped to see them march down Manhattan’s Broadway to the music of “Old John Brown.”

After the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, the Union Army began allowing African American men to enlist for the first time. Despite receiving lower wages, poor supplies, and lesser chances for promotion than their white colleagues, these men demonstrated tremendous bravery to end slavery and be recognized as equal citizens of the United States.

Ironically, many Americans blamed black people for the Civil War, especially following the Emancipation Proclamation, when ending slavery became an explicit goal. This ugly resentment towards African Americans erupted during Brooklyn’s Tobacco Factory Riots (1862) and Manhattan’s Draft Riots (1863).

Brooklyn’s Tobacco Factory Riots (1862) were an important and often overlooked precursor to the Manhattan’s Draft Riots (1863).

In August 1862, African American workers, mostly women and children, were assaulted by Irish mobs at the Tobacco Factory on Sedgwick Street in Brooklyn. Even the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, often responsible for some of the most derogatory passages about black Brooklynites during the 19th century, wrote:

We regret most profoundly that, a city, so justly celebrated for its law and order as Brooklyn, should have been so disgraced.

Fear that fugitives and newly emancipated people would move to Brooklyn and take scarce jobs exacerbated hostilities between Irish and African American workers. The Irish, impoverished and marginalized themselves, had emigrated to America to escape the horrors of Ireland’s devastating Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852. But they were greeted with discrimination and limited economic opportunities. Irish immigrants and African Americans competed for the same occupations as laborers, waiters, servants and washerwomen.

Black New Yorkers suffered the worst atrocities in the Draft Riots. A twenty-year-old disabled man named Abraham Franklin called at his mother’s house to check that she was safe. Before he was able to leave her house, a mob burst in and beat Franklin before lynching him and mutilating his body.

15-year-old Maritcha Lyons was among the many terrified African Americans who fled their homes in Manhattan during the city’s Draft Riots. The Lyons family were prominent anti-slavery activists. Maritcha, her sister, her mother Mary, and father Albro all ran to Brooklyn for safety and refuge. They never returned to Manhattan. As an adult, Maritcha dedicated her life to Brooklyn’s public schools.

On March 3, 1865, Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau. It was intended to provide employment opportunities for newly emancipated people and white veterans. The New York and Brooklyn Freedmen’s Bureau was located on the corner of Court and Joralemon. Brooklynites could hire children aged 10 to 15 years old and women aged 18 to 35. Most would have worked as domestic servants.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

Church Debates on the Fugitive Slave Law

“The Bible is Heavier than the Statute Book.”

At Plymouth Church, on Orange between Henry and Hicks, the high profile abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher spoke out against the Fugitive Slave Law. The law allowed federal authorities to cross state lines and kidnap any person of color suspected of being a fugitive.

For white abolitionists kidnapping under the Fugitive Slave Law would always remain in the abstract – a violation that could not be committed against them. But it did not deter pastors with anti-slavery convictions denouncing the law at the pulpit. Brooklyn, the “City of Churches”, so called because of the disproportionate number of churches to people, entered a war of words.

Church Debates on the Fugitive Slave Law

“Is this law right? Is it equitable and just? Does it agree with the law which GOD has given me, when he tells me to love me neighbor as myself?”

At Church of the Pilgrims, Richard S. Storrs asked his congregation to reflect on which law held more weight – religious or secular.

Henry C. Bowen, Lewis Tappan’s son-in-law, founded the church on the corner of Henry and Remsen. Bowen left Church of the Pilgrims to organize Plymouth Church which became a center of abolitionism under Beecher’s leadership.

In response to the Fugitive Slave Law, New Yorkers and Brooklynites formed three vigilance committees. William J Wilson, Junius Morel, and T. Joiner White and others formed a group called the Committee of Thirteen. They offered financial assistance to freedom seekers, protection from slavecatchers and protested colonization. Information is scarce on the other organizations – a Committee of Nine in Brooklyn and Committee of Five in Williamsburg.

In 1851, all three committees worked together on the high profile Christiana Patriots Case. When fugitives in Christiana, Pennsylvania killed the slave catcher that had come to arrest them, they were charged with treason, riot and murder. Vigilance committees in New York and Brooklyn raised funds for the defendants.

Territorial gains made during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) reopened debates on the expansion of slavery. A new political party – the Free Soil Party – believed that the westward expansion of slavery should be halted. However, they did not wish to see the deeply rooted institution of slavery dismantled and they did not support the abolitionists, whom they deemed fanatics. Walt Whitman, one of Brooklyn’s most famous residents, was an ardent Free Soiler.

As historian Craig Steven Wilder has noted, if “King Cotton” ruled Manhattan’s economy, then “Queen Sugar” reigned supreme in Brooklyn.

The sugar industry, so crucial to Brooklyn’s growth, exploited land and labor from the southern slave plantations of Louisiana to the cane fields of Cuba.

Brooklyn – the “walled city.”

By 1840, Manhattan’s waterfront warehouses had become overcrowded and expensive. Developer Daniel Richards turned his sights to Brooklyn. The result was the Atlantic Docks which transformed Red Hook’s marshland into an industrial wall around Brooklyn. Its success catalyzed further development.

The prosperity of Brooklyn’s newly industrialized waterfront was tied to the economies of slavery. From Williamsburg to Red Hook, the city’s warehouses stored sugar, cotton, and tobacco – all valuable commodities produced by unfree labor.

Sugar, spices, coffee, rum and sugar were all coveted consumer products in Brooklyn and beyond. They were prominently advertised in various publications including newspapers and city directories. But all of the notices contain a silence about the product’s source or origins. Many enslaved laborers lost their lives working in oppressive conditions to produce these highly coveted goods.

Unfree laborers produced sugar, tobacco and cotton – commodities that guaranteed Brooklyn’s wealth. Many people of African descent lost their lives working in the fields of South Carolina, Louisiana, Cuba and Puerto Rico.

In the case of sugar production, the work was relentless, exhausting, and dangerous. The season began in late December with the prolonged and backbreaking task of planting the sugar crop. By spring and early summer, workers removed weeds from the growing sugar canes. During the summer months, laborer built canals and ditches to ensure the fields had sufficient drainage. By early November, once the crop was in harvest, men, women and children worked non-stop. They cut sugar canes, stripped the leaves, and transported them to the mill for processing. The mill, where workers crystallized the sugar and packed it to destinations like Brooklyn, was oppressively hot. Once the year’s work was complete these laborers rested a few days before crop planting began again. That’s if the worker had not injured him/herself during the grueling work or died from exhaustion. The sugar trade was a death trap for many.

Lewis H. Nelson, a barber and political activist in Williamsburg, was part of a new generation of entrepreneurs, who built their own businesses, creating a context for their own capabilities. Nelson was born in Pennsylvania around 1810. By 1837, he had moved to Manhattan, where he ran a grocery and tea store stocked with “goods free from slave labor.” He moved to Williamsburg around 1841, when Willis Hodges, William Hodges and others began buying land and building a community. Nelson operated a “Hair Dressing & Shaving Saloon” at 45 4th Street which was also his place of residence.

Like many black barbers, Nelson also had a long career as an activist. He served in a benevolent association that supported the education of African Americans and was a founding member of the African School in Williamsburg. He also spoke out publicly against voter discrimination. Nelson died on September 28, 1868, leaving his personal estate to his wife Harriet.

Freeman Murrows, another Williamsburg resident, invented an innovative brush for whitewashing, painting and varnishing. Previously brushes had fixed handles so that the entire brush had to be thrown away once the bristles had worn out. The brush was also adjustable and could be angled to make the work easier.

Murrows faced challenges in promoting his invention. He was not permitted to showcase it at the American Institute Fair in 1853 (a precursor to the World Fair), so it was exhibited by a white man instead. The invention won the silver medal. Despite this success, Murrows was unable to secure financing for his business – the Brooklyn Brush Manufacturing Company. In 1855, Lewis Tappan urged his fellows abolitionists to invest in the business at an anti-slavery convention.
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Henry Bibb, originally a fugitive from Kentucky enjoyed a long successful career as a public speaker and prominent abolitionist.

He published the Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave (1849) designed to tell his own story and provide a source of income as a free man. But former fugitives such as Bibb were often contracted by various anti-slavery societies to tell their story directly to audiences. They challenged proslavery propaganda and revealed the mental, physical, and sexual violence perpetuated upon the black body. Brooklyn was one of Bibb’s many stops on the anti-slavery lecture circuit.

Brooklyn Heights resident, Lewis Tappan, housed Ann Maria Weems at his home before she departed for Canada. Tappan’s wife Sarah used $63 from the Weems Ransom Fund to buy Ann Maria new clothes as she still wore the boys clothing she had escaped in.

Tappan funded many abolitionist activities during the antebellum period and was a white ally in the fight for black civil rights. A businessman from Northampton, Massachusetts, he moved to New York to work with his brother Arthur Tappan. He was spurred to action by a deeply religious evangelical impulse brought about during the Second Great Awakening. He was originally pro- colonization but changed his mind after seeing waves of anti-colonization protests led by African Americans and became committed to abolitionism.
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In April 1848, some 80 people were arrested on a schooner on the Potomac attempting to flee slavery. Among them were Mary Edmonson, age 16, and her sister, Emily, age 13. The slavetrading company Bruin and Hill of Virginia, wrote to the girls’ parents, demanding $2250 ($64,100 today) for their emancipation. Their father Paul Edmonson, with the help of Washington D.C. abolitionists, approached James W. C. Pennington in New York who recommended Henry Ward Beecher fundraise the money. Using an auction format, Beecher asked the audience to imagine the enslaved girls as their own sisters and daughters. The crowd, appalled at the girls’ experience, donated the money for their emancipation.
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Pomona Brice was originally enslaved in North Carolina. By 1857, she was free and a resident of Brooklyn. Determined to reunite with her family she traveled across the North raising money. She worked with an attorney in Brooklyn and received money from Beecher, Bethel AME Church in Weeksville, and Bridge Street AME Church among others.

It is difficult to say whether her family was ever freed.