North of Reconstruction: Black Yankees Confront the 13th Amendment

After slavery ended in 1865, black New Yorkers who had long fought for abolition unexpectedly found themselves in conflict with those who had just recently gained their freedom. Within just a few short years, white Yankees exhibited a nascent nostalgia for the Old South. Their adoption of “Lost Cause” mythology framed and shaped the ensuing black urban experience. Whites projected a longing for the plantation legend onto the servant (and slave) of old who embodied "southern" characteristics while they simultaneously demonstrated diminished tolerance for their black neighbors. This paper explores the struggle that black New Yorkers faced in these circumstances as they fought to stake their claim to equality representing themselves as suitable members of the body politic while struggling against the growing white nostalgia for slavery, a condition that presupposed their inferiority.

My research exposes the existence of ethnic and class fissures within the black population. At the same time, this essay exposes the collision course of race relations created by antithetical views of slavery held by New York’s black and white populations. As black New Yorkers asserted their sophistication and urbanity in an attempt to solidify their position as rightful participants in city life and as full-fledged citizens, whites insisted on privileging those black people who demonstrated the docile, naïve, and servile characteristics associated with slavery. Black people faced the Herculean task of representing themselves as suitable members of the body politic while struggling against the growing white nostalgia for slavery, a condition that presupposed their inferiority.