Streetcar to Justice
Page 1
Dedication
Lee H. Hill Jr.,
my father, who taught me to love history,
and for the Delany sisters,
from whom I learned history firsthand
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Three Notes about Language
PART I: A Day like No Other ONE: “Those Monsters in Human Form” THE FIRST NEW YORKERS
TWO: Stray Dogs and Pickpockets SLAVERY IN THE NORTH
TIMELINE: THE END OF SLAVERY IN NORTHERN STATES
THREE: A City Divided by Race WHAT WAS JIM CROW?
FOUR: “I Screamed Murder with All My Voice”
FIVE: “You Will Sweat for This!”
SIX: An Admired Family FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND THE BLACK PRESS
WHO SHOULD GO TO SCHOOL?
SEVEN: A “Shameful” and “Loathsome” Issue TRYING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON AND THE LIBERATOR
HORACE GREELEY AND THE NEW YORK DAILY TRIBUNE
EIGHT: A Future U.S. President THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT
CHESTER A. ARTHUR: HIS EARLY YEARS
NINE: Elizabeth Jennings v. Third Avenue Railroad Company GETTING TO BROOKLYN
TEN: The Jury’s Decision
PART II: A Forgotten Hero ELEVEN: An Uncanny Similarity to Rosa Parks
TWELVE: What Happened to Elizabeth Jennings? THE CIVIL WAR DRAFT RIOTS
THE FIRST FREE KINDERGARTEN FOR COLORED CHILDREN IN NEW YORK CITY
THIRTEEN: How a Creepy Old House Led to the Writing of This Book
FOURTEEN: Retracing Her Footsteps
POSTSCRIPT: Chester A. Arthur: Tragedy Leads to Presidency
Bibliography
Notes
Author’s Note about Elizabeth Jennings’s Age in 1854
Suggested Reading
Elizabeth Jennings’s Life within a Historical Timeline
Important Locations
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Epigraph
“I screamed murder with all my voice.”
—Elizabeth Jennings, 1854
Three Notes about Language
LANGUAGE IS NEVER STAGNANT. The meaning and intent of words can change over time. That is the case with the word colored, which is not accepted today because it has evolved into a loaded word meant to be racist and hurtful.
Colored was once commonly used to refer to black or African American people. African Americans frequently used the word colored in Elizabeth Jennings’s era. The Colored American, for example, was a black newspaper in New York founded in 1837. Other examples of the use of the word by the African American community include the First Colored Presbyterian Church and First Colored American Congregational Church, churches in New York City. Frederick Douglass used the term colored in his publications, several of which are quoted from in this book.
Readers may also note that the term civil rights, which is a common phrase describing the struggle for equality among races, has been replaced with equal rights for blacks to avoid confusion. Historically civil rights is a term used mainly to describe the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, not the 1850s.
Some readers will no doubt be curious about the emphasis put on social class by the primary sources referred to or quoted from in this book, including Elizabeth Jennings, who refers to herself as “respectable” and “genteel.” This was typical of the way members of the middle class, both white and black, described themselves in the era.
Other words, archaic in meaning today, are explained in the text or in footnotes when needed.
PART I
A DAY LIKE NO OTHER
The only known photograph of Elizabeth Jennings.
ONE
“Those Monsters in Human Form”
MISS ELIZABETH JENNINGS had a job to do.
She had to get to the First Colored American Congregational Church, where she was the organist. The choir would be waiting for her. They rehearsed each Sunday afternoon, and having the organist accompany them was essential.
But on this particular Sunday she never arrived.
This was surprising. A schoolteacher as well as an accomplished musician, Elizabeth Jennings lived a well-ordered life. In her twenties and unmarried, the youngest of several children, she lived at home with her father, Thomas L. Jennings, and mother, also named Elizabeth, at 167 Church Street in Manhattan. The Jennings family was part of New York City’s small black middle class and was active in civic and religious organizations that promoted the education, well-being, and rights of the city’s black population.
There was no way of knowing, of course, that this would be a day like no other, that soon she would become embroiled in an incident involving several men she would later call “those monsters in human form.” The day’s events would change her life—and, as it turned out, the path that history has taken.
A gathering of black activists in the mid-1800s.
An 1852 drawing of New York (Manhattan). At the right of the drawing is Brooklyn, then a separate city.
Traveling to church meant a short walk followed by a ride on a streetcar. As she made her way to the streetcar stop, her only concern was being late.
The date was July 16, 1854.
And the place, New York City.
NEW YORK WAS NOT the city it is today, where tall buildings seem to reach into the clouds and subways whisk people from place to place.
There was no Brooklyn Bridge or Statue of Liberty in 1854. They hadn’t been built yet. The same was true of the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center. Times Square, then called Long Acre Square, was only partially developed.
New York City was made up of Manhattan only. The heavily forested area north that became the Bronx was then a part of Westchester County. Brooklyn was a separate city. Queens was still largely farmland, although factories were starting to be built. On Staten Island a manufacturing boom had not yet begun. Staten Island residents worked mainly on farms or at sea.
The city that Elizabeth Jennings lived in was much smaller, and much dirtier, than it is today. Many roads were unpaved. Some were made of cobblestone. Sidewalks existed in some places but not others.
As she made her way to the streetcar stop at what was then the corner of Pearl and Chatham streets (now the corner of Pearl Street and Park Row), she would have walked around piles of horse manure and maybe even the bloated remains of a dead animal or two—frequently a horse—that had been left to rot. It wasn’t uncommon for two to three feet of garbage to be piled up in front of buildings.
To make matters worse, women of the time wore long dresses that came down to the ankle. Elizabeth had to navigate these streets while trying to keep the hem of her dress clean.
A photograph of a crowded and filthy street in Five Points.
This was not harmless dust. This was foul, disgusting dirt. Dangerous dirt that was full of germs. That’s because there was no indoor plumbing and no city-wide sewer system. Most people lived in four- or five-story apartment buildings and shared crude outhouses with as many as a hundred other residents. Elizabeth’s parents owned their home, which meant the Jennings family probably had a private outhouse (called a privy) in a very small backyard.
When it rained, the roadways turned into mud almost instantly. Carriages and wagons became stuck for hours. Raw sewage floated down the street.
On that particular afternoon, as Elizabeth walked to the streetcar stop, rain was not the concern. In fact, there was a drought. In the countryside crops were failing. In the city the air stank and was filled with grit and dust.
Even at the best of times life in th
e city was very hard for most people. Disease was a regular concern. Deadly cholera epidemics occurred almost every year, including an 1849 outbreak that killed five thousand New Yorkers. Typhus was epidemic in 1852. Tuberculosis was a constant threat. More than half the babies born in the city died before their first birthdays.
The rowdiest, unhealthiest, and most dangerous part of Manhattan was a neighborhood called Five Points, which had such a bad reputation that it had become well known around the world. During a visit to America the famous English author Charles Dickens compared Five Points with the worst slums of London, which he had written about in novels such as Oliver Twist. “[H]ideous tenements which take their name from robbery and murder; all that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here,” Dickens wrote.
Many New Yorkers, if they could avoid it, never went to Five Points. Elizabeth Jennings, whose family lived in a residential neighborhood near the corner of Church and Chamber streets, had to walk through or by this notorious section of Manhattan to catch a streetcar on the Third Avenue Railroad line, which would take her to church.
A famous depiction of Five Points, from the archives of the New-York Historical Society.
As Elizabeth walked to the streetcar stop, she met up with Sarah E. Adams, about whom little is known other than that she was a friend of Elizabeth’s. The two women continued on their way together.
As it turned out, Sarah’s presence would be very important: She would become the main witness to the events that were about to unfold.
The First New Yorkers
Manhattan was a pristine landscape of meadows, gentle slopes, streams, and marshland for many thousands of years.
The people living there, often called the original New Yorkers, were the Lenni-Lenape, who called it Mannahatta, or “island of the hills.”
And then, in 1614, the Dutch came, followed by the English in 1664. The island of the hills would never be the same.
The colonists, enthralled by one of the largest natural harbors in the world, quickly built settlements, starting in lower Manhattan. As time went on, they moved northward and even outward, filling the bogs and marshes of the island with rocks and debris. This was the beginning of New York City, a community called New Amsterdam by the Dutch and then New-York by the English.
The Lenni-Lenape people, whose territory stretched from Manhattan Island south to the Delaware Bay, including all of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, were under siege. Those living on Manhattan were pushed farther north on the island and eventually across the Hudson River (as it was later called) to New Jersey. Some were enslaved. Many died from diseases brought by the Europeans or were killed outright.
The Lenni-Lenape people have not disappeared completely, however. The most substantial populations live on reservations at Bartlesville and Anadarko, Oklahoma, and at Six Nations, Moraviantown, and Muncy Town in Ontario, Canada. Others live in Kansas, Colorado, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The largest and most vibrant community still living in part of the original Lenni-Lenape territory is the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation of Bridgeton, New Jersey.
Tish-Co-Han, a chief of the Lenni-Lenape people.
A horse-drawn streetcar in New York.
The conductor and driver (in charge of the horses)
TWO
Stray Dogs and Pickpockets
ELIZABETH JENNINGS AND SARAH ADAMS would probably have been looking forward to their streetcar ride. Although sometimes overcrowded, a streetcar was usually the most pleasant way to travel.
Pulled by a team of horses, the streetcars (also called horsecars or trolleys) moved along at eight miles per hour. The ride was smooth and steady because the streetcars were transported on iron or steel rails that had been set into the ground. Each car was operated by at least two men, a driver in charge of the horses and a conductor. Some of the streetcars featured outside seats or places to stand, like a little platform or running board.
An advertisement for omnibuses, from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.
Compared with an omnibus, which was simply a cart or wagon pulled by a horse, the streetcar was a big improvement. In an omnibus, or even a fancy private carriage, passengers were bounced and jolted with every bump.
Another advantage of the streetcar was that it pulled up to a platform. This made boarding faster and easier for passengers. In the twenty years since the first streetcar line was launched, the service had become very popular. As many as fourteen streetcar (or railroad) companies were said to be operating in Manhattan by 1860.
The streetcar that Elizabeth and Sarah would take was the Third Avenue line.
A horse-drawn streetcar in New York. Photo courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.
The corner of Pearl and Chatham streets (now the corner of Pearl Street and Park Row) in 1861. This is where Elizabeth Jennings and Sarah E. Adams boarded the horse-drawn streetcar.
Five Points on a midsummer’s day. The signs say “Hot Corn,” “Rye Bourbon,” and “Oysters & Clam Chowder.”
This 1859 sketch was called “Pork Lively” and was ironically described by the artist as a “sketch from nature at the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street.”
While waiting and watching for a streetcar to pull up, Elizabeth and Sarah would have been surrounded by turmoil. At the intersection of Pearl and Chatham streets, anything could happen. Stray dogs scavenged for food. Wild hogs, a regular nuisance, rooted in the street.
Although it was a Sunday, and businesses in Five Points such as printshops and manufacturers of shoes and tobacco products would be closed, the area would have been bustling with people. Residents trying to escape their hot apartments, visitors from other parts of the city who came out of curiosity, and dockworkers looking for entertainment on their day off created a lively atmosphere.
Peddlers sold all kinds of food and goods. Women typically sold fruit, cakes, and candy similar to jelly beans and chewing gum. Black peddlers specialized in selling buttermilk and straw for bedding. And black women sold a favorite Manhattan treat, hot corn, or freshly cooked ears of sweet corn. These women walked back and forth at intersections, singing:
“Hot corn all hot, here’s your lily white hot corn
Hot corn all hot, just come out of the boiling pot.”
A large number of peddlers and passersby were new immigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany. Many languages were spoken in the Five Points neighborhood.
Five Points in 1859, from an illustration in the collection of the New-York Historical Society.
To these newly arrived immigrants and even to longtime New Yorkers, it would have been obvious that Elizabeth and Sarah were not poor. Their stylish, clean, and neatly pressed dresses indicated that they were members of the small middle-class black community in New York.
New York was a place of opportunity where, it was said, any young person could rise from a humble background to lead a successful life, with hard work and determination the only requirements. This rags-to-riches dream was later reinforced by the wildly popular writings of Horatio Alger, Jr., a Massachusetts-born author. In his novels, Alger’s heroes were street urchins who overcame poverty through courage and good morals.
Left unsaid, however, was the fact that this type of story described a path open to whites and to boys. Such opportunity was simply not available to girls. For blacks, both boys and girls, the road to success was blocked by the color of their skin. Only a very few managed to break through the barriers, and when they did, they still were not considered equal to whites.
This was the reality Elizabeth and Sarah faced each day of their lives.
Slavery in the North
The institution of slavery was not confined to the southern part of the United States. New York and other northern states were at one time slave states, too.
From 1711 to 1762, a period of fifty-one years, New York City even had its own municipal slave market. Located where Wall Street met the East River, it was where persons of African ancestry, along with some Native Americ
ans, were bought and sold or hired out as day laborers by their owners in a setting no less horrific than the slave markets in such southern cities as Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia.
A drawing of the New York Slave Market at Wall Street.
Enslaved persons were among the workers who built the wall for which Wall Street is named. The construction of the original portion of the city’s most famous street, Broadway, included the labor of slaves.
Manhattan is a place of constant change. History is actually paved over. As a result, sometimes New Yorkers are surprised by stark reminders of the past.
One such moment occurred in 1991, when an old burial ground was discovered during the construction of a new federal building at 290 Broadway in lower Manhattan. The burial ground had been the final resting place for thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, who had died between the 1690s and 1794. In 1993 the site, known as the African Burial Ground, was designated a National Historic Landmark. On February 27, 2006, President George W. Bush named the African Burial Ground a National Monument.
The story of slavery in the United States is complex and far-reaching. In the North slavery ended much sooner than in the South, and it was abolished by the will, or choice, of the people. State by state in the North, citizens supported the passage of laws to stop it.