The Negro at Work in New York City: A Study in Economic Progress

by George Edmund Haynes

2. A HISTORY OF THE NEGRO IN BUSINESS

The economic propensity to higgle and barter appeared early among the Negroes of the New Amsterdam Colony. As early as 1684 the Colonial General Assembly passed a law that "no servant or slave, either male or female, shall either give, sell or truck any commodity whatsoever during the term of their service." Any servant or slave who violated the law was to be given corporal punishment at the discretion of two justices and any person trading with such servant or slave should return the commodity and forfeit five pounds for each offense.[66] And further action was taken in 1702 which rendered all bargains or contracts with slaves void and prevented any person from trading in any way with a slave, without the consent of the owner of such slave.[67] The penalty for violation was to forfeit treble the value of the commodity and payment of five pounds to the owner of the slave. In 1712, probably after the terror of the Negro riot of that year, it was decreed that no Negro, Indian or mulatto who should be set free, should hold any land or real estate, but it should be escheated.[68] The provisions of the two acts of 1684 and 1702 about trading with slaves were revised and re-enacted in 1726.[69]

The character of much of this trade is shown by city regulations which forbade the sale of great quantities of "boiled corn, peaches, pears, apples, and other kinds of fruit." These wares were bought and sold not only in houses and outhouses but in the public streets. The Common Council in 1740 declared the same to be a nuisance and prohibited it with a penalty of public whipping. The Council gave as one of its reasons that it was productive of "many dangerous fevers and other distempers and diseases in the inhabitants in the same city," but those coming to market by order of their masters were excepted from the prohibition. The effect of the latter traffic upon the health of the city was purposely not discerned.[70] The act of 1726 was again re-enacted in 1788.[71] From time to time faithful slaves of the West India Company were set free. These usually began tilling the soil for themselves and probably marketed their products in the town.

Slaves, therefore, had little or no opportunity to share in the trading operations of the Colony. State emancipation by the acts of 1799, 1817, and 1827, however, was finally secured, and with the coming of this boon there was liberty to engage in the traffic of the growing metropolis. There is conclusive evidence that considerable numbers of Negroes did embrace the opportunity.

The volumes of the Colored American from 1838 to 1841 contain a number of advertisements and references to business enterprises run by Negroes. The newspaper itself was a considerable undertaking and job printing was also "executed with dispatch." In 1837, George Pell and John Alexander opened a restaurant in the one-hundred block in Church Street.

In 1838, there were two boarding houses in this same block, and two boarding houses in Leonard Street and one each in Spruce and Franklin and Lispenard Streets. The next year two other boarding houses were started, one on South Pearl Street and the other near the beginning of Cross Street, and in 1840 two more entered the list, on Sullivan and Church Streets. The drug store of Dr. Samuel McCune Smith and the cleaning and dyeing establishment of Bennet Johnson, both in the one-hundred block on Broadway, were well known and successful enterprises of the day.

B. Bowen and James Green both had small stores for dry goods and notions in 1838, the former on Walker Street and the latter on Anthony. While the same year a hair-dressing establishment on Leonard Street, a coal-yard on Duane Street, a pleasure garden on Thomas Street and three tailors, whose location could not be ascertained, were enterprises of promise.

In 1839 and 1840, there were a pleasure garden and saloon in Anthony Street and a similar establishment on King Street, with an "Amusement House" on Spring Street, and near it Brown and Wood ran a confectionary and fruit store. Richard Carroll ran a bathing establishment in Church Street. A coal-yard in Pearl Street, a watch and clock maker, three private schools, and a "dry-goods store of the female Trading Association," complete the list of firms that was contained in the record of the period.

A number of these enterprises are known to have continued for a number of years after 1840. Testimony of witnesses[72] as late as the time of the Civil War shows that a number of the above-named enterprises were in existence as late as 1860.

Also that second-hand clothing shops were frequently run by Negroes, and barber-shops and restaurants of excellent equipment were evidences of activity comparable with the earlier period. Thomas Downing kept a restaurant at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets and from it amassed considerable wealth bequeathed to his children.