2: Stray Dogs and Pickpockets
Description and details about horse-drawn trolleys and omnibuses: New York Transit Museum website and 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York.
“In the twenty years since the first horse railway was launched”: The world’s first horse railway (or horse-drawn streetcar) was launched by the New York and Harlem Railroad in 1832: ibid., 37. By 1860 there were fourteen horse railroad companies in Manhattan: ibid., 40.
Businesses in Five Points included printshops and manufacturers of shoes and tobacco products: Gotham, 475.
Children as pickpockets: Five Points, 220.
Black peddlers sold buttermilk and straw for bedding: Five Points, 119.
“Hot corn all hot”: City of Women, 14.
Hot corn was not popcorn, but “freshly cooked ears of sweet corn” in season: Five Points, 129.
Sources for information on Horatio Alger, Jr., include Gotham, 977–78.
Sidebar “Slavery in the North”:
“New York City even had its own slave market, located where Wall Street met the East River”: The Historical Atlas of New York City, 44.
New York’s Municipal Slave Market, at Mannahatta Park: details from the website of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, address listed in Bibliography.
The African Burial Ground National Monument: website of the National Park Service, address listed in Bibliography.
Sidebar “Timeline, the End of Slavery in Northern States”: Jim Crow New York, 19–23, and the following sources for the end of slavery by state:
MASSACHUSETTS: www.mass.gov/courts/court-info/sjc/edu-res-center/abolition/abolition1-gen.html
PENNSYLVANIA: www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1776-1865/abolition-slavery.html
RHODE ISLAND: www.ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4956&context=etd
CONNECTICUT: www.connecticuthistory.org/topics-page/slavery-and-abolition/
NEW YORK: www.nyhistory.org/community/slavery-end-new-york-state
NEW JERSEY: www.academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/slave08.htm
OHIO, INDIANA, ILLINOIS, MICHIGAN, IOWA, WISCONSIN, and MINNESOTA, MAINE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, KANSAS, and VERMONT: www.mtholyoke.edu/~kmporter/slaverytimeline.htm
CALIFORNIA: www.sfmuseum.org/hist5/caladmit.html
OREGON: www.ohs.org/research-and-library/oregon-historical-quarterly/upload/02_Smith_Oregon-s-Civil-War_115_2_Summer-2014.pdf
NEVADA: www.onlinenevada.org/articles/nevada-statehood
WEST VIRGINIA: www.wvculture.org/history///africanamericans/slaveryabolished01.html
3. A City Divided by Race
Voting restrictions by race in New York: Gotham, 512–14.
Free blacks in the North were denied the right to vote except in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, according to American Slavery, 82. “Winning the Vote: A History of Voting Rights,” by Steven Mintz, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, however, includes Rhode Island in that list: www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/government-and-civics/essays/winning-vote-history-voting-rights. Both sources state that in New York black residents could vote but only if they met a property requirement. Also regarding voting in New York, see www.nycourts.gov/history/legal-history-new-york/documents/Publications_1821-NY-Constitution.pdf.
Voting rights for women: The Unfinished Nation, 640.
Segregated schools: Journal of Negro History, vol. 16, issue 4, 426–33 (Oct. 1931).
Schools for black children in New York City described as “dark, damp, small, and cheerless”: New-York Daily Tribune, March 8, 1859.
Jobs available to black New Yorkers: multiple sources, including Journal of Negro History, vol. 16, issue 4, 438 (Oct. 1931) and Jim Crow New York, 17. Black men as chimney sweeps: Five Points, 91.
In 1855 there were 13 black teachers in New York City, out of a total of 1,356: Immigrant Life in New York City 1825–1863, 217.
“What are my prospects?”: Gotham, 547.
Segregation in churches: Gateway to Freedom, 59.
Segregation by neighborhood: In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City 1626–1863, 266–67; also, Five Points, 97.
Theaters, “among the first institutions to be segregated in New York”: Stories of Freedom in Black New York, 80.
Segregated hotels and restaurants in New York City: “Freedom’s Story: Segregation,” website, National Humanities Center, address listed in Bibliography.
Rules on streetcars that forced blacks to ride on the outside of New York City streetcars or to wait for one carrying a sign that stated COLORED PEOPLE ALLOWED IN THE CAR: Gotham, 856; also, New York Times, Jan. 1, 1880.
“Colored” streetcars in New York City were often called Jim Crow cars after a minstrel character of that name became an insulting term used by whites to describe black people: Gotham, 856.
Information about the origins of the term Jim Crow for sidebar “What Was Jim Crow?”: Jim Crow New York, 3–4, and Gotham, 856.
4. “I Screamed Murder with All My Voice” and 5. “You Will Sweat for This!’”
Source for both chapters: Elizabeth Jennings herself in her account published by the New-York Daily Tribune, July 19, 1854.
6: An Admired Family
Thomas Jennings marched with others as a young man through the streets of lower Manhattan: Anglo-African Magazine, April 1859.
Many sources refer to Elizabeth’s father as an activist. Thomas Jennings “worked in the African Society for Mutual Relief and helped found the Abyssinian Baptist Church”: Gotham, 856.
The most complete source on the life of Thomas Jennings comes from an obituary or tribute written by Frederick Douglass, published in Douglass’ Monthly, March 1859 and reprinted in The Anglo-African Magazine, April 1859, includes details about Elizabeth and her siblings.
Thomas Jennings’s shop at Nassau and Chatham streets: Douglass’ Monthly, March 1859.
Thomas Jennings, inventor: ibid. Patent signed by John Quincy Adams: Douglass’ Monthly, March 1859.
Elizabeth’s mother, a daughter of Jacob Cartwright, a black soldier in the Revolutionary War: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, March 2, 1855.
African Free Schools, New-York Historical Society’s website, address listed in Bibliography. The names of the Jennings children—William, Thomas, Jr., Matilda, and Elizabeth—are mentioned in various publications, such as The Colored American, Douglass’ Monthly, and the New-York Daily Tribune. Matilda shows up in the U.S. Census, on a Freedman’s Bank record, and on the tombstone in the Jennings family plot in Brooklyn, N.Y. Another sister, Lucy, is mentioned by Frederick Douglass (Douglass’ Monthly, March 1859). She evidently married and moved to San Francisco (Pacific Appeal, May 16, 1863). Elizabeth herself refers to at least four brothers and sisters in a letter to the editor published by New York Age, Sept. 20, 1890.
In this letter, she wrote of their very unusual educational opportunities: “Another school was opened . . . and four of my brothers and sisters were the first pupils enrolled. This was the nucleus of colored teachers in the city of New York.”
The Ladies’ Literary Society, coverage of essay, and essay itself, recited by Elizabeth Jennings: The Colored American, Sept. 23, 1837.
Recitations by children as teaching method and as a form of popular entertainment: The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 479.
Sidebar “Who Should Go to School?”:
Education for girls unequal to that for boys and meant to make them be better mothers and wives: Education and Social Change, 89–90.
Climbing stairs too often might be a danger to their health: ibid., 94.
Sidebar “Frederick Douglass and the Black Press”: The Almanac of American History, 267, and The Unfinished Nation, 358. Regarding Frederick Douglass’s publications: www.loc.gov/collections/frederick-douglass-papers/articles-and-essays/frederick-douglass-timeline/1847-to-1859/
Black newspapers: “The Free Negro in New York,” Journal of Negro
History, 444-46. While Hirsch, the author, credits John B. Russwurm as the founder of Freedom’s Journal, the authors of Gotham assert that it was Russwurm along with Rev. Samuel Cornish, William Hamilton, and Rev. Peter Williams, Jr., 549. Information on The Colored American from Gotham, p. 855.
Frederick Douglass referred to Elizabeth’s conduct as “courageous” and “beyond all praise”: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, March 2, 1855.
7: A “Shameful” and “Loathsome” Issue
“An emergency meeting was held at the church”: from Elizabeth Jennings’s published account.
Letter by David L. Child, Anti-Slavery Society, describing segregated conditions in the North: The Liberator May 7, 1831.
Letter by Frederick Douglass describing “the brutal manner in which colored persons are uniformly treated in steamers on the Hudson River”: The Liberator, June 11, 1847.
Writer reports incident on uptown streetcar: New-York Daily Tribune, September 7, 1850.
Conductors, not passengers, to blame: letter to the editor, New-York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1850.
Sidebar “Trying to Make a Difference” The Liberator, June 14, 1834.
Sidebar “William Lloyd Garrison”: The Unfinished Nation, 357, and America, a Narrative History, 633–34, and the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University: www.rare.library.cornell.edu/.
Sidebar “Horace Greeley”: The Almanac of American History, p. 323; The Unfinished Nation, p. 462; and America, a Narrative History, 537, 649; Gotham, 525; Lehigh University: The Vault at Pfaff’s: An Archive of Art and Literature by the Bohemians of Antebellum New York. www.pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/
8. A Future U.S. President
Erastus Culver: Gentleman Boss, 14.
Family background of Chester A. Arthur: sources include Gentleman Boss and The Life of Gen. Chester A. Arthur.
Chester Arthur made a good impression on Erastus Culver; law firm name changed to Culver, Parker, and Arthur: Gentleman Boss, 14. Also, New York World, “Preparing for the Burial,” November 20, 1886.
Address of law firm Culver & Parker: Chester A. Arthur, a Quarter-Century of Machine Politics, 12.
Sidebar “Chester Arthur: His Early Years”:
Chester’s college pranks: Gentleman Boss, 8–9.
Essay by Chester Arthur in which he argued that slavery infected the very soul of the nation itself: Arthur Papers, New-York Historical Society, 1847.
Sidebar “The Fugitive Slave Act”: Gateway to Freedom, 124–25, 134, 136.
The number of black residents in New York City decreased from 16,358 in 1840 to 13,815 in 1850; from 1850 to 1855, declined to 11,740: In the Shadow of Slavery, 274–75.
The total population of the city had surged in 1855 to a new high of nearly 630,000 because of white immigration: Immigrant Life in New York City 1825–1863, 20.
9: Elizabeth Jennings v. Third Avenue Railroad Company
Lawsuit filed in Brooklyn: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 23, 1855.
The conductor and the driver chose not to fight the lawsuit: ibid.
“What they really wanted was to change the system”: letter by Thomas L. Jennings to Elizabeth’s supporters, published in The American Woman’s Journal.
Among the judges was a man named William Rockwell: The Brooklyn City and Kings County Record: A Budget of General Information.
The courtroom was “crowded almost to suffocation”; the black community hoped that it would be a test case: New York Times, in a story about Chester A. Arthur, Jan. 1, 1880.
We do not know the exact list of witnesses who testified or if black witnesses, including Elizabeth Jennings, were permitted to testify. It is possible that Chester Arthur, acting as Elizabeth’s attorney, read aloud her letter describing the events on the streetcar. The original transcripts consisting of handwritten notes are said to have been lost in a historic 1911 fire that destroyed the New York State Library in Albany, New York.
Elizabeth was allowed to be a plaintiff; this was not unusual by this time in New York: “The presence of blacks in court on their own behalf became familiar [in New York] by the late 1820s,” according to In the Shadow of Slavery, 105.
Judge Rockwell’s instructions to the jury: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 23, 1855.
Sidebar “Getting to Brooklyn”: East River frozen: Annual Report of the City Inspector of the City of New York for the Year includes a chart showing that the month of February 1855 was much colder than usual.
Painting, crossing from Brooklyn to Manhattan on the ice, 1852: Brooklyn Public Library.
10: The Jury’s Decision
“A Wholesome Verdict”: New-York Daily Tribune, Feb. 23, 1855.
“Rights of Coloured People Vindicated”: National Anti-Slavery Standard, March 3, 1855.
“Legal Rights Vindicated”: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, March 2, 1855.
The Third Avenue Railroad Company, followed shortly by the other streetcar companies, moved quickly to integrate their cars: Gentleman Boss, 16, states that “all New York city railroad companies integrated their cars.” Other sources state that three of the four operating in Manhattan did.
“Railroads, steamboats, omnibuses, and ferry boats will be admonished [warned] from this, as to the rights of respectable colored people”: New-York Daily Tribune, Feb. 23, 1855.
Success of Elizabeth Jennings v. Third Avenue Railroad Company considered “the first major breakthrough” in ending discriminatory practices in public transportation in NYC: Gotham, 856.
Setbacks: Gotham, 857.
Success of court case led to founding of the Legal Rights’ Association in New York City; one of the founders was Thomas Jennings: Douglass’ Monthly, March 1859.
February 22, the date of Elizabeth’s court victory, was celebrated for years in New York: Gentleman Boss, 16.
Part II: A Forgotten Hero
11: An Uncanny Similarity to Rosa Parks
Details about the arrest of Rosa Parks: From Dividing Lines, p. 45–61.
Advertisements in a southern newspaper: New-Orleans Picayune, July 18, 1854.
Nearly four million black men, women, and children were enslaved in the South at the start of the Civil War in 1860: American Slavery, 93.
Free black people estimated at about 226,000 in 1860 in the North and about 260,000 in the South: ibid., 253.
She refers to herself as Elizabeth Jennings Graham: letter to the editor, New York Age, Sept. 20, 1890.
12: What Happened to Elizabeth Jennings?
Details of the Civil War: The Shaping of America, 528.
Death of Thomas Jennings: Douglass’ Monthly, March 1859. Died Feb. 11, 1859, at age sixty-eight (born 1791).
On June 18, 1860, Elizabeth “Jinnings” (sic) married Charles Graham: Anglo-African Magazine, June 30, 1860.
Elizabeth and her husband had one child, a boy named Thomas, who died at age one: Half a Man, 25.
Elizabeth, her husband, and her mother left New York for Monmouth County, New Jersey: 1870 U.S. Census shows Elizabeth, her sister Matilda, and their mother living in Ocean, Monmouth County, N.J.
Charles Graham, Elizabeth’s husband, died in Long Branch, N.J., in 1867: records filled out by Elizabeth at Freedman’s Bank in Manhattan in 1871.
Elizabeth, her sister Matilda, and their mother continued to live at the New Jersey seashore in or near a place called Eatontown for several more years: 1870 U.S. Census.
In 1871, after eight years in New Jersey, Elizabeth and her mother moved back to Manhattan, residing at 543 Broome St. Elizabeth began working as a teacher at the 41st Street School: National Archives and Records Administration, Freedman’s Bank records, 1865–1871. Elizabeth made a bank deposit of $240 on Sept. 28, 1871.
According to Hewitt’s article for New York History (October 1990), earlier in her career Elizabeth taught at Colored Public School No. 2, about 1848–1849; Promotion Society School No. 2 (part of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children), 19 Thomas St., 1849–1850; Promoti
on Society School No. 1, 1850–1851, held at St. Philip’s Church; transferred back to Promotion Society School No. 2, 1851–1853; Boys’ Department of the Board of Education’s Colored School No. 5, 19 Thomas St., 1854–1857, and 101 Hudson St. 1858–1862. In 1858 or 1859, she studied for and earned a Certificate of Qualification, a credential newly required by the city.
Death of Elizabeth’s mother, 1873: tombstone, Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Elizabeth appears to have outlived all her siblings. Her brother William died in 1840: The Colored American, Oct. 24, 1840. Thomas, Jr., who had studied dentistry in Boston and set up a private practice in New Orleans, died there Jan. 31, 1862: The Pacific Appeal, Sept. 27, 1862. Matilda seems to have died in 1886: tombstone, Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y. And there is no further mention, after 1863, of Lucy.
With two other black women, founded the first free kindergarten for black children in NYC; the school was held at her home; details about the school: The American Woman’s Journal, July 1895.
Died at home, 237 W. 41st St., Manhattan, June 5, 1901: Hewitt, New York History.
Burial at Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y., in Jennings family plot: confirmed by author with cemetery administrators, 2016.
Sidebar, “The Civil War Draft Riots”: Gotham, 888–91; In the Shadow of Slavery, 279–86; Five Points, 315. In response to the riots, the federal government did back down, reducing the number of men who were selected for the draft: Gotham, 895–99.
Sidebar, “The First Free Kindergarten for Colored Children in NYC”: Kindergarten as a new concept and philosophy: Preschool Education in America, 38–42; kindergarten invented by Froebel in Germany in 1837: 40; New York and Boston took the lead on starting kindergartens that were free: 73.
13: How a Creepy Old House Led to the Writing of this Book
House on Havell Street in Ossining, New York, was residence of Chester A. Arthur: Ossining Historical Society.
14: Retracing Her Footsteps
Streetcar to Justice Page 8
