Stories of Slavery In New York
From today's NYT: A 'Main Event' in Old New York, by GLENN COLLINS
"It is called a trading book. In meticulous, spidery notations, it reveals just how the sloop Rhode Island, owned by Philip Livingston & Sons, New York merchants, traded rum, tobacco and cheese for guns, cloth and ivory in 1749.
"Then, along the African coast, it traded those goods for 124 slaves.
"The ledger is but one of more than 400 artifacts, documents, paintings and maps in a forthcoming exhibition on slavery at the New-York Historical Society that detail the vital connections between New York and the system of slavery that was an economic engine of the Americas for more than three centuries.
"We all grew up with images of 'Gone With the Wind' and we thought slavery was a Southern institution, but for 200 years slavery was a dominant force in New York," said Richard Rabinowitz, the show's curator.
"The $5 million exhibition, "Slavery in New York," will open to the public on Oct. 7. Its story begins in the 1620's and ends on July 5, 1827, when black New Yorkers celebrated emancipation in their state. Late next year, a sequel exhibition, "Commerce and Conscience," will extend the chronicle past the Civil War.
"The show is a potentially controversial one for the society, a 201-year-old institution that has stirred debate since it was re-energized by two wealthy, conservative businessmen, Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, the forces behind an Alexander Hamilton exhibition that earned mixed reviews from historians last year.
"Many people, blacks as well as whites, have some trouble having the story of slavery told in a major public venue," said James Oliver Horton, the Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University, who is the exhibition's chief historian. "But we do not have the right not to tell the story." ....
Full story here.