African Americans constitute one of the longer-running ethnic presences in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, home to the largest urban

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

population, and the world's largest

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...

population of any city outside

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, by a significant margin.

Population

According to the 2010 Census, New York City had the largest population of black residents of any U.S. city, with over 2 million within the city's boundaries, although this number has decreased since 2000. New York City had more black people than did the entire state of

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

until the 1980 Census. The black community consists of immigrants and their descendants from Africa and the Caribbean as well as native-born African-Americans. Many of the city's black residents live in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...

, and

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

. Several of the city's neighborhoods are historical birthplaces of urban black culture in America, among them the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford–Stuyvesant and Manhattan's

and various sections of Eastern Queens and The Bronx. Bedford-Stuyvesant is considered to have the highest concentration of black residents in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. New York City has the largest population of black immigrants (at 686,814) and descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean (especially from

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate) ...

, Guyana,

Belize Belize (; bzj, Bileez) is a Caribbean and Central American country on the northeastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a wate ...

, Grenada, and Haiti), Latin America ( Afro-Latinos), and of sub-Saharan Africans. African immigration is now driving the growth of the Black population in New York City.

History

After abolition

Following the final abolition of slavery in New York in 1827, New York City emerged as one of the largest pre-

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

metropolitan concentrations of free African-Americans, and many institutions were established to advance the community in the

antebellum period In the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by ...

. It was the site of the first African-American periodical journal ''

Freedom's Journal ''Freedom's Journal'' was the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. Founded by Rev. John Wilk and other free Black men in New York City, it was published weekly starting with the 16 March 1827 issue. ...

'', which lasted for two years and renamed ''

The Rights of All ''The Rights of All'' (May 1829 to 1830) was an African-American abolitionist newspaper, founded in New York City by Samuel Cornish, a black Presbyterian minister and antislavery activist. ''The Rights of All'' replaced ''Freedom's Journal,'' the n ...

'' for a third year before fading to obsolescence; the newspaper served as both a powerful voice for the abolition lobby in the United States as well as a voice of information for the African population of New York City and other metropolitan areas. The African Dorcas Association was also established to provide educational and clothing aid to Black youth in the city. However, New York residents were less willing to give blacks equal voting rights. By the constitution of 1777, voting was restricted to free men who could satisfy certain property requirements for value of real estate. This property requirement disfranchised poor men among both blacks and whites. The reformed Constitution of 1821 conditioned suffrage for black men by maintaining the property requirement, which most could not meet, so effectively disfranchised them. The same constitution eliminated the property requirement for white men and expanded their franchise."African American Voting Rights"
, New York State Archives, accessed 11 February 2012 No women yet had the vote in New York. "As late as 1869, a majority of the state's voters cast ballots in favor of retaining property qualifications that kept New York's polls closed to many blacks. African-American men did not obtain equal voting rights in New York until ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870." The emancipated African-Americans established communities in the New York City area, including

Seneca Village Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of mostly African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within what would become present-day Central Park. The settlement was located near the current Upper West Side ne ...

in what is now

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and Sandy Ground on Staten Island, and Weeksville in

. These communities were among the earliest. The city was a nerve center for the abolitionist movement in the United States.

After the Civil War

Harlem and Great Migration

The violent rise of Jim Crow in the Deep and Upper South led to the mass migration of African Americans, including ex-slaves and their free-born children, from those regions to northern metropolitan areas, including New York City. Their mass arrival coincided with the transition of the center of African-American power and demography in the city from other districts of the city to

. The tipping point occurred on June 15, 1904, when up-and-coming real estate entrepreneur Philip A. Payton, Jr. established the Afro-American Realty Company, which began to aggressively buy and lease houses in the ethnically mixed but predominantly-white Harlem following the housing crashes of 1904 and 1905. In addition to an influx of long-time African-American residents from other neighborhoods,"The Making of Harlem,"
James Weldon Johnson, The Survey Graphic, March 1925 the Tenderloin,

San Juan Hill San Juan Hill is a series of hills to the east of Santiago, Cuba, running north to south. The area is known as the San Juan Heights or in Spanish ''Alturas de San Juan'' before Spanish–American War of 1898, and are now part of Lomas de San Ju ...

(now the site of

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...

), Little Africa around Minetta Lane in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

and

Hell's Kitchen Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is considered to be bordered by 34th Street (or 41st Street) to the south, 59th Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the ea ...

in the west 40s and 50s. The move to northern Manhattan was driven in part by fears that anti-black riots such as those that had occurred in the Tenderloin in 1900 and in San Juan Hill in 1905"Harlem, the Village That Became a Ghetto", Martin Duberman, in ''New York, N.Y.: An American Heritage History of the Nation's Greatest City'', 1968 might recur. In addition, a number of tenements that had been occupied by blacks in the west 30s were destroyed at this time to make way for the construction of the original

Penn Station Pennsylvania Station is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad to several of its grand passenger terminals. Pennsylvania Station or Penn Station may also refer to Current train stations * Baltimore Penn Station * Pennsylvania Station (Cinc ...

Caribbean immigration

The Great Depression and demographic shift

Harlem's decline as the center of the Afro-American population in New York City began with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. In the early 1930s, 25% of Harlemites were out of work, and employment prospects for Harlemites stayed bad for decades. Employment among black New Yorkers fell as some traditionally black businesses, including domestic service and some types of manual labor, were taken over by other ethnic groups. Major industries left New York City altogether, especially after 1950. Several riots happened in this period, including in 1935 and

1943 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 – WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad, with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured. * January 4 ...

. Following the construction of the IND Fulton Street LineEchanove, Matias
"Bed-Stuy on the Move"
. Master thesis. Urban Planning Program. ''Columbia University''. Urbanology.org. 2003. in 1936, African Americans left an overcrowded

for greater housing availability in Bedford–Stuyvesant. migrants from the American South brought the neighborhood's black population to around 30,000, making it the second largest

community in the city at the time. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the

Brooklyn Navy Yard The Brooklyn Navy Yard (originally known as the New York Navy Yard) is a shipyard and industrial complex located in northwest Brooklyn in New York City, New York. The Navy Yard is located on the East River in Wallabout Bay, a semicircular bend ...

attracted many blacks to the neighborhood as an opportunity for employment, while the relatively prosperous war economy enabled many of the resident Jews and Italians to move to Queens and Long Island. By 1950, the number of blacks in Bedford–Stuyvesant had risen to 155,000, comprising about 55 percent of the population of Bedford–Stuyvesant. In the 1950s,

real estate agents A real estate agent or real estate broker is a person who represents sellers or buyers of real estate or real property. While a broker may work independently, an agent usually works under a licensed broker to represent clients. Brokers and agen ...

and

speculators In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.) Many s ...

employed blockbusting to turn a profit. As a result, formerly middle class white homes were being turned over to poorer black families. By 1960, eighty-five percent of the population was black.

African-Americans and the COVID-19 pandemic

Mortuary Trucks in New York City by Archer West

The

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

has disproportionally affected African Americans, or Black Americans living inside the United States. Black Americans are more likely to contract COVID-19, more likely to be hospitalized, and more likely to die from COVID-19 than White, non-Hispanic Americans. Many Black Americans work jobs without health insurance coverage, leading to an inability to seek proper medical care when faced with a severe COVID-19 case. Furthermore, Black Americans were overrepresented in jobs labeled essential when governments began reacting to the pandemic, such as grocery store workers, transit workers, and civil jobs. This meant Black Americans continued to work jobs that posed higher risk to exposure to COVID-19. The unique combination of stressors faced by Black people in America under the COVID-19 Pandemic has put many Black social systems and crisis-meeting resources under stress. The

Black Church The black church (sometimes termed Black Christianity or African American Christianity) is the faith and body of Christian congregations and denominations in the United States that minister predominantly to African Americans, as well as their ...

has historically been a place of community support, recognition, and social connections for African-American communities, a community that provides access to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs that many Black Americans face systematic difficulty in attaining. The policy of

Social Distancing In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, (NB. Regula Venske is president of the PEN Centre Germany.) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious dis ...

as recommended for the sake of public health in COVID-19 has contributed to the hardships faced by all humans, but has affected Black Americans and their social systems especially. Black Americans that live within the poor and underserviced neighborhoods rely on complex social and religious organizations, including the Black Church, to meet their physical and emotional needs. Social Distancing has led to an increased difficulty in maintaining these essential social relationships, resulting in increased

social isolation Social isolation is a state of complete or near-complete lack of contact between an individual and society. It differs from loneliness, which reflects temporary and involuntary lack of contact with other humans in the world. Social isolation ...

throughout Black communities. Within New York City, these issues are present or intensified. The COVID-19 Pandemic has revealed the long-standing systemic racism present throughout New York City's healthcare system, especially in terms of access to critical healthcare resources in underserviced, and often predominantly black communities. This inability to properly treat affected Black residents of certain New York City zip-codes is especially harsh when contrasted by the abundance of empty hospital beds and available resources of the hospitals in more affluent and well off communities. The racial inequality between zip codes is further highlighted when examining COVID-19 testing rates, where zip-codes of predominantly Black New Yorkers are at a significantly higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19. Of the ten zip codes in New York City with highest COVID-19 death rates, eight of them are Black or Hispanic.

Notable Black New Yorkers

18th and 19th-centuries

20th and 21st-centuries

James Baldwin

Accomplishments

* Adam Clayton Powell Jr. - first person of African-American descent to be elected from New York to Congress; previously, first person of African-American descent to be elected to New York City Council *

Alonzo Smythe Yerby Alonzo Yerby (1921–1994) was an American physician and academic who served as the Associate Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. He previously served as New York City Hospitals Commissioner, as a department head and professor a ...

- first black chairman of a department at the public health school, and the first black to be New York City Hospitals Commissioner, heading the city's hospitals department, namesake of the Harvard Chan Yerby Fellowship Program at the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first ...

. * Arthur Mitchell - First African-American male dancer in a major ballet company: (

New York City Ballet New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company' ...

); also first African-American principal dancer of a major ballet company (NYCB), 1956 * Brigette A. Bryant - first woman of African-American descent to serve as Vice Chancellor of the City University of New York *

David Dinkins David Norman Dinkins (July 10, 1927 – November 23, 2020) was an American politician, lawyer, and author who served as the 106th mayor of New York City from 1990 to 1993. He was the first African American to hold the office. Before enteri ...

- first African-American mayor of New York City (1990) * Dr. James McCune Smith - First formally trained African-American Medical Doctor * Letitia James - first woman of African-American descent to be elected to citywide office (

New York City Public Advocate The office of New York City Public Advocate (President of the City Council) is a citywide elected position in New York City, which is first in line to succeed the mayor. The office serves as a direct link between the electorate and city government ...

) * Mary Pinkett, first woman of African-American descent to be elected to New York City Council * Robert O. Lowery - First African-American fire commissioner of the New York City Fire Department and of any major U.S. City's fire department * Samuel J. Battle - First African-American police officer in the New York Police Department following consolidation of the boroughs (1911). Also the NYPD's first African-American sergeant (1926), lieutenant (1935), and parole commissioner (1941). *

Shirley Chisholm Shirley Anita Chisholm ( ; ; November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York's 12th congressional distr ...

- first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress and first black candidate, male or female, for a major party's nomination for President of the United States. * Todd Duncan - first African-American member of the

New York City Opera The New York City Opera (NYCO) is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City. The company has been active from 1943 through 2013 (when it filed for bankruptcy), and again since 2016 when it was revived. The opera company, du ...

* Wesley Augustus Williams - first African-American officer in the New York Fire Department * William Grant Still's ''Troubled Island'' as performed by the New York City Opera - first black-composed opera to be performed by a major U.S. company * Willie Overton - First African-American police officer in present-day New York City (1891)

References

{{West Indian Americans

External links

History of Slavery in New YorkRecovering New York’s Entangled Dutch, Native American, And African Histories: An Interview With Jennifer ToschSlaves in New AmsterdamNew York City's Slave Market
*https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/henken08/articles/t/h/e/The_History_of_Black_New_York_864f.html *https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/EncyNYC/Blacks_for_draft_riots.html