Little Africa was an African American neighborhood 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 particularly the

South Village The South Village is a largely residential area that is part of the larger Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, New York City, directly below Washington Square Park. Known for its immigrant heritage and bohemian history, the architecture of the ...

, from the mid-19th century until about the turn of the 20th century. The dominant African American center in Manhattan of its period, as part of a general northward

march uptown The uptown trend of Manhattan, allegorized as an inexorable parade of destiny on its "march uptown", refers to the northward socioeconomic real estate trend toward Uptown, a long-standing historical pattern from the 17th to the 20th centuries. B ...

it was preceded by the Five Points (also known as "Little Africa" or Stagg Town), and succeeded by the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill and eventually

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 (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

. Its main thoroughfare was Thompson Street, and also the complex of Minetta Lane/Street/Place, and much of its historic area lies with the current Sullivan-Thompson Historic District. Little Africa initially developed as a reaction to the violence of the 1834 anti-abolition riots in the Five Points. It formed a demographic contrast to the smaller, more rural and middle-class Seneca Village located farther north until its razing in 1857. The urban neighborhood suffered great violence itself during the 1863

draft riots The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of white working-cl ...

, although in the aftermath of the Civil War its African American population grew with the migration of Southern freedmen. Two centuries before the urban neighborhood, under Dutch colonial rule there was a complex of African-owned farms in approximately the same area north of New Amsterdam.

References

{{reflist African-American history in New York City Former New York City neighborhoods Greenwich Village