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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's take a trip to Brooklyn of yesteryear. In the years after the American Revolution, Brooklyn was a slave hoping capital, but there was a small, thriving Black community that established schools and churches, advocated for voting rights, and increased its own financial power. Free Black Brooklyn underwent rapid change and growth while living under a veil of white supremacy and violence.

Now, a new book traces the history of free Black Brooklyn over an 80-year period, from the 1790s to the 1870s, through four families; the Crogers, the Hodges, the Wilsons, and the Gloucesters. The book is called Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough. With me now is author Prithi Kakama-- Let me get this right. Hold on. Kanakamendala?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Kanakamedala.

Alison Stewart: One more time. Say it for me.

Prithi Kanakamedala: Kanakamedala.

Alison Stewart: Kanakamedala. Prithi Kanakamedala. She's the author of the book. She's a professor of history at Bronx Community College. Thank you so much for joining us.

Prithi Kanakamedala: Thank you, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Meanwhile, Prithi has a book talk tomorrow at the Center for Brooklyn History beginning at 6:30 PM. I wanted to say that out loud. What was the original village of Brooklyn? How much land did it encompass?

Prithi Kanakamedala: The original village was about the area we think of today when we think of Dumbo. It was that very Northwest tip that was the village within the town of Brooklyn. It's a village of Brooklyn within the town of Brooklyn, and it's only about a square mile.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my gosh.

Prithi Kanakamedala: Yes, but was just as culturally diverse then as it is perhaps today in that you had people of Dutch descent, English descent, and also people of African descent, all trying to figure out how to live alongside each other. Small, but certainly still packed.

Alison Stewart: Yes. How prominent was the free Black population at this time?

Prithi Kanakamedala: The free Black community was small, and it was small in comparison to Manhattan, so when I say the small community-- but it was mighty in its own right. It was growing slowly, and part of the reason was because Brooklyn was largely agricultural at this time. It was people of African descent who were enslaved, who were doing most of the labor. That free Black community is smaller to begin with, for many reasons, but it grows exponentially over time, and at the heart of it is that Black radical tradition in thinking about self-determination and how this community will grow their own institutions.

Alison Stewart: How did Brooklyn go from being a slave capital to having a free population?

Prithi Kanakamedala: That's the law. New York State in 1799 will pass the first Gradual Emancipation Act, but it's not in any way immediate. By that, I mean it will take 28 long years for slavery to end in New York State. The reason Brooklyn deserves to have its own story is because, in Brooklyn, it will do something slightly different. Slavery will actually strengthen in numbers at the end of the American Revolution, where it starts to wane in, say, Manhattan or other parts of New York State.

That original free Black community came about through, historians think, a variety of methods. One might be that they've come over from Manhattan and that they were free. It could be that their elders or ancestors fought in the American Revolution as Black loyalists and gained their freedom, and so their children would have been free. There were other Northern states in which slavery had ceased to exist. It could be folks coming in from Pennsylvania or Massachusetts, but certainly, this was a free Black community.

Alison Stewart: You look at these four different families. Let's talk about the Crogers. Peter and Benjamin are brothers. Their spouses are Elenor and Elizabeth. How do the Crogers make their money?

Prithi Kanakamedala: The Crogers are listed in the census records as a very necessary job in the village of Brooklyn. They're listed as white washers. Back in the day, people would use a lime compound to basically wash their walls rather than painting it constantly. That's how you would get your buildings clean from all the environmental pollution. That's their official jobs in terms of the census. I think the book invites us all to think about what our lives look like more whole.

That's their job in the census, but actually, within the village of Brooklyn, they were building a mutual aid society, building the first Black church in Brooklyn, which, of course, still exists today. It's called Bridge Street AWME, still at the center of faith and politics in that borough, and building a school, so doing so much more, I think, as we all do as New Yorkers. We have our day job, but then, for those who are committed to their communities, we do so much more in terms of grassroots building.

Alison Stewart: We know so much more about Peter and Benjamin than we do about their wives. How common is the disparity between Black men and Black women in historical archives?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Huge. [chuckles] Always. Early 19th-century archives are so difficult to recover the lives of ordinary Black women, and I think it's very intentional that I raise that constantly in the book. It doesn't mean as historians or as New Yorkers that we need to honor or celebrate them any less, I think it just means that we need to think in more creative ways about the ways in which Black women existed in Brooklyn. It's a huge year for us in terms of democracy here in the United States, and we're constantly talking about Black women saving the election.

That has a huge history in this country and in this city. Black women were always at the center of organizing. Peter Croger, officially in the newspaper, the school opens at his home. Well, he shares that home with his wife, Elenor Croger, so in my mind, who was inviting all these folks into the home? Who was making them comfortable? Who was creating space? That would have been Elenor Croger. I think just because the archives are silent about their contributions, it doesn't mean we have to be in terms of historians and the books that we write.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to ask back up a little bit because the Crogers were free Blacks in Brooklyn when slavery was still legal in New York, and it was called a gradual emancipation. What does a gradual emancipation look like? What is that law of gradual emancipation?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Yes, it's a mouthful, and it was intentionally designed to protect or help slaveholders rather than enslaved people. That Gradual Emancipation Act, passed in 1799, is complicated by intention. It states that anybody born to an enslaved mother after July 4th, 1799 will be free at the age of 28 if male and 25 if female. That, of course, ensures you get the best working years out of that person who is enslaved. Just a lot going on.

I think the message or the hope of that community is that free Black community isn't waiting for that emancipation moment to happen in July 4th, 1827, when slavery will eventually end. They're already organizing and mobilizing and thinking of ways in which this community needs institutions and it needs something in order to ensure political and legal equality, which, of course, nobody was talking about during the gradual emancipation period.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Prithi Kanakamedala. We're talking about her new book, Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough. By the way, Prithi has a book talk tomorrow at the Center for Brooklyn History, beginning at 6:30 PM. You mentioned they built mutual aid societies, schools, churches, but they did so independently of Northern white abolitionist philanthropy. Why is that an important distinction?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Absolutely. As historians, when we teach the history of Manhattan, or even Boston, which were huge hotbeds of abolitionism, some of those roots come from white philanthropy. I think what makes Brooklyn's story so distinct, so unique, is that it comes from the Black community for its bias, and I think the roots of that are still felt in Brooklyn today. As a young person certainly growing up in the '90s back in Liverpool, England, all we would hear about is that Black Arts Renaissance period coming out of Fort Greene. All of that self-determination, I think, has deep roots in Brooklyn from the early 19th century of we'll just create and make it for ourselves.

Alison Stewart: We're going to talk about another part of Brooklyn. Williamsburg. It's not yet a part of Brooklyn yet, but it was thought to be rural, a small town, the home to the second free Black community in Kings County. That's where the Hodges family was from?

Prithi Kanakamedala: They're not from there. They moved there.

Alison Stewart: They moved there from Virginia. That's right.

Prithi Kanakamedala: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What was it about living in a smaller village that made it easier for free Blacks?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Thank God Willis Hodges left his autobiography, and he tells us himself. He says the racism is more easier to bear in smaller villages. The Hodges, like so many people who will eventually become New Yorkers, move here to fulfill their own ambitions and dreams. They move to Williamsburg because they have lived in Manhattan, and the place is now a city unto itself. They find the racism too intense, and so they move to Williamsburg to think about how they can really grow that village in an anti-slavery vision.

They do a lot of the same things that the Crogers are doing 20 years earlier, which is they'll create a school, they'll establish a Black church, and then they'll start to grow their own cell phone business, small businesses, so thinking about the ways in which they can grapple the city before it becomes a city and really shape the streets and neighborhoods.

Alison Stewart: The Hodges were part of an effort to take on big political issues in New York, the owning of land to get the right to vote. You write real estate, voting, citizenship, that order. How easy was it for Black people to own land? Free Black people?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Oh, it was impossible. I never want to stay as I do. I talk about it in the book that somehow if you can just buy property, you can vote, and then you could claim you were a citizen. We all know as New Yorkers today, getting on that property ladder, owning property is the most impossible thing in this city. You had to own, according to the New York State Constitution, which makes an amendment in 1821, $250 worth of property in order to vote. That was about an annual salary for the average working Black man.

If you think about your annual salary and how much you're actually able to save, the idea of saving a full year's worth just to be able to buy enough property and then tell the state you are eligible to vote is huge. That's a huge obstacle. The reason for the formula of citizenship is it is pre-1870, so there is no 14th and 15th Amendment around, if I'm born on US soil, I am an American citizen, and if I am an American citizen, I therefore have the right to vote. Those amendments don't exist yet. Again, it is free Black people who are pioneering these kinds of arguments around what citizenship looks like in the United States.

Alison Stewart: The other family you mentioned is the Wilsons, Mary Ann Wilson and her husband, William J Wilson. They were both active community members. Mary even owned her own business on Atlantic Avenue. What was the business?

Prithi Kanakamedala: It was a crockery store.

Alison Stewart: How else did they get involved in local business? The Wilsons?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Actually, the Wilsons are so close to my heart just because they were educators as well. Again, they're not from Brooklyn, but they will move to Brooklyn and become long-term Brooklynites, really shaping the neighborhood. The Wilsons arrive here at a time when Brooklyn is really starting to transform. It's on its way to becoming the third-largest city in the United States. They understand really early on something about racial capitalism and having Black-owned businesses in this city, and so they're constantly--

William's writing in various newspapers, one owned by Frederick Douglass, saying, "We need to open businesses on that thing called Fulton that seems to be expanding, and the other street called Atlantic before someone else takes it all over." Huge, huge, huge advocates of Black-owned businesses, and again, thinking about Brooklyn today. I love that website, Black-Owned Brooklyn, that celebrates what it means in the entrepreneurship. Huge history in Brooklyn.

Alison Stewart: A dark part of American history is the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, where any American found assisting a "fugitive" or a runaway slave could be fined, imprisoned, and any Black person suspected of being a runaway slave could be sent back. When you think about the impact of the Fugitive Slave Act on Brooklyn's free Black population, how did it compare to other regions in the North?

Prithi Kanakamedala: The first person who's going to be arrested after the federal government passes that Fugitive Slave Act is a Brooklynite. It's a person from Williamsburg. His name is James Hamlet. I would say the impact of it is felt, and it's seen here in New York City. He is arrested in Manhattan, but he is absolutely from Brooklyn. Again, it will be Brooklynites and New Yorkers figuring out how to fundraise and get money so that they can get him out of Baltimore.

I think a lesser-known part of that story is his wife is right there at the center of it, fundraising as well, so thinking of the ways in which I think these sort of laws have terrorized and traumatized New Yorkers, but at the same time, the ways in which New Yorkers have always learned to organize around them.

Alison Stewart: Let's hop to the other side, the Underground Railroad. Where were the most used properties in Brooklyn?

Prithi Kanakamedala: The most used properties-- It's hard, Alison, because so much of this wasn't documented. There is William still in Philadelphia. He actively documents everything. We do know that in New York, specifically in Brooklyn, there was a young girl called Anna Maria Weems who will stay in Brooklyn Heights because she stays at Lewis Tappan's home, who is a white abolitionist. There's also various places dotted around.

I think in the book, I invite readers to think about the Underground Railroad, those spaces not necessarily being about attics and tunnels. I think his popular conception has been around them. If you think about it, these are ordinary American residents coming from the South, freedom seekers, who want to make a life for themselves. The last thing they want to do is hide. What they can do in Brooklyn is come here and stay with somebody and start to figure out, "Well, how do I get a job? How do I have a piece of that American dream? How do I own a home?"

You see lots of freedom seekers coming here, and certainly to Brooklyn in which they're starting businesses. The book talks about Isaac Hunter, who comes from North Carolina and is hiding [unintelligible 00:15:52]. He's a shoe person. He's a shoe repair person in Downtown Brooklyn, so thinking about, again, not necessarily hiding, but actually Brooklyn being a destination.

Alison Stewart: I have to imagine the churches were really important at this point.

Prithi Kanakamedala: Yes, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Tell me more.

Prithi Kanakamedala: There are so many Black churches that still exist today; Bridge Street, Shiloh, Concord. Incredible, incredible fundraising happening in those churches, thinking about how to buy somebody out of their enslavement, and again, acting as a center of politics and faith in which they have a home and a community once they've moved here. Yes, Black churches, individuals, businesses, everybody contributing to this financial arrangement around the Underground Railroad.

Alison Stewart: Around the 1860s were a time of increased violence in New York, the Draft Riots of 1863 in Manhattan led by mobs of Irish immigrants, but the violence also came to Brooklyn's Black community in 1862. What happened on August 4th of that year? Where did the violence take place?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Like all New York summers, it was probably oppressively hot, and everybody is angry and fed up with it all, but there's also the Civil War happening in the background, and that is the key backdrop. The tobacco factory, which is today that bit of Brooklyn that's cut off by the BQE, [unintelligible 00:17:22], had a number of free Black people that worked there; men, women, and children. In that summer, Irish community, Irish mobs would go through.

Basically, it's the first recorded act of white terrorism in that part of Brooklyn, and it devastates the community. Most of those workers are so traumatized they don't want to return to work. I say that because the way in which we have talked about the Draft Riots is all the domestic terrorism happened on Manhattan streets in 1863 and that free Black community will run for their lives to Brooklyn.

I just wanted to nuance that slightly because, yes, absolutely, it was incredibly traumatic, the summer of 1863, but I would never want Brooklyn to feel like it was some sort of bastion of liberty and freedom. It had its own problems and racist violence. That was the reason for bringing in 1862 and showing actually, Brooklyn was as complex as Manhattan.

Alison Stewart: I did want to get to the Gloucester family before we wrap up, led by Elizabeth Gloucester. She's buried in Green-Wood Cemetery today, to give you a hint that she amassed a certain amount of wealth. How did she make it in Brooklyn?

Prithi Kanakamedala: She made it like really smart New Yorkers through real estate. She bought lots and lots of real estate. The brilliant Brent Staples has also written about Elizabeth Gloucester. She will die one of the richest women in the United States when she dies in the late 19th century. I hope the book invites people to think, for every Elizabeth Gloucester, there were dozens of ordinary Black women also sustaining the economy in much more informal ways.

Elizabeth Gloucester, hugely important, and I hope I've contoured her life by thinking about, she was amazing in that she was super rich and she owned lots of real estate, but also, she was an ordinary human being who suffered all of the same kind of losses that we do as human beings. At one point, she's giving money to John Brown to go raid Harpers Ferry. Badass. She's like, "Go start the revolution." It's the same year that her two-year-old Alfred will pass away, and so thinking about pediatric outcomes for Black children and certainly also for Black women.

Alison Stewart: In researching this book, where in the cities do most of the research for researching free Black Brooklynites exist? Where does it exist?

Prithi Kanakamedala: All over the place, but the majority, in terms of archives, still exist at Center for Brooklyn History, which is part of Brooklyn Public Library, and are freely available to see for anybody who wants to. That site was previously Brooklyn Historical Society, which existed for almost 100 years and no longer does.

Alison Stewart: If someone were walking around Brooklyn today, what clues remain of the free Black Brooklynites?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Do you know, it's an odd one, because I'm not sure there is much in terms of landscape. The Black churches still exist, absolutely. They just don't exist in the original locations.

As an educator who takes my students on walking tours all the time, I think one of the greatest gifts is to be a New Yorker who is constantly reminded that we are walking on the achievements and the contributions of New Yorkers past constantly so that even if that specific building is not there, and there's a few examples that are in the book, but even if it's not, to imagine what would these New Yorkers or Brooklynites have heard, what would they have smelt, what would they have seen in terms of the street, and to really bring the past to life in that way.

Alison Stewart: What's one thing that you remember from your research that you think, "Yes, I remember this. I tell people about this"? In our last minute.

Prithi Kanakamedala: There was a Black woman who was fundraising for her family and it broke open the idea that a very famous preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, was raising all the money by himself. There was [unintelligible 00:21:29] with her collections book and her bank statements showing that she was always at the center of her own fundraising.

Alison Stewart: Prithi Kanakamedala?

Prithi Kanakamedala: Yes. Perfect. Thank you. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Yes. All right.

Prithi Kanakamedala: She's a professor of history at Bronx Community College in the city of New York. Her book is Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough. Prithi has a book talk tomorrow at the Center for Brooklyn History beginning at 6:30 PM. Thank you so much for joining us to share the story with us.

Prithi Kanakamedala: Oh, thank you.

Alison Stewart: Coming up on tomorrow's show, Saoirse Ronan, a new film called The Outrun. She stars as Rona, a young woman struggling with alcoholism. In her attempt to get sober, she returns to her home, remote islands off the coast of Scotland. It opens on Friday, and she will join us to discuss. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you, and I will meet you back here next time if I don't see you tonight at the library.

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