Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We've got a very special presentation for you, especially if you're a fan of the hit show, The Gilded Age. Last month, WNYC partnered with the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side to take a deep look at some of the real New York City history in which The Gilded Age is set.

We wanted to look in particular at a character named Peggy Scott, an aspiring writer educated at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, who came to New York City to pursue her ambitions. Since so much of the public's consciousness about The Gilded Age is about wealthy white families, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, we wanted to explore what the era of New York City would have been like for someone like Peggy.

We gathered a live audience in the green space for this event with the Tenement Museum's Marquise Taylor. We were also joined by historian Leslie Harris and actor Denée Benton, who plays Peggy Scott in The Gilded Age. Without further ado, here's Tenement Museum president Annie Polland to introduce the event.

Annie Polland: This program tonight is called Peggy Scott's New York, and it's an homage to the amazing character on HBO's hit The Gilded Age. Peggy Scott's character, played by the remarkable Denée Benton, is an interruption in the way that we typically think about The Gilded Age. So often when we think about The Gilded Age, we think about a character like Christine Baranski's Agnes Van Rhijn or Bertha. You guys all know her name. Bertha--

Audience: Bertha Russell.

Annie Polland: Bertha Russell. Thank you. See, I know this audience. Played by the amazing Carrie Coon. We think about the parvenu and the aristocrat, but we don't usually think about The Gilded Age from the perspective of a journalist from the elite Black population of New York City. This Peggy Scott character has interrupted our understanding of The Gilded Age and in doing so, broadened and enlivened, expanded our idea of New York City. Tonight, we want to build on that. We want to keep interrupting, and we want to keep expanding our view of New York City because we want to get a sense of what Peggy Scott would think of the tenement districts.

Again with The Gilded Age, we think a lot about the mansions. We think a lot about the brownstones. Tonight, we want to think about it also in relation to the tenements. In other words, what would have been the ties that would have bound a Black woman like Peggy Scott to the tenement dwellers, the working class of this very neighborhood? Because this Neighborhood that we're in right now, we think of it as Soho, or we think of it as Lower Village, South Village, but it used to be known as the 8th Ward in the 19th century. The 8th Ward was home to one of the largest free Black populations in the country, and certainly in the city.

Most of the free Black people that lived in this neighborhood lived in tenements. At the Tenement Museum, we tell the story of one of those families, Joseph and Rachel Moore, who lived at 17 Laurens, now West Broadway. We tell that story in our tenement. You might be wondering, why is that story told at the Tenement Museum? Why isn't it told here in this neighborhood in their tenement? Their tenement was torn down. It was part of the expansion of the city, and their tenement was torn down, and they had to relocate.

So many Black people that lived in this neighborhood, victim to the growth of the city. When we went back to the area where Joseph and Rachel lived, as we were researching their story, we found that there was the Soho Grand Hotel there. I guess The Gilded Age has come back to town. We were so enamored of the story that we thought we had to tell this at the Tenement Museum. Now, what we're going to do tonight is we're going to bring the story of Peggy to life, and to even more life, and expand our story to try to imagine what it would have been like for Peggy to come in contact with the tenement district.

We're going to learn much more about Peggy's backstory tonight. We're going to be joined, too, not just by Denée Benton, the actress who plays Peggy, but also Leslie Harris, the extraordinary historian who wrote a book called In the Shadow of Slavery that documents the history of Black New York. She'll be here tonight, as well as her graduate student, Marquise Taylor. Is Caprice Taylor here tonight? Oh, my goodness. So wonderful to meet you. Caprice Taylor is the mother of Marquise Taylor.

Marquise has made the life of the Tenement Museum so much better by doing amazing research on the Joseph and Rachel Moore story and continuing to work with us to keep expanding that story. He'll be here tonight to share the research he's done in the Black newspapers. Of course, we also have with us tonight the amazing Alison Stewart, the host of WNYC's morning program, All Of It. We're so excited that she's here to help us connect all the dots.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for joining us here in the green space. Hello to everybody in the audience. Hello to people at home. People in the audience, can you turn off your cell phones? You don't have to put them away. You can take pictures. Put us on Instagram, wherever you want to put them. Hashtag us, and we'll rehash tag them as well. People at home, you can leave your phones on. I do want to tell you that we are going to go through the program. We'll also have time for questions at the end. Get ready to ask your questions, because we like questions and people, what are we going to ask? Questions.

Let's talk about Peggy Scott. Denée Betton has played Peggy since season one on The Gilded Age. Broadway lovers, some of you in the house, know her as Eliza in Hamilton or as Natasha in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, for which she was nominated for a Tony. I saw it twice. Unfortunately, The Gilded Age hasn't had her sing yet. Maybe you can join my personal hashtag #letpeggysing. Might happen. Please welcome Denée Benton.

[applause]

Denée Benton: Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming.

Alison Stewart: We're so happy to have you.

Denée Benton: Yes, happy to be here.

Alison Stewart: The Gilded Age was co-founded by Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield. When they first presented Peggy to you, what was she presented like in the script?

Denée Benton: When I auditioned in 2019, which is crazy to think how long ago that was, Sonja wasn't involved yet. It was a really big part of the push of me, and Dr. Erica Dunbar, incredible cohort, and Sally Richardson Whitfield to ask them to expand the writer's room to include a Black woman who could be more adept in really digging into the textures of our story. Before that, Julian had read this book called Black Gotham, which, Carla Peterson, I believe is her name, was tracking the history of her own family in the 1880s in Black Brooklyn.

She was connected to Philip White, who was a Black pharmacist who owned-- That's where Julian got the inspiration for this story, but at the time, Peggy was falling into some stereotypes around what we usually see of Black women on television at that time. Written to be a domestic worker, which no shame in that work. It's work my grandmothers did. There's so much honor in it, and we were like, "Well, she comes from wealth. Is there room for her to maybe use some of her skills as an educated woman? Can she be a secretary? Can she be working for a newspaper? We got to really expand from what was originally on the page.

Alison Stewart: I was watching earlier the first season, and I realized Peggy's a bit of a mystery in the first season. Did you have a sense of what her arc would be over the three seasons or did you not know?

Denée Benton: No, we've really gone one season at a time. At the beginning of Season 1, I knew what her secret would be, about her history and her situation with her family, but to be honest, it's because of all of you that we've kept getting more seasons. Each season, we've thought maybe it was our last. Every year, we've gotten to come back with a fresh, exciting start.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned Erica Armstrong Dunbar. She's a great historian and professor, and she co-produced the show. Largely, she is responsible for accuracy, especially around Black characters. What questions did you have for her about how Peggy would move through the world?

Denée Benton: I think there are a lot of moments where we get to see the dignity that she moves with, but I think that Dr. Dunbar always does a really good job at reminding us just how life and death, every moment really was, like to offend a white person in that time and this time, unfortunately, with where we are now, but at that time, it really was every moment that you chose to speak up for yourself or you chose to challenge anything. The spaces Peggy's moving through and the code switching she does, she always is walking this very specific tightrope, and that was really helpful.

The history of Black journalism at that time is really exciting. It was such a centering point for every region around the country. They would host read-ins where they would teach different members of the community who had just been emancipated or were a generation away how to read. There was obviously still classism, but there was a sense of responsibility for one another, and also still some of the same issues we face today around that type of separation. She is such a rich resource and was a big part-- I don't know if I'm skipping ahead to any of your questions.

Alison Stewart: It's good.

Denée Benton: Her vision for T. Thomas Fortune was a really big gift to our show because, originally, Peggy was going to write under a white pen name for a white newspaper. Dr. Dunbar was like, "There was a Black newspaper that existed. What if we just have her write for The Globe?" Those moments were just priceless.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to ask you about a relationship early in the season between Marian Brook and Peggy. Marian's played by Louisa Jacobson, the niece of the wealthy widows, who you live with. It's interesting because, how did you discuss about whether they would have a friendship or could they actually have a friendship?

Denée Benton: Originally, the infamous shoe scene that everyone talks about, Marian and the shoes--

Alison Stewart: Do you know what this is about? The Marian and the shoes? Marian shows up at her house in Brooklyn with a bag of shoes to give the family, "Oh, you might need shoes." She was wrong.

Denée Benton: She was wrong. It's actually the scene that I still get stopped on the street about.

Alison Stewart: Do you really?

Denée Benton: People are obsessed with it. "Then she brought those shoes." [laughter] They love it. Originally, it was written for Peggy to be really understanding, and Marian to apologize and Peggy to forgive her really quickly. Louisa and I really advocated. We were like, "We're only going to see a true friendship build between them if we allow this rupture to happen and allow this trust to be broken and allow Peggy to really put Louisa's character in her place, Marian in her place. How Marian responds to that as a white woman in that time will tell Peggy everything she needs to know about whether or not they can actually be friends or if this is just a nice acquaintance."

Us really allowing that moment to be heated and how dangerous it was for Peggy to raise her voice at her was something we really advocated for. It's exciting because I think the way Marian responds in time, we, as an audience, believe that they could become friends as these two-- They get to be these secret keepers for each other because all of their relationship really exists in the comfort of that home. They get to build a true bond in time, but we really wanted to fight for that moment to be earned.

Alison Stewart: I'd like to bring on our historians, if that's okay with you.

Denée Benton: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Leslie Harris is a renowned scholar and history professor at Northwestern University, advisor to the Tennant Museum. Come on up, and Marquise Taylor. Thank you for being with us.

Leslie Harris: Thanks for having us. This is exciting.

Alison Stewart: It's nice to see you again.

Leslie Harris: Good to see you.

Alison Stewart: I wanted you to comment on the area of Brooklyn that the Scotts would have lived in. Where do you think they would have lived? [crosstalk]

Leslie Harris: I think Weeksville. That's exactly what came to mind as well. Weeksville was an independent Black community, Black homeowners, businesses, and that fits very well. The other thing about Brooklyn at this time and Blacks in New York at this time, we think a lot about residential segregation, but Black people didn't live in isolated pockets. Weeksville is unique in that way. It's very likely, as you said, that they lived among other people, immigrants, white people in Brooklyn Heights or in other places in Brooklyn. It was actually, in a funny way, more integrated because Black people, when they lived in these places, the city did not contain them in that way.

The other thing I want to say, though, about why there's so many Black people in Brooklyn in this time and why they may have been there is that they were pushed out of Manhattan by the 1863 Draft Riots. There's a big drop in the population after the Draft Riots, and there are people who say, "I crossed the river into Brooklyn, and I swore I'd never go back to Manhattan after that. Horrible days of writing." Before this time period, that's another big push into Brooklyn of African Americans.

Alison Stewart: We've been listening to a special event with the Tenement Museum called The Gilded Age: Peggy Scott's New York with actor Denée Benton, historian Leslie Harris, and the Tenement Museum's Marquise Taylor. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Welcome back to All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. This hour, we're bringing you my live event from the green space called The Gilded Age: Peggy Scott's New York. We partnered with the Tenement Museum to explore some New York City history through the lens of Peggy Scott, a character in the hit show The Gilded Age. Peggy is an educated Black woman who comes to New York City in pursuit of her ambition to be a writer.

Since most of the Gilded Age that you'll read about in high school textbooks is about the rich white guys like Rockefellers and Carnegies, we wanted to take a closer look at people like Peggy in The Gilded Age and how their stories helped shape New York City that we live in today. We were joined by Denée Benton, the actor who plays Peggy, as well as historian Leslie Harris and the Tenement Museum's Marquise Taylor. We were talking about the different parts of New York City and particularly how African American neighborhoods developed in New York around the turn of the century. I asked Marquise Taylor to describe the 8th Ward, a neighborhood in what's now called Soho, where our event took place.

Marquise Taylor: Between the 1850s and 1870s, for the Black people who remained on the island of Manhattan, nearly 45% of them were living in this western corridor of Manhattan. That is Lower Manhattan's 8th Ward, where we are currently standing today, but the neighborhood also just south of that, which we knew at this time as the Five Points, and a neighborhood directly north of the 8th Ward, which was known at the time as Little Africa, which we now know today as Greenwich Village.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Marquise Taylor: In these neighborhoods at this time, Black New Yorkers are routinely supporting Black businesses in different forms of institutions, such as churches. A lot of the storied Black churches that now are in Harlem actually had their origins in the 8th Ward, and if not in the 8th Ward, right in Little Africa. When we think about places like Abyssinian Baptist Church, or St. Philip's Episcopal Church, or Bethel AME Church, these institutions were actually born and created in the 8th Ward and the surrounding areas.

This neighborhood was also not solely a neighborhood that was occupied by Black people. Both Black and Irish people lived in this community together. About 15% of Irish immigrants lived in this neighborhood alongside Black New Yorkers.

Alison Stewart: That was actually in the show.

Denée Benton: Yes. [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: Wasn't it?

Denée Benton: Go ahead.

Alison Stewart: Yes, go ahead.

Denée Benton: Oh, yes. Season 2, when they're saving the public schools, one of the ways that they are able to do it is by integrating them with Irish students. It's what the city allowed for them to keep the schools going. Sarah Garnet's houses in the West Village.

Marquise Taylor: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Yes. What was life like, Marquis? Daily life like?

Marquise Taylor: Within the 8th Ward, a big part of what is ordering people's daily life is work and labor. The neighborhood is mostly working-class at this time. At the Tenement Museum, we tell the story of both Joseph and Rachel Moore, who are a Black couple who lived in New York City during this time period. Joseph, his labor was very emblematic of the work that Black men were performing at the time. He was both a waiter and he also was a coachman. Those are the two highest jobs that working-class Black men occupied at this time. His wife, Rachel, on the 1870 census, says that she was keeping home, which meant that she was ordering the home and the daily life there.

We also know from other records that she was also a washerwoman, which is a common profession for Black women at this time. People are working, but people are also coming together in community. A lot of that is happening, like I said, within the churches, but then also, too, within the school system as well, which is a Big part of life in the 8th Ward at this time.

Alison Stewart: Leslie, what issues did Black people face in the North, especially around this time, post-Reconstruction, during the redemption period?

Leslie Harris: It's mixed. Post-Reconstruction, really, post-Civil War, there's a strong movement, migration, from the south to places like New York to the North, where people think they can have more opportunity. There's some intraracial tension with the Black Knickerbockers, as they're called, who look at many of these people who are newly out of enslavement, and they have questions about whether or not they can survive and thrive in New York. Are they going to be good laborers?

Some of the assumptions that people have are-- Black people have them too-- that people have about Southern slaves, Northern Blacks have them too. Of course, we see that a little bit in this last season on The Gilded Age. There continues to be racism. There continues to be a shift of movements of Black people. As European immigration increases and as elites are trying to shape Lower Manhattan, this is where you begin to get the movement North of Black people out of the 8th Ward, first into what we would now call, I think, the meatpacking district for a while, and then finally up into Harlem.

Those kinds of pressures are definitely there. This is why these churches move. There's a moving photograph, I think it's of Abyssinian, that final photograph in front of their building right before they're leaving. That constant movement is definitely part of the experience. One more thing that happens, and this gets to someone like Peggy's family, is that some middle-class Black people do create these reform groups. Women, especially, are trying to protect what they see as young women coming from a rural area to an urban area.

They want them to be "safe," not to get into trouble in all the ways that they meant in the late 19th century, the things you were talking about, to instill morality. That becomes a big part of the Black community at this time.

Alison Stewart: Can I ask you, when you say the elites, what do you mean when you keep saying the elites?

Leslie Harris: Educated, perhaps multi-generational. Now, when I say elite, I'm not saying they're super wealthy, although there are some property owners, and we don't know enough about them. I was on a panel at the Schomburg several years ago, and in Little Africa, there are some, you'd be surprised, quite wealthy property owners. They own multiple apartment buildings, et cetera. Their names are not even to me, coming to my mind, which tells you how buried they are in the history.

It's mostly thinking about people who started newspapers, who started churches, who saw themselves as having an experience and an understanding of uplift, and that they really wanted this community, and they saw themselves as tied to whether or not this community could thrive and survive because racist ideas were always waiting there to crush them as well. Elite in the sense that they took on a very conscious leadership role. Now that's us looking back. We can ask whether or not working-class people always wanted that imposition or reform. That's not always the case.

Alison Stewart: What do you think, Marquise? Did they?

Marquise Taylor: You find oftentimes, to Dr. Harris point, that people are working in tandem to advance certain goals within the Black community at times, but then also that it can also be antagonistic as well. There's definitely this intra-racial class distinction that is taking shape at this time.

Alison Stewart: Denée, Peggy writes for the New York Globe. It was a Black paper at the time, as you mentioned. T. Thomas Fortune, a real person. How much did you get into studying the Black press?

Denée Benton: I've gotten to read a lot of articles from the Globe, which was exciting. I think what is cool about Peggy's character is that her father was emancipated, and T. Thomas Fortune was also born into slavery in Florida, and he learned about the press in Florida before migrating up North. I think between him, between reading some of Ida B. Wells writing at that time, it was really the Black press was the center of all movement work between that and the church, and how everyone really gathered any kind of information.

Silencing the press would have real ramifications. Keeping it going was how they got out the word about saving the three Black public schools in New York City, or in Brooklyn. It was more than, "This is what's happening today." It had such a huge, vital importance.

Alison Stewart: Marquise, tell me how the Black press helped you in your research.

Marquise Taylor: The Black press has been indispensable to the research that I've done. It's been super, super helpful for us to get a really good understanding of the aims and priorities of Black New Yorkers at this time. So much of what is out there and the dominant narrative about Black New Yorkers in particular neighborhoods, even like the 8th Ward, is covered by newspapers like the New York Times or the New York Herald, which talks about this neighborhood as being filled with crime, vice, and degeneracy.

The Black newspapers instead provide a perspective that is Black-centered and allows us to see the different businesses and institutions that were in the community at this time. At the Tenement Museum, we talk a lot about the different businesses that were there. There were women like Ann Magnan, who was a Black woman who worked at Colored School No. 2, and she taught students Spanish guitar and piano from her tenement apartment at 154 Sullivan Street.

We learned about women like Madam Johnson, who owned an ice cream parlor. That was something that was really important as a community institution because there were people like William Butler, who was a Black pastor at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, who talked about the embarrassment that he experienced by some days being able to go to an ice cream parlor, a white-owned ice cream parlor, and other days not being able to get serviced. The Black newspapers clearly talk about the institutions that are there, but then also they do the work of correcting what mainstream, non-Black newspapers are saying about Black people at this time.

Alison Stewart: Let's play a clip from The Gilded Age. In this scene, this sets up the Black woman's role in the community and teaching with journalism and a larger point that there are struggles to face in the north as there were in the South. This clip features Peggy, her mother, and activist Sarah Garnet.

Speaker 6: In short, we must work together. Please join us in showing your support by signing the petition to stop the board. Thank you. [applause]

Speaker 7: Look who I brought.

Speaker 6: Aren't you a sight for eyes.

Speaker 7: It's so nice to see you again.

Speaker 6: I'm sorry it's under these circumstances.

Speaker 8: I am as well.

Speaker 6: If you stay determined, they won't win.

Speaker 8: It's an uphill battle. Some of the teachers are already looking for new jobs.

Speaker 7: I have the seamstress shop, but that won't be enough to make a living if the school's closed.

Speaker 6: Organizing this meeting is a good first step.

Speaker 7: It's not enough.

Speaker 8: You know, Peggy has an important piece coming out in the Globe about Booker T. Washington's school in Tuskegee.

Speaker 6: Mother.

Speaker 8: I was just thinking this could be your next article. First, she wrote about education in the South, but we face our own challenges here in the North.

Speaker 7: That's exactly what we need. Public exposure. Some folks don't even know this is happening. We need parents, and colored businesses, and the press to fight this together. What do you say?

Speaker 6: It does sound like something my editor would be interested in, but I have to speak with him first.

Speaker 7: Whatever you can do, Peggy, we'd be most appreciative.

Alison Stewart: Leslie, will you tell us who Sarah Garnet is?

Leslie Harris: Sarah Garnet is this fascinating woman who lives through so much change. She's born in 1831. She lives through the Civil War. When we see her there, she-- Oh, I have to mention that her sister, Susan McKinney Stewart, is one of the first African American doctors, women doctors as well. When we see her at that point, she's a teacher, a principal of one of the Color School No. 5, I think. Anyway, she is also the wife of Henry Highland Garnet, who himself had escaped slavery with his family and is a very fiery anti-slavery activist in the pre-Civil War period.

In fact, he and Douglass part ways. This is a second marriage for them both at this period of time. She's a leader. She also is a suffragist, and she is definitely a force in that community. Many of the women like her who are teachers, who are principals, who are educators, it's a good job if you can keep the school open and funded. Definitely a leader and just influences a lot of children. It's a very important thread in the Black community here.

Alison Stewart: Marquise, this is a place where we should mention Fanny Tompkins. She was related by marriage to Sarah Garnet. Could you explain a little bit about Fanny Tompkins?

Marquise Taylor: Yes. Fanny Tompkins and Sarah Garnet are connected from Sarah Garnet's first marriage to Fanny Tompkins brother. That's how the two of them are connected. They're sister-in-laws, and Fanny Tompkins, like Sarah Tompkins Garnet, was also an educator.

She spent nearly four decades laboring in New York City as a teacher, first with the African Free School system, which is a set of private schools for Black students. Then she eventually makes her way into the colored school system, which is a public set of institutions. Most notably, she works at Colored School No. 2, which is situated right here in this neighborhood on what is now West Broadway. She served as principal of that school. I think in a lot of ways she's the embodiment of how education had profound implications for, of course, teaching students, but also teaching students about the real world.

In 1859, just after John Brown has his insurrection on Harper's Ferry, what she actually does is that, under her direction, she has her students perform an oratorio of Joseph, which is a story that basically exposes this idea that, how can Christians hold other Christians who are Black in slavery. She's having her students do this type of work, and they raise money, and they give the money to the widows of John Brown's insurrection.

Fanny Tompkins, just like her sister-in-law, Sarah Tompkins Garnet, is someone who inspired, I'm sure, hundreds, if not thousands, of students within New York City over the four decades in which she labored here. She also was acutely aware of the limitations of her students in the sense of she was a part of a concert of Black educators who petitioned the city to start a colored night school, a night school for Black students, realizing that some students' families needed their labor during the day and wanted to create different opportunities for them. In my eyes, Sarah Tompkins and Fanny Garnet, they're very influential women.

Alison Stewart: Being a teacher, was that the ultimate goal for a Black woman at that time?

Leslie Harris: I don't know if it was the ultimate. Again, we have Peggy, who wants to be a reporter, and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, who has her own magazine. It certainly is an acceptable role. Again, it's a way to serve, but then her sister is a doctor. We don't know what more dreams people would have had, but just were limited. To be even a woman, much less a Black woman doctor, was a huge achievement at that time.

Alison Stewart: Marquise, most of the women who lived in the 8th Ward, what did they do with their time? Were they mothers? Were they washerwomen? Were they teachers? What did they do with their days?

Marquise Taylor: Most of the women living in the 8th Ward, largely, were washerwomen. You also have some women who were teachers, like Sarah. Fanny Tompkins lived in the 8th Ward as well. The neighborhood was you had a mix of people who were doing, in some ways, professional work, but they were largely washerwomen. That's the second-most-occupied job for Black women at this time, being a washerwoman.

Alison Stewart: Denée, you have something you're going to read for us?

Denée Benton: Yes. It was on a stand right there. Great. [laughter]

Alison Stewart: Right now. This was actually printed in Frederick Douglass's paper. It was a series by James McCune Smith, and it was about working-class jobs. This was called The Washerwomen. Denée Benton.

[applause]

Denée Benton: The Washerwoman by James McCune Smith. Heads of the Colored People No. 3. Saturday night, dunk goes the smoothing iron, then a swift gliding sound as it passes smoothly over starched bosom and collar and wristbands of one of the many dozen shirts that hang round the room on horses, chairs, lines, and every other thing capable of being hanged on. Dunk, dunk goes the iron, sadly, wearily but steadily, as if the very heat of toil were throbbing in its penultimate beats.

Dunk, dunk, and that small and delicately formed hand and wrist swell up with knotted muscles and bursting veins, and the eye and brow chiseled out for stern, resolved in high thought, the one now dull and haggard and the other seamed and blistered with deep furrows and great drops of sweat wrung out by over toil. The apartment is small, hot as an oven, the air in it thick and misty with the steam rising from the ironing tables in the corners, under the tables, and in all out-of-the-way places, are stowed tubs of various sizes, some empty, some full of clothes soaking for next week's labor.

On the walls hang pictures of old Pappy Thompson, or Brother Paul, or Sammy Cornish. In one corner of the room, a newly varnished mahogany table is partly filled with books, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Watts’ Hymns, the Life of Christ, and a nice, greasy novel just in from the circulating library. Between the windows stands an old bureau, the big drawer of which is the larder containing sundry slices of cold meat, secondhand toast with butter on it, and the carcass of a turkey, the return cargo of a basket of clothes sent downtown that morning.

Even this food is untasted, for the Sabbath approaches and the old Zion and the vivid doses of hellfire ready to be showered from the pulpit on all who do labor, saving the parson who does pound the reading board in a style which, to the unsanctioned, looks like hard work on the day of rest. The Washerwoman.

[applause]

Alison Stewart: We've been listening to a special event with the Tenement Museum called The Gilded Age: Peggy Scott's New York, with actor Denée Benton, historian Leslie Harris, and the Tenement Museum's Marquise Taylor. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's get back into our special presentation. All this hour, we've been hearing parts of my conversation in the green space called The Gilded Age: Peggy Scott's New York. WNYC collaborated with the Tenement Museum to explore the real history of New York City around the turn of the century through the lens of Peggy Scott, a Black woman and an aspiring writer who came to New York to pursue her ambitions.

Peggy and those like her were part of the story of the Gilded Age of New York, even though we tend to think about the wealthy white men, commonly called robber barons, who became icons of the era. We were joined in the green space by Denée Benton, the actor who plays Peggy, as well as historian Leslie Harris and the Tenement Museum's Marquise Taylor. We wrapped up the event with a Q&A with our audience, and that's where we'll pick things up.

Speaker 9: This has been excellent. Thank you so much. My question is for Denée. As professional Black women, even in the 21st century, there's many more of us, but we face certain challenges. I was just wondering, drawing inspiration from Peggy, do you ever think, what would Peggy do as you go through your life? [laughter]

Denée Benton: Oh, my gosh, yes. That was my mantra for the first season, actually, because I feel like we were going through our Saturn returns at the same time, if anyone knows what that is, when you're emerging into adulthood, and your life falls apart. I was going through that personally while playing Peggy Season 1. I would be in my dressing room having some breakdown and be like, "If Peggy can do it, I can do it. We got this." What would Peggy do? Definitely stays with me.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's a Gilded Age t-shirt if I've ever seen one.

Denée Benton: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my God.

Denée Benton: Absolutely. Make the merch people. [laughter]

Alison Stewart: Who else had a question? There's a lady right here and a gentleman back there.

Speaker 10: Hi. How are you? First of all, it's such an honor to have you all three here. My question is for the three of you, and thank you so much. It's a delight to speak with you. It's a little bit different of the topic that we have talked in the last couple of minutes and hour. I'm really interested in exploring basically the history of immigration, especially in New York, because we know that is a huge topic, especially today. I would like to know if you can tell me a little bit more about immigration in the Gilded Age, and basically, what was the role that they play in The Gilded Age, and especially for Denis, what role did they play in shaping the city?

I'm so sorry. I'm going to say that again. I have three questions specifically. First, can you tell me about the immigration population in New York during the Gilded Age? The second is, what role did they play in shaping the city? The third is if there is any connection between this era and what is happening in migration policies today, and if there is going to be maybe an operation or maybe a little piece in the future in The Gilded Age in immigration policies, and basically what is happening. Thank you.

Leslie Harris: Want to take it?

Denée Benton: You want to start?

Leslie Harris: Go ahead [crosstalk].

Marquise Taylor: To talk about and at least thinking about within the Black community at this time during the Gilded Age, we're going to see a surge of Black immigrants coming to the United States, primarily from the Caribbean at this time. Between 1890 and about 1915, we're going to see the rates of Black immigrants increase. A lot of that has to do with the interests of the United States and a lot of these different Caribbean countries. We know that the United States has recently annexed Puerto Rico.

There's all this migration that's happening across the Caribbean, largely because I would say, during the Gilded Age, it's a time of mass wealth, but for people who are not wealthy, they're suffering from economic exploitation. You see that in places like New York, there is an increase of people who are coming from places like Puerto Rico, places like St. Kitts and St. Croix. They're immigrating all across the Caribbean, looking for work, and they ultimately make their way to New York.

This will even extend a little bit beyond the Gilded Age until the 1930s. So much so that in a place like Harlem, about a third of its Black community are people who are newly arrived to this country and a part of that immigration trajectory.

Leslie Harris: I would say more generally, of course, we are in another moment of desperately needing the labor of immigrants and now demonizing. That was definitely not only for these immigrants, but for, of course, the massive European immigration that comes in in the same time period. It's shameful. We need more people to be not just aware of the history, but to actually realize the contribution of all of these immigrants. That's just an ongoing struggle.

We have people who are the children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of immigrants who are now calling to stop immigration or who are themselves immigrants. I won't go any further, but I think you get my drift. [laughter] Pendulum. I will say, when I'm feeling hopeful, that more people than ever before recognize the enormous contributions that immigrants have made. Unfortunately, we had to get to the point we did, but the events in Minneapolis, people are really exercised.

I think that we just have to keep pushing back against all of this ridiculousness, lies. You can look at newspapers from this time, the same lies about Chinese immigrants, about Jewish people, about Germans, about Italians, you name it. "You're not like us. You're different. You drink too much, you Irish, you do this, that. Da da da da da." Constant. We're back there. Boring.

Yeah. [laughter] [applause]

Denée Benton: I'm even really interested in the language of immigrant and who we imagine when we say that word, because obviously, the Van Rhijns, everyone that they descend from, were white immigrants who came here and took land from native people, who we now call immigrants. It happened in every faction of this country of America, and then South America, Central America. Our language is really twisted. I'm also interested in the fact that during this time, Black people were still called Africans. It was the Free African School. It was the Free African Church.

We hadn't even been embraced into the concept of what it meant to be American yet. The regional fugitivity of coming from the South to coming to the North, and the relationship to the great migration that would happen later. I do feel like Black people within this nation have a relationship to being fugitives from different regions and having to run from terrorism. Obviously, you're not an immigrant when you were brought here by force, but there was a migration across the Atlantic. I think it's really interesting.

I wonder when Peggy or Peggy's parents, when they thought of themselves as Americans, when that consciousness shifted, or if you still thought of yourself as an African on this land. The language is all so screwed because this country is just hell-bent on getting free labor. It's the way our economy's popped up. Anytime one group of people escapes its grip, the Leviathan monster turns and tries to trap another group to try to get some more free labor. There's enough for all of us, but these, I don't know, 10 scary billionaires are just really hell-bent on not letting it change.

Alison Stewart: There was a gentleman in the back who had a question.

Speaker 11: My question is for whoever thinks they have the best answer. [laughter] I remember watching The Gilded Age in the first season, and I think Marian and Peggy were walking in what was supposed to be Madison Square Park, and there was a lot of people around. I just remember thinking, "Would people have thought this was normal? Would people have reacted to it? Would either Marian or Peggy have felt insecure about the situation, or was it at a point where people were just used to interracial friendships and general interactions?"

Leslie Harris: That's a great question. I'd have to think about it a little bit, but I'll say this. In the Antebellum period, if you were walking in that way as they were as friends, you would almost certainly be called an abolitionist, and you could be attacked. Frederick Douglass is walking with, I think it's Julia Griffiths, who is a white British anti-slavery activist who's visiting the city. They're there for the American Anti-Slavery Society meetings, and they're attacked physically.

Many other white abolitionists walking with Black people as colleagues and friends get attacked throughout the US. That's why one history. I don't think that necessarily has ended by this time period, by the 1880s. Because Peggy would look middle-class, maybe not as well-dressed, but very close to as well-dressed as Marian, that would be seen as odd, perhaps threatening. I wouldn't be surprised if they got people talking to them, "Who are you?" or "Why are you with her?" Maybe not physical attacks, but I would expect that they would hear some chatter, actually.

Alison Stewart: There's a scene where you're with your dad, and you're discussing, and you're walking, and a white couple comes up to you, and you and your father step back.

Leslie Harris: Yes.

Denée Benton: Yes. There's also a scene in season one where Marian's oblivious and takes Peggy with her to this sax type store. Peggy is like, "Girl, why did you bring me here? You know I can't--" [crosstalk] You're right. You see them--

Leslie Harris: She's like, "Can we go?"

Denée Benton: Dr. Dunbar was also a part of Peggy would walk behind Marian in that circumstance, and the frustration, I think, with Peggy of being put in that position.

Leslie Harris: Because walking behind her would indicate she was her servant.

Denée Benton: Exactly.

Leslie Harris: That's another issue for them.

Alison Stewart: Oh, hi. Hello over there.

Speaker 12: Hi. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Speaker 12: Thanks again. This is great. I'm curious about that fractured media environment you're describing with all of these newspapers springing up regionally and ethnically and racially and politically, all representing different causes. Sounds so familiar to a media environment now. I have two questions. One which is how has how journalists think of themselves changed from an advocate for a cause to this objectivity thing that is hard to achieve.

Also, was there conspiracies being thrown around more liberally back then, and also now, do we maybe underrate the benefits of that fractured media so that can lift up voices that wouldn't be heard otherwise?

Leslie Harris: Yes, all of that. It is funny to be in the journalism moment we're in now, because when you look at the 19th century, newspapers are very politically tied to different causes. I haven't even mentioned the anti-slavery press, which is very closely tied to the Black press, but they're also very different. Objectivity in the way we think of it, that's really a 20th-century thing. I recently read a New York Times op ed by Lydia Polgreen, who's an excellent journalist, and she gives this thumbnail sketch of journalism.

She was responding to Jeff Bezos's whatever of the Washington Post, but she said with the way the Washington Post situated itself in opposition with Watergate, we entered this golden age of journalists really being advocates for the truth, not for particular positions. Now we're seeing that crumble in the legacy media, but it's rising up in this other place, I think. I personally find it exciting to have all of the fracturing. It doesn't feel like fracture. It feels like patchwork. It feels like pastiche.

There's more space. I think even though it was a struggle for Blacks to find the money to do their newspapers, it did mean that they could in a way that's different. I don't know. It's exciting. It is scary, though, because we are so used. I grew up with ABC, NBC, CBS, and maybe a little PBS. That was pretty narrow in terms of journalism. The one piece that we are missing, though, is local journalism, but there's some nonprofits that are trying to pick that up. I would say support local nonprofits for your state and city stuff. [laughter] Just saying.

Speaker 13: We actually have a question from the online chat.

Leslie Harris: Oh, this is exciting.

Speaker 13: What was the decision like to portray T. Thomas Fortune and his relationship with Peggy?

Denée Benton: Yes. It was tricky. I think originally they were hoping for a big love story arc, and then Dr. Dunbar was like, "Wait, he was married?" [laughter] She was able to flag that. Instead, we got to play with this intellectual tension between them and the spark that goes. T. Thomas Fortune had a tragic ending. He, I think, dealing with a lot of the PTSD from his life, had a pretty severe drinking addiction by the end. We could only take it so far. People have their different opinions. I was happy we got to see Peggy's passionate, bad-girl side-

Marquise Taylor: Definitely.

Denée Benton: -in Tuskegee.

Leslie Harris: It was great.

Denée Benton: It was great.

Alison Stewart: That was The Gilded Age: Peggy Scott's New York with Denée Benton, the actor who plays Peggy in the HBO series, as well as historian Leslie Harris and the Tenement Museum's Marquise Taylor. The event was held in front of a live audience in the green space and was the result of a collaboration between WNYC and the Tenement Museum. That's All Of It for today. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

 

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