Black Gotham : a family history of African Americans in nineteenth-century New York City / Carla L. Peterson.

Originally published: 2011.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prologue: family, memory, history ---- Part I. Lower Manhattan, 1795-1865. 1. Collect Street: Circa 1819 --- 2. The Mulberry Street School: Circa 1828 --- 3. The Young Graduates: Circa 1834 --- 4. Community Building: Circa 1840 --- 5. A Black Aristocracy: Circa 1847 --- 6. Whimsy and Resistance: Circa 1853 --- 7. The Draft Riots: July 1863 --- 8. Union and Disunion: Circa 1864 ---- Part Brooklyn, 1865-1895. 9. Peter Guignon's Private Wars: Circa 1862 --- 10. Philip White in Brooklyn: Circa 1875 --- 11. New Women, New Men at Century's End.

Part detective tale, part social and cultural narrative, Black Gotham is Carla Peterson's riveting account of her quest to reconstruct the lives of her nineteenth-century ancestors. As she shares their stories and those of their friends, neighbors, and business associates, she illuminates the greater history of African-American elites in New York City. Black Gotham challenges many of the accepted "truths" about African-American history, including the assumption that the phrase "nineteenth-century black Americans" means enslaved people, that "New York state before the Civil War" refers to a place of freedom, and that a black elite did not exist until the twentieth century. Beginning her story in the 1820s, Peterson focuses on the pupils of the Mulberry Street School, the graduates of which went on to become eminent African-American leaders. She traces their political activities as well as their many achievements in trade, business, and the professions against the backdrop of the expansion of scientific racism, the trauma of the Civil War draft riots, and the rise of Jim Crow.