Yesterday was Presidents’ Day, a federal holiday commemorating Washington’s birthday and generally thought of as a celebration of the birthdays and lives of all U.S. presidents. It is an opportunity to reexamine our past.
We often think of the Civil War as a fight between the free North and the slaveholding South, but this dichotomy obscures Northern states’ history of violent racism, including here in New York City. New York City’s economic dependence on Southern cotton led business interests to urge reconciliation with the Confederacy. At the same time, working-class white immigrants competed for jobs with Black workers, and anti-war politicians and newspapers stoked white fears of losing work to newly freed Southern slaves.
Against this backdrop of conflict and racist propagandizing, the National Conscription Act of 1863 set off the most violent five days of rioting in U.S. history. White working-class New Yorkers who couldn’t pay $300, or about a year’s wages, to avoid the draft were angry that otherwise qualified Black men were exempt from the draft since Black people were not considered citizens. On July 13, 1863, white workers began by attacking government buildings but soon moved on to violently targeting Black New Yorkers’ homes and businesses. Known as the New York Draft Riots, this revolt left an estimated 1,200 people dead and led to the long-term displacement of nearly a quarter of the city’s Black population from Manhattan to Brooklyn and New Jersey.
The intertwining of economic and class interests with white supremacy persists to this day. Historically racist redlining, highway creation, and city planning efforts continue to cause violence against and displacement of BlPOC New Yorkers. As white people we need to know the history of the land we live on so we can better understand how the system and city has been built on violence against BIPOC communities.
As always, see below for ways to plug into the work for racial justice. And take good care.
In solidarity,
SURJ NYC