Hidden Histories: Black Stories of the Lower East Side NYC

The Civil War Draft Riots began on July 14th, 1863 when a white mob burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue as a reaction to the Conscription Act, which called up 300,000 men to fight for the Union Army. The draft lottery would pull the names of 26,000 men between the ages of 20 and 45 in New York. In the five days of violent rioting, the official number of people killed was 119, although estimates of the actual number of deaths range up to 1200. Two hundred and thirty-seven young residents fled to safety, but lost their home.

After the first lottery drawing on Saturday July 11 in 1863, many people were angered by the number of working class citizens being called up to the Union militia, while wealthy residents purchased their own release. By Monday, hundreds of protestors were out on the streets. The protests quickly turned to rioting, first bombarding the draft office and then setting the building on fire. The Metropolitan police tried to quell the crowd but ended up escalating the violence, injuring multiple people. Police Inspector Daniel C. Carpenter clubbed and killed a man he believed to be the leader of a mob.

African-Americans were exempt because they were not legally citizens, but recent immigrants who had elected to become citizens (a 60-day process) were told their only option to escape the draft was to leave the country or pay a $300 fine, nearly a year’s wages for laborers. Some past exemptions from military services, such as being a volunteer firefighter with one of the notorious Five Points engine companies, were rolled back. Although, violence was first directed at the draft office and city officials, as the rioting spread throughout Manhattan, the assaults became racially motivated. Attacks on the Black community grew as mobs blamed African-Americans for the draft, even for the Civil War as a whole. The same day that the draft riots began, an African-American man named William Jones was lynched on his way to buy bread. A day later, James Costello, a Black shoemaker, was stoned by a mob of over two hundred people and hung from a tree on 32nd street. Rows of homes owned by Black families were burned to the ground, dance halls, boarding houses, and tenements known to cater to both Black and white residents were attacked. Over the course of five days of rioting, killing, and lynching, 3,000 African-Americans (one quarter of the free Black community) saw their homes and businesses destroyed.

Five Points was the most well known center of Black and interracial social life in the LES.

Initially, Five Points was relatively quiet during the riots. Mobs neither attacked the brothels there nor killed Black people within its borders. There were also instances of interracial cooperation. When a mob threatened the Black owner Philip White in his drugstore at the corner of Gold and Frankfurt Street his Irish neighbors drove the mob away. When rioters invaded Hart’s Alley and became trapped at its dead end, the Black and White residents of the alley working together leaned out of their windows and poured hot starch on the mob, driving them from the neighborhood.

The draft riots forced some African Americans to seek a new home farther north in the area, which would become Harlem and many left New York City altogether. By 1865, two years after the Draft Riots, the city’s overall Black population had dropped by 20 percent. 3,000 African-Americans (one quarter of the free Black community) saw their homes and businesses destroyed. The Draft Riots was one of the most brutal attacks on Black New Yorkers ever to take place here

Lynching on a Greenwich Village street in 1863 and Clarkson Street

At 6 p.m. on the hot evening of July 13, 1863, William Jones, an African-American cartman, left his Clarkson Street home to buy a loaf of bread. As indicated in Ephemeral New York website indicated about the lynching in Greenwich Village: “They instantly set upon and beat him, and after nearly killing him, hung him to a lamp-post. His body was left suspended for several hours. A fire was made underneath him, and he was literally roasted as he hung, the mob reveling in their demonic act.”

References & Resources

American Historical Association. ( n.d). The Five Points neighborhood and the New York City draft riots. https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/approaches-to-teaching/the-aha-guide-to-teaching-and-learning-with-new-media/some-very-detailed-examples/the-five-points-neighborhood-and-the-new-york-city-draft-riots

Barnes, D. (2009). The draft riots in New York, July 1863: The metropolitan police, their services during the riot week, their honorable record (Civil War). Carlisle, MA: Applewood Books.

Ephemeral New York. (n.d.). A lynching on Greenwich Village streets in 1863. https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-lynching-on-a-greenwich-village-street-in-1863/

Podcast, “The Bowery Boys #127 The Civil War Draft Riots” - https://omny.fm/shows/the-bowery-boys-new-york-city-history/127-the-civil-war-draft-riots

Scott, D. (n.d.). 1863 the civil war draft riots-An attack on Black New Yorkers. The People's LES. https://www.peoplesles.org/the-civil-war-draft-riots-an-attack-on-the-black-community-of-lower-manhattan/

Tenement Museum. (n. d.).On this day: 1863, The New York City draft riots. https://www.tenement.org/blog/on-this-day-1863-the-new-york-city-draft-riots/

Young, P. (2011, June 15). A discussion of Irish immigrants and the New York City draft riots. Long Island Wins. https://longislandwins.com/news/national/a-discussion-on-irish-immigrants-and-the-new-york-city-draft-riots-2/

Young, P. (2013, August 23). Five Points on the edge of the draft riots. Long Island Wins. https://longislandwins.com/columns/immigrants-civil-war/five-points-on-the-edge-of-the-draft-riots/