American resurrection and the 1788 New York doctors' riot

Abstract

[Extract] "People say the South was evil, keeping slaves, and that the good people of the North were opposed to it. The truth is, New York was just as involved; this city's economy was tied to slavery, and New York merchants financed the South’s cotton trade", observed Howard Dodson, Director of Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the opening of the African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan, New York, last year. Adjacent to the site of the African Burial Ground, where around 15000 African slaves and their descendants were buried in the 17th and 18th centuries, the centre is just a short walk from Wall Street where those same slaves were once traded. By the end of the American Revolution (1776), about a fifth of the population of New York City was of African descent, and almost all of these people were enslaved. Slave labour was crucial to the construction of the city under Dutch colonial rule as well as English.