Communities in Conflict: Racialized Violence During Gradual Emancipation on Long Island

Summary

From New Amsterdam to Seneca Village, Diana diZerega Wall has examined the often-conflicting interactions of communities living in close relation.  In the early nineteenth century, the nearly 30-year process of Gradual Emancipation slowly dismantled the system of slavery in New York State, but it also created the conditions for the perpetuation of inequality among closely intertwined peoples: the black and white inhabitants of eastern Long Island. Inspired by Wall’s ability to uncover the multiple ways socially disadvantaged people negotiated power imbalances and her subtle appeal for us to consider present disparities in light of historically rooted ones, this paper draws on a free black site and a slaveholding white household site to ask how systemic racialized violence was used by whites to erode black advances and to maintain white supremacy – and how black communities and households found the means of self-determination in spite of this violence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Legacy and Influences of a Gotham Archaeologist: Papers in Honor of Diana diZerega Wall   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 852