Did you know that The Atlantic Slave Trade has roots in New York City? How about the first armed black rebellion in 1712?
You are just in luck as educator Kamau Ware’s The Black Gotham Experience is giving tours that will enrich you on NYC’s black roots. Ware created the tour back in 2010 when he was asked by a child on a separate tour about the history of black people in the 1800s.
“I felt like that was a very important question to be asked by a young girl who was more or less just curious about how come she doesn’t see the black experience represented in museums and in media and in books or in classrooms,” he continued. “And so I began doing my research [and] came out with a way to share that information.”
Upon research, he saw evidence of the slave trade and a black rebellion, which were only just the tip of the iceberg. NYC’s black history is so deep, that Ware had to create three separate tours in order to be able to cover as much history as possible. The tours “Other Side Of Wall Street”, “Caesar’s Rebellion” and “Citizen Hope,” all include the history of black people in New York from 1609 to 1883.
Here is a quick Black History Month fact, New York was at one time the second highest slave population, next to Charleston, South Carolina.
“One of the biggest misconceptions that people have about slavery in the North is that it was small, it was minimal,” Ware said.
