In 1991, while doing preliminary excavations for the construction of a federal office building in New York City, traces of human remains were found. Archaeologists concluded that these remains were those of free and enslaved African Americans who lived and died in colonial and antebellum New York. The burial ground, long forgotten and covered with layers of city construction, forced New Yorkers to come to terms with something that many would have preferred to remain buried in the past – the visible history of 200 years of slavery on Manhattan Island.
In 2017, the towering statue of Robert E. Lee (21 feet tall including base) was lowered down from its 60-foot column in Lee Circle. The sculpture had loomed over the city of New Orleans for 133 years, with Lee facing north, arms crossed defiantly in the direction of the Civil War “aggressors.” In 2018 two new historical markers of a different kind were erected in the French Quarter – one marked the significance of the transatlantic slave trade in the city, while the other marked the impact of the domestic slave trade.
In the early 1700s New York City had the highest percentage of enslaved peoples of any urban area in the North, and was second in the country only to Charleston, South Carolina. Much of the history of urban slavery, as opposed to plantation slavery, has been obscured with the expansion and growth of urban centers in both the North and South. This class seeks to uncover these histories, examine case studies on how to interpret this history, and contemplate ways of making this “invisible history” more embedded within the larger social public history of cities. While the major thrust of the course is to look at urban centers in the United States, case studies from cities and plantations in the U.S. as well as abroad will help to give context to the worldwide impact and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Therefore, this course will be part social and economic history of the United States, part urban history, and part public history.
About Professor Wiley
Amber Wiley specializes in architecture, urbanism, and African American cultural studies. Her research interests are centered on the social aspects of design and how it affects urban communities - architecture as a literal and figural structure of power. She focuses on the ways local and national bodies have made the claim for the dominating narrative and collective memory of cities and examines how preservation and public history contribute to the creation and maintenance of the identity and “sense of place” of a city.