A Respectable Woman: The Public Roles of African American Women in 19th-Century New York

Introduction

Introduction At age seventy-eight, Phoebe Sisco recounted her life story to Special Examiner J. McDonald, an army pension official. Born into slavery in New Jersey in 1820, she met her “husband,” Samuel Sisco, “sometime during the war with Mexico.” The couple moved into an apartment in New York City and had four children over the next decade . “No we were never married but lived together as man and wife and were so recognized by all our friends,” she stated. The Sisco family remained in the city for fifty years but often changed residences. “We first lived in Le Roy Street [or Benton Street], New York and then moved to Houston Street, New York. When the war came on we lived in 17th Street between 9[th] and 10[th] Avenues,” Phoebe recalled. Phoebe Sisco worked as a servant for at least two white families, and when her husband enlisted in Company A of the Thirty-first U.S. Colored Troops regiment from New York, the illiterate forty-four-year-old mother of four sought financial relief. “While he was in the army he sent my relief money. I got $60 first and after that Mr. Cooper of 71 Jayne Street collected the money for me and my children. We got a card to come and get the relief money for soldiers’ families.” When Samuel Sisco was discharged in 1865, he returned to New York City. According to Phoebe, “He came to live with me as my husband 1 again . . . and moved around doing kalso mining work.” Phoebe and Samuel separated following a violent argument in 1880. “Once he got tight and was going to kill my crippled daughter and he went away for fear we would have him arrested,” Phoebe explained. Shortly after leaving his family, Samuel Sisco fell ill and died at the New York City Colored Home in 1880. Phoebe Sisco experienced financial difficulties following her husband ’s death. She recalled, “I can get out days work. I do what I can. I am too old to work much. . . . I have to depend on charity and such assistance as my neighbors and children can give.” The pension official described her as “very honest and even respectable.”1 The story of Phoebe Sisco reveals many themes about the lives of black women in nineteenth-century New York City. Born a slave in the neighboring state of New Jersey, Sisco moved to New York City following her emancipation and continued to work as a domestic servant. She met her husband and became a mother of four. Like most black New Yorkers, she moved around the city. She looked after her family when her husband was away at war and negotiated with government officials to obtain the financial support to which she was entitled. Like many northern black women who gained their freedom in the early nineteenth century, she confronted new concepts of black gender roles and carved out a powerful position. New York City was home to one of the most important black populations in the North and is therefore an ideal city in which to explore the lives of black women. In the nineteenth century, its industrial and commercial base was changing. New York City was one of the main ports of entry for immigrants, and the city had tremendous ethnic diversity . Its geography shifted over the nineteenth century as the city expanded northward. Racial violence and increasing discrimination plagued black New Yorkers, who devised a variety of creative strategies to overcome them. With the passage of the 1827 Gradual Emancipation Act, which put an end to slavery in New York, African Americans flooded into the city and the city’s population increased. Black New Yorkers founded schools, published newspapers, built churches, and raised funds for community institutions. They agitated for political rights in defiance of a state law that made property ownership a prereq2 | Introduction uisite for voting, virtually disenfranchising all black men. Black New Yorkers knew that racism limited their lives and opportunities, but they also believed that this discrimination was temporary. They clung to the hope that the end of southern slavery would elevate their economic, social , and political position. Blacks’ hopes for racial equality, however, were dashed with the eruption of the New York City Draft Riot, one of the bloodiest in American history, on July 13, 1863. As the Civil War dragged on and the number...