Tenement Museum Tells the Untold Story of a 19th Century African-American Family in New York

From the Irish fleeing the great famine of the 19th century to the survivors of the Holocaust, the Tenement Museum preserves the memories of immigrants who shaped New York: now, it will also tell the life of an African-American family, so that the story is “more honest”.

It is a narrow two-room apartment, with rustic floors and wooden furniture, impeccably tidy, where visitors enter. The laundry hangs in the kitchen, two beds fill the other room. On a mantelpiece, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States and architect of the abolition of slavery in 1865.

Welcome to Joseph and Rachel Moore, an African-American couple who huddled here, without running water, with three other residents: there is Jane, sister-in-law from Rachel’s first marriage, Rose, an Irish immigrant, and her mixed-race son Louis, 14, lists Kathryn Lloyd, who is leading a pilot tour, ahead of its official launch after Christmas.

Joseph worked as a waiter or coachman depending on the season, Rachel was a servant for wealthy families.

“They came to New York quite young and lived in Manhattan during one of the most tumultuous decades in the country’s history, during the Civil War (1861-1865) (…) and while black Americans were getting rights for the first time,” says Kathryn Lloyd, the museum’s vice president of programs.

– Accused of “rewriting history” –

Their history enriches the palette of the Tenement Museum, where 200,000 visitors per year immerse themselves in some of the destinies of millions of migrants who settled in New York in the 19th and 20th centuries.

A mission that resonates as the megacity struggles to urgently accommodate more than 100,000 new migrants who have arrived over the past year from Latin America.

The museum has this particularity: everyone, from the Schneiders, German owners of a brewery in the years 1860-1880, to the Baldizzis, Italians who lived through the great depression of the 1930s, actually lived at 97 or 103 Orchard Street, the two brick buildings nestled in the Lower East Side neighborhood, where their apartments have been recreated.

All, but not Joseph and Rachel Moore, who lived in a similar building in the SoHo district, a 20-minute walk away, where the African-American community was established, with its parishes and newspapers.

In the city registers, Joseph Moore appears with the mention “col’d”, for “colored”, right next to another Joseph Moore, also a waiter but Irish, fleeing the famine in his country, and whose the story is also revealed at “Tenement”.

When the project was announced, the museum was accused of “rewriting history” in an article in the conservative newspaper New York Post, because the African-American Moores, born in the United States, had not lived in Orchard. Street.

– “American identity” –

But after the visit, Vanessa Willoughby, 28, a Harlem resident who works in finance, said she was “delighted” that “a black family” was included “in the description of the New York working classes of the late 19th century.” century”. The museum also organizes guided tours of the neighborhood, including one on African-American spaces.

For Kathryn Lloyd, vice-president of the museum, telling the story of the Moores is “crucial” to understanding what pushed families to move “within the United States” and better understanding “American identity” .

Rachel Moore, “the first generation of her family to be born free” and not a slave like her ancestors, arrived in New York in 1847 from a rural corner of the region; Joseph arrived ten years later from neighboring New Jersey, where slavery was not abolished, unlike in New York. The risk of being removed to be sold may have played a role in his decision, the museum supposes.

But in July 1863, the draft riots broke out, revolts against enlistment in the army during the Civil War which turned into racist pogroms against African-Americans in New York. The violence left at least 120 dead and pushed 20% of African-Americans to leave the city.

The museum lost track of Rachel after 1870, and found Joseph in New Jersey, where he returned to live years later. His apartment is described there in a press article of the time, with the portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

2023-12-23 14:32:25
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