New York and Slavery Lower Manhattan Walking Tour

Other Important Manhattan Sites

In 1838, David Ruggles (36 Lispendard Street, one block south of Canal Street at the corner of Church Street) harbored a fugitive slave here named Frederick Washington Bailey who later became known as Frederick Douglass.

In 1644, eleven enslaved African men petitioned the local government and obtained their freedom in exchange for the promise to pay an annual tax in produce. They each received the title to land on the outskirts of the colony where they would be a buffer against attack from native forces. Black farmers soon owned a two-mile long strip of land known as the Land of the Blacks (Washington Square Park) from what is now Canal Street to 34th Street in Manhattan.

Seneca Village was Manhattan’s first prominent community of African American property owners. From 1825 to 1857, it was located between 82nd and 89th Streets at Seventh and Eighth Avenues in what is now a section of Central Park.