This New Exhibit In NYC Is Telling The Story Of A Black Household For The First Time

For the primary time in its 35-year historical past, The Tenement Museum in New York Metropolis is sharing the story of a Black household with its new exhibit, “A Union of Hope: 1869”.

“A Union of Hope” would be the solely everlasting exhibit in New York centered on Nineteenth-century Black history throughout and after the Civil Struggle. It tells the story of a Black household that lived at 17 Laurens St. within the now well-known SoHo neighborhood in 1870.

“Too usually, the tales of Black New Yorkers within the Nineteenth century have been written out of historical past,” mentioned Annie Polland, President of the Tenement Museum, in an announcement shared with ESSENCE. “With ‘A Union of Hope’, we broaden our understanding of migration to New York Metropolis by highlighting an untold story from the Civil Struggle period. A long time earlier than Harlem grew to become a Black neighborhood, Decrease Manhattan had the most important Black neighborhood within the north, with a vital community of church buildings, mutual help associations, faculties, and newspapers. It was on this tenement neighborhood that Joseph and Rachel Moore carved out new lives,” Polland added. 

“A Union of Hope” tells the story of Joseph and Rachel Moore, that includes a recreated house and greater than 200 never-before-seen historic artifacts that share their journey from Belvidere, New Jersey, and Kingston, New York to the Eighth Ward in Decrease Manhattan, at this time’s SoHo. Many Black residents as soon as lived on this neighborhood earlier than city improvement compelled them to maneuver north or depart town altogether.

“Exploring Black experiences among the many tenements in New York Metropolis is essential to increasing our understanding of immigrant and migrant histories in this nation,” mentioned Leslie Harris, Professor of Historical past and Black Research at Northwestern College and a consulting scholar on the event of the brand new exhibit. “The story of Joseph and Rachel Moore, who made their solution to town throughout one of the vital tumultuous many years in US historical past, shines a lightweight on how the primary technology of free Black Individuals confronted the boundaries and expanded the promise of this nation’s evolving beliefs throughout the revolutionary Civil Struggle Period.”

Interactive excursions will look at how Joseph and Rachel’s migration to New York throughout the Civil Struggle positioned them on the epicenter of serious social, political, and financial actions of the time, such because the ratification of the fifteenth Modification, the New York Metropolis Draft Riots, the emergence of Black media, the expansion of networks of mutual help, city improvement and neighborhood displacement and past.

“In researching ‘A Union of Hope’ we had been intentional about making certain Black New Yorkers are on the forefront of telling their very own tales,” mentioned Marquis Taylor, lead researcher for the exhibit. “It’s thrilling that guests and college students will now have the ability to be taught from this wealth of beforehand unexplored materials, curated from a interval when Black New Yorkers’ voices have usually been marginalized or unacknowledged,” Taylor mentioned.