Black Gotham: A Family History Of African Americans In Nineteenth-Century New York City - Plot & Excerpts
For them, it was an invigorating period of maturation and emergence into adulthood. On any given night, passersby could observe the young men streaming into Philomathean Hall at 161 Duane Street. The physical structure of the hall has disappeared from historical memory, yet the significance the place held for black New Yorkers remains alive in the archives. The building was a mecca of civic activism for black youth and “old heads” alike, beckoning them to take part in the community’s many flourishing institutions. Fortunately for us, the Colored American extensively covered the many meetings held there, since the newspaper’s various editors—Philip Bell, another Mulberry Street School graduate, James McCune Smith, Samuel Cornish, Charles Ray, a recent newcomer from Massachusetts—overlapped with the organizations’ leadership.1 Peter Guignon Peter was newly wed. “Rebecca was married to Peter Guignon in 1840,” Williamson noted tersely in his genealogical records; “she was his first wife.”
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