Angels of Mercy: White Women and the History of New York's Colored Orphan Asylum
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
William Seraile uncovers the history of the colored orphan asylum, founded in New York City in 1836 as the nation’s first orphanage for African American children. It is a remarkable institution that is still in the forefront aiding children. Although no longer an orphanage, in its current incarnation as Harlem-Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services it maintains the principles of the women who organized it nearly 200 years ago.
The agency weathered three wars, two major financial panics, a devastating fire during the 1863 Draft Riots, several epidemics, waves of racial prejudice, and severe financial difficulties to care for orphaned, neglected, and delinquent children. Eventually financial support would come from some of New York’s finest families, including the Jays, Murrays, Roosevelts, Macys, and Astors.
While the white female managers and their male advisers were dedicated to uplifting these black children, the evangelical, mainly Quaker founding managers also exhibited the extreme paternalistic views endemic at the time, accepting the advice or support of the African American community only grudgingly. It was frank criticism in 1913 from W. E. B. Du Bois that highlighted the conflict between the orphanage and the community it served, and it wasn’t until 1939 that it hired the first black trustee.
More than 15,000 children were raised in the orphanage, and throughout its history letters and visits have revealed that hundreds if not thousands of “old boys and girls” looked back with admiration and respect at the home that nurtured them throughout their formative years.
Weaving together African American history with a unique history of New York City, this is not only a painstaking study of a previously unsung institution of black history but a unique window onto complex racial dynamics during a period when many failed to recognize equality among all citizens as a worthy purpose.
Related to Angels of Mercy
Related ebooks
Angels of Mercy: White Women and the History of New York's Colored Orphan Asylum Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An African Republic: Black and White Virginians in the Making of Liberia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5In The Company Of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVermont Women, Native Americans & African Americans: Out of the Shadows of History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe's Families after World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLittle Rock: Race and Resistance at Central High School Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLaboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat's the Way It Was: Stories of Struggle, Survival and Self-Respect in Twentieth-Century Black St. Louis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRemembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQueering the Underworld: Slumming, Literature, and the Undoing of Lesbian and Gay History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Path to Freedom: Black Families in New Jersey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Uplift Generation: Cooperation across the Color Line in Early Twentieth-Century Virginia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Men of Letters in the Early Republic: Cultivating Forums of Citizenship Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBarry Farm-Hillsdale in Anacostia: A Historic African American Community Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSay It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
United States History For You
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The White Album: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Angels of Mercy
0 ratings0 reviews