Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (22 page)

Mulberry Street School graduates spearheaded many of these efforts. Patrick Reason advertised classes in a “scientific method of drawing” in the
Colored American
, while William Webster appealed to those who wanted to study the science and practice of vocal music using the Pestalozzi system. James McCune Smith opened an evening school in his home in the fall of 1839. Edward Marshall, who had been a teacher at primary school no. 1, was the principal instructor and offered basic courses in the three Rs as well as a smattering of geography.

Women participated in these efforts. Fanny Tompkins advertised the opening of a private seminary for girls in the
Colored American
of September 18, 1841. Not only did she teach sewing, knitting, and the three Rs, but she also offered courses in geography, astronomy, history, and music.
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Most ambitious by far was the New York Select Academy, where the first principal was John Brown, formerly head of the boys’ department at Colored School no. 1; Philip Bell, Samuel Cornish, Isaiah DeGrasse, and James Fields were trustees. After Brown became ill, Thomas Sidney was appointed principal. Sidney and Alexander Crummell ran the evening school.
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Remembering Charles Andrews’s broad curriculum, these Mulberry Street School graduates offered courses that went well beyond the three Rs: grammar, algebra, geometry, bookkeeping, history, astronomy, natural philosophy, botany, geography, and the use of globes. Even with their few resources, they were trying to pass on to the younger generation some of the cosmopolitan knowledge that Andrews had instilled in them years earlier.

In his eulogy of Philip White printed in the
Brooklyn Citizen
for March 27, 1891, George Downing claimed that Philip began teaching adult classes in the late 1830s even while a student at Colored School
no. 2.
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Although only sixteen years old, it’s evident that Philip was mature enough to understand the value of education. Downing never mentioned the name of the school. It could have been the evening school that James McCune Smith opened in his home, where Philip might have served as Edward Marshall’s aide. Or maybe it was the New York Select Academy’s evening school managed by Thomas Sidney and Alexander Crummell.

Downing described in considerable detail how teaching improved the minds of not only students but the instructor as well. Philip, he wrote,

was enabled to fasten in his mind the principles he endeavored to explain. To make what he knew available he had to mentally classify and arrange miscellaneous collections of facts, and the conscious power exerted in so doing stimulated him to increase the variety, extent and value of his literary acquisitions. These accumulated facts furnish material for thought, and in the effort of trying to think the mind began to expand, and with growth that is natural and normal, there is always proportion, harmony and strength.

How to account for Philip’s maturity?

Born in 1823, at the time of his death in 1891 Philip was a prominent man, respected by blacks and whites alike. He was widely commemorated. The dozen obituaries and eulogies I’ve found of him all repeat the same basic factual information. To my mind, the most compelling eulogy—because the most detailed, closely observed, and sensitive—was George Downing’s.

Downing seems to have been on intimate terms with the White family. Philip’s father, Thomas White, came from northern England. A “stern old English gentleman,” in Downing’s words, “he exacted instant, unquestioning obedience, and supervised manners and morals after the good old fashion of that era.” About the origins of Philip’s mother, Elizabeth Steele, Downing maintained absolute silence. I know from Philip’s death certificate that she came from Jamaica, so that it was her racial heritage that led to the designation of her son as “colored.”
But I don’t know whether she was born a slave or free, where she and Thomas White met, whether they married, or how they ended up in the United States.

The 1830 census lists the White family as living in Hoboken, New Jersey. There were six children, four daughters and two sons. By 1832 the family had moved to Manhattan where, according to the city directory, Thomas ran a grocery store at 102 Gold Street, on the corner of Frankfort, the very same location of Philip’s drugstore some fifteen years later.

Theirs was a close-knit family. Thomas soon became an invalid and was house bound. “His confinement,” Downing suggested, “brought him into close and more frequent contact with his children than is customary. They busied themselves in giving him the countless little attentions so essential to the comfort of an invalid, and at his knee, spelled the first reading, recited the catechism and childish hymns and prayers.” For her part, Philip’s mother “gave him a sense of family pride, virtuous habits and inspired him with an aim to be great and good.” Thomas died in 1835, but, “until the loss of their head, this family, obscure but happy, grew and throve in a little world of their own.” In his eulogy, Downing wrote of children, but I’ve found virtually no information about Philip’s siblings. The 1850 census indicates that in addition to his mother, a sister, Sarah M., lived with him; her name appears in conjunction with various community organizations in newspapers of the 1860s. So does that of another sister, Mary, who married Richard Thompson. In her memoir, Maritcha wrote that the Thompsons’ daughter Elizabeth, known as Bessie, was a favorite niece of Philip’s, and that he was devastated by her early death. In passing, Maritcha also noted the death in the 1880s of a third sister, Emma. That’s virtually all I know about Philip’s siblings.
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Reading into this scant written record, I believe the presence of both parents was fundamental to Philip’s development and later sense of identity. Unlike Peter and James McCune Smith, Philip knew his white father, who, I’m sure, instilled in him the firm conviction that he was as good as any white man. But like the two older men, Philip was nurtured by a black mother. Downing maintained in no uncertain terms that she lavished her love on her son and that he repaid her in kind: “To her close devotion and judicious training the success of her youngest son was mainly due. For this devoted self-sacrificing mother
Mr. White always expressed the deepest filial affection.” The one photograph I have of Philip suggests that he was very light-skinned and could have probably passed for white; yet if his mother was darker skinned I don’t think he would ever have contemplated leaving her behind. Even without concrete evidence, we have a sense of how instrumental black mothers were in the rearing of their mixed-race sons.

Thomas’s death had a significant impact on the family. Thereafter, it was up to Elizabeth to raise her children on her own and keep the household together. She persevered, beginning with their education. Philip undoubtedly attended one of the low-ranked primary schools before entering Colored School no. 2 in 1836. Located in a brand-new two-story building on Laurens Street, the school was run by black teachers. Ransom Wake was head of the male department and Eliza Richards of the female; the boys’ principal teacher was Charles Reason. Much like the advanced senior boys at the Mulberry Street School, Philip was offered supplementary courses in Latin and history, both ancient and modern. “What the course of study provided and the text books furnished, that [Philip] learned,” Downing insisted. “He has said of his school work that his lessons were never a task. He memorized all that was required, and always felt that had twice as much been demanded he could have accomplished the same with equal readiness and ease.”

The family was impoverished. Quite by accident, I discovered that the Public School Society helped out by hiring Philip and his mother for occasional low-skilled jobs. While poring through the handwritten records of the Public School Society at the New-York Historical Society, I came across the following records of payment: on January 25 and April 28, 1840, three dollars to Philip A. White for making fires in African Public School no. 2 during three months; on June 11, 1841, fifteen dollars to Elizabeth White for cleaning and whitewashing primary school no. 7.
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These must have been trying times for Philip and his mother; and it must have been Elizabeth’s fortitude, sense of family pride, and aspirations for a better life that enabled them to face an uncertain future with dignity.

As the boys’ principal teacher, Charles Reason taught Philip. Some twenty-five years later, Maritcha Lyons was one of his students.

Charles Reason, photograph by Denison’s Photographic Parlors (Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library)

In her memoir she portrayed him as a demanding but rewarding taskmaster:

Professor Reason, cultured, refined, inclined to be a little supercilious was quite intolerant of mediocrity; he instinctively shunned the ordinary and the common place, and kept himself aloof from all that was awkward and unseemly. He could and would teach, but only if allowed his right of choice in the selection of his pupils. Those willing and able to submit to his processes, found compensation far in excess of exaction. He taught how to study, developed a love of study
for study’s sake; to those mentally alert, aspiring, and diligent he disclosed vistas of interest. Satisfaction and wonder, whoever could be trained to enjoy what he enjoyed in the way it pleased him had measureless content as complete as exceptional.
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Charles Reason had learned from Charles Andrews, and was now taking his place as a black instructor of black youth. I’d like to think he chose to mentor Philip, and that it was he who taught the young man the supplementary courses in Latin and history.

By the late 1830s, Elizabeth knew that she didn’t have to worry about what would happen to her beloved younger son. The now grown boys of the Mulberry Street School were watching out for him, developing his talents and preparing him for his future profession and leadership role.

Philip needed to learn a trade. Elizabeth first placed him as an apprentice to Patrick Reason to learn engraving; once again, a black mentor replaced a white one. This must have been quite an honor for young Philip, since Patrick was quickly making a name for himself. Was Elizabeth disappointed when Philip failed to live up to expectations? “A three months’ probation,” Downing confessed, “satisfied parent and master that the apprentice had not the slightest aptitude for the work.”

Philip had ideas of his own, and they centered on James McCune Smith. If he had indeed taught in Edward Marshall’s evening school, Philip would have become acquainted with Smith at that time and come to admire the older man. Conversely, it’s possible that Philip’s rapid intellectual growth so impressed Smith that he turned to the younger man when he decided he needed an apprentice in his drugstore. In any event, things worked out to everybody’s satisfaction: “Then the youth’s own plan was discussed,” Downing explained. “At the expiration of a year it was arranged that he should study pharmacy under the famous Dr. James McCune Smith. Then his life work began in earnest.”

CIRCA 1847

AT MID CENTURY, BLACK
New Yorkers found that life, if anything, had grown harsher and more unforgiving. Facing stiff competition from immigrant labor, particularly the Irish, and increased racism from all quarters, black workers found themselves forced out of jobs they had traditionally held as porters, dockhands, waiters, barbers, and cooks, and reduced to the most unskilled and menial forms of labor. Housing conditions were poor. The school situation remained lamentable. Gone were the Philomathean, Phoenix, and Phoenixonian Societies, the New York Political Association, and the
Colored American.
Until Frederick Douglass founded the
North Star
in Rochester in 1847, black New Yorkers were forced to rely on two white abolitionist newspapers, William Lloyd Garrison’s
Liberator
and the American Anti-Slavery Society’s
National Anti-Slavery Standard
, for news of special interest to them. Horace Greeley’s
New York Daily Tribune
served as their local paper; they followed its reporting closely, often contributing articles and placing advertisements.

Gone too were some of the brightest of New York’s black elite. Already in poor health, Thomas Sidney died suddenly in the summer of 1840. Isaiah DeGrasse followed shortly thereafter; unable to overcome the racism of the U.S. Episcopal Church, he moved to Jamaica in 1841, only to die a few months later. Above all, in October 1840 there was the devastating loss of Peter Williams. His funeral, carefully recorded by the still-functioning
Colored American
, was truly impressive.
In attendance were the city’s most prominent Episcopal clergymen, among them the rectors of Trinity Church, Christ Church, St. George’s Chapel, and St. John’s Church. Amazingly, the funeral sermon was delivered by Bishop Onderdonk, the very same man who had forced Williams to retreat from his antislavery activism and prevented Isaiah DeGrasse and Alexander Crummell from attending the General Theological Seminary. Amazingly too, students from the seminary, who only a few years earlier had objected to DeGrasse’s presence, formed part of the funeral procession. The black community turned out en masse. Marching in the procession were Williams’s family, St. Philip’s vestry, members of literary societies, students from the colored schools, and the general public.
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