NYC to study impacts of slavery, consider reparations

The New York City Council on Thursday passed a package of legislation aimed at addressing the impact of slavery and racial injustice in New York City. The legislation establishes a “Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation” process on slavery in NYC, which was the nation’s capital of slavery for nearly two centuries. Other bills require the city to conduct a reparations study, install informational plaques at the site of the city’s first slave market in lower Manhattan, and create a task force to explore creating a “freedom trail” recognizing sites linked to the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. (1902). “New York slave market about 1730.” Via New York Public Library Digital Collections. During the early 1700s, New York had one of the highest rates of slave ownership in the nation, with between 15 and 20 percent of the population being enslaved. In fact, before the American Revolution, more enslaved Africans lived in NYC than in every other city except South Carolina, with more than 40 percent of households owning slaves. Even after slavery was banned statewide in 1827, New York City continued...