Probably many of you do not know that this village community was first settled by 11 black men who had arrived as indentured servants in what was then the small settlement of New Amsterdam, in 1626. Eighteen years later these servants demanded manumission. All of the men had taken wives by that time and so they were families. In 1644 the Dutch settlers granted these blacks’ request, but made them move to the outskirts of the settlement in a “tangled swamp” known later as Greenwich Village. The Village was the earliest community in New York city...
The Village was the center of New York’s black community until just before the civil war when Irish immigrants and other poor whites, egged on by northern merchants who were in sympathy with the south because the south owed them money, set fire to the black community including the black orphan asylum. This was in July 1863, over 1000 people were killed and wounded. This was the end of the black community in the village.
