wfn.org | New York Episcopal church reopens its slave gallery

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

For more information contact:
Episcopal News Service
Kathryn McCormick
Kmccormick@dfms.org
212/922-5383
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens
2000-061
New York church reopens its slave gallery
to stand as a lesson in pain--and hope
by Judith Milone
     (ENS) Imagine waking up on Sunday morning
knowing you'll be in church in a few hours. But
instead of leisurely pouring a second cup of coffee
or glancing at the Sunday paper, you must wait and
watch attentively, ready to answer your owner's every
beck and call. And instead of walking or taking the bus
to church, you row your master and his family in a boat
across the roiling East River from Brooklyn to lower
Manhattan.
     Once at church, the family walks to its pew on the
 main floor. You climb a steep, narrow staircase and
spend the time during the service standing with others
in a "gallery," a small, dark, grim room behind the
church's balcony.
     You are a slave, a person of African descent in
legal bondage to a white man. The place is New York
City. The church, St. Augustine's, is Episcopal. 
     Not only did slavery exist until it was for the
most part ended in 1827 in New York State, the average
slaveholder in New York owned more slaves than his
counterparts in any state north of Virginia. Even after
the legal abolition of slavery in New York, some cases
of slavery, as well as deep-rooted racism and legislated
segregation, persisted.
     On February 26, in a world very different from that
of 1827, church members, historians and conservationists
gathered at the church to memorialize the gallery and
launch its restoration and reopening, this time to serve
as a reminder of a shameful part of the country's--and
the church's--history. 
     The moving ceremony, punctuated by African drums and
a performance by St. Augustine's Liturgical Choir, also
inaugurated the Lower East Side Community Preservation
Program, of which the gallery is a part. 
     "We always knew it was there," states the Rev. Errol A.
Harvey, rector of St. Augustine's, a vibrant congregation
of 150 that meets in the attractive, colonial-style church
built in the mid-1820s. 
     The congregation, once all white, is now predominantly
black, and proud of its African-American heritage. The handsome
sanctuary has an altar bearing a kinte cloth frontal and there
are prominently placed portraits of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. 
Silent testimony
     Harvey described the slave gallery--two small, unventilated
rooms located in the rear of the church, above the nave's balcony,
as a "testimony of good people colluding with a monstrous evil."
In times past, even though the congregation knew that the rooms
had been built for a horrific use, there was no urge to acknowledging
the slave gallery, he said. Only in the aftermath of the enormous
social and political changes in our country since the civil rights
movement, and in today's openness about claiming history and
remembering evils, did St. Augustine's form a committee, just over
a year ago. 
     The slave gallery committee led the way in making the story
known, having the area memorialized, and beginning scholarly
research to answer the many questions about the gallery's use
and the life of African-Americans in the early part of the 19th
century in New York City.
     Joining in that work is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum,
a bustling organization that preserves and presents the history
of that section of Manhattan. In an address during the February
program, Ruth Abram, founder of the museum  and its current
president, said,  "We have gathered and resolved to convert the
slave gallery from its original intent as an instrument of
separation and degradation to a symbol of our refusal to participate
by action or even by silence in the establishment or maintenance
of policies or customs of separation."
     The museum is collaborating with the parish in restoring
the gallery for public view and has raised funds to establish the
Lower East Side Community Preservation Program to help. To begin
its work, the project has already put out a call for artifacts
related to the history of slavery and the post-Colonial era on
the Lower East Side. Other work will have to be done to prepare
the space for visits by groups and produce materials to help
explain the history. Harvey said he hoped the space would be
ready by the end of this year.
     While there are gaps in history, colorful and perhaps
apocryphal stories have been kept alive by oral tradition at
St. Augustine's. Edgar Allen Poe allegedly sat in the back of
St. Augustine's and meditated. The infamous Boss Tweed--the
rogue of 19th century New York politics--reportedly hid in the
gallery itself during his mother's funeral. A fugitive at the
time, Tweed made a quick escape after the funeral, the slave
gallery having successfully kept him from the arm of the law. 
Many questions
     To confirm the history of the gallery the project has
important research to undertake. The only other extant known
slave gallery is in Old South Church, Boston. Are there others?
Why does St. Augustine's building have a gallery while other
Episcopal churches built at the same time or before do not?
Could slaves worship in any way while they were held there?
Were slaves baptized? Were they in shackles? Was there any
connection between St. Augustine's gallery and the underground
railroad, which is known to have used another house of worship
in the area? The need for objective answers is real.
     One of the February 26 speakers for whom the day had special
meaning was A. J. Williams Myers, now professor of black studies
at the State University of New York campus at New Paltz. Myers
spent some of his youth in the parish, where his father was vicar
in the 1950s. Discussing the gallery, he said, "We all knew about
it but weren't able to deal with it." Now with his vast knowledge
of history of slavery, Myers declared, "The gallery's story must
be told so that we can begin the process of healing and so that
those who come after us will make a better world."   
For information about the slave gallery or the Lower East Side
Community Preservation Project, contact Liz Sevcenko, project
director of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, 66 Allen Street,
New York, NY 10002, phone (212) 431-0233, X230, or check the
museum's website, www.tenement.org. You can also write to
Edgar W. Hopper, on-site coordinator, St. Augustine's Episcopal
Church, 333 Madison Street, New York, NY 10002. 
--Judith Milone is a correspondent for The Episcopal
New Yorker, the newspaper of the Diocese of New York,
for which this article was written.