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The Slave Galleries
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THE SLAVE GALLERIES RESTORATION AND PRESERVATION PROJECT AS OF JULY 5, 2003 St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church was built in 1828 (known then as All Saints Free Church) for the city’s patrician elite; today, it houses the largest African American congregation of any denomination on the Lower East Side. The congregation worships in the shadow of two “Slave Galleries”: haunting, box-like rooms above the balcony where African Americans were forced to sit. This rare artifact of racial segregation in New York stands as a stark, physical reminder of how and why boundaries of marginalization are drawn and contested.
By the 1990s, leaders of St. Augustine’s
Church became concerned that the African American
In 1999, the Committee asked the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, with whom they already had a long relationship, to bring its rich experience with research, preservation and interpretation to the project. The Museum agreed to conduct fund raising, develop and direct a team of preservation architects, consulting historians, and researchers, and commit its own interpretive staff. It was intended, all along, that the Slave Galleries Committee would absorb enough of the basics to continue the project on their own.
The Slave Galleries Project launched in February 2000 at St. Augustine’s Church. The event revealed the power of this unique space to inspire dialogue about the most urgent issues facing our neighborhood. The Slave Galleries Project brought together more than thirty Community Preservationists – leaders representing African American, Asian, Latino, Jewish and other ethnic religious groups – with scholars and preservationists in a collaborative learning process. The project included restoration, interpretation, and civic dialogue in a highly integrated and mutually informative process. The need for a community forum was undeniable- we knew the “Slave Galleries” should be restored, preserved and used for this purpose.
The project conducted research along two lines. The genealogical to determine what we could about the founders of the church and who could have possibly sat in the “Slave Galleries,” and the architectural to learn all we could about what were conditions like in the galleries. How were they used? What could the Galleries tell us about the early nineteenth Century attitudes toward this insidious form of segregation?
At this point our affiliation with The Lower East Side Tenement Museum has officially ended and the St. Augustine’s Slave Galleries Committee is forging ahead on its own. We have a Historical Research Report that lays out all the information we know about who sat in the galleries; who sat in the sanctuary; how other churches in the area practiced segregation and how African Americans resisted it so that we can eventually tell this story to the public. Our Preservation Architect has given us an Existing Conditions Report and Preservation Plan that identifies all we know about the physical fabric of the Slave Galleries and lays out a design and budget for how to restore the space and make the galleries accessible to the public. These are the essential building blocks that will allow and encourage foundations to further fund the Slave Galleries Restoration Project. We have an enormous task facing us, however the Slave Galleries Committee fully intends to continue the important work of preserving and interpreting these sacred spaces.
The Vision of a Museum
Slavery is not African-American History, it is American History. We would lik Slavery in America was a violation of human rights. It also was a stain on the flag of liberty and justice, a betrayal of the spirit of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution. We envision a small museum where the history and impact of African-Americans on New York's Lower Manhattan is remembered. We also envisioned showing the progress that African-Americans have made in New York City and how their struggle expanded liberty and freedom for all New Yorkers.
Donations If you would like to assist in bringing this museum to reality, there are two things that you could help us with. Donations of historic artifacts, pictures, or other memorabilia that relate to African American heritage in New York will be greatly appreciated. Money donations are needed as well. Please make checks out to St. Augustine's Church with a memo for Slave Galleries. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, contact Deacon Edgar Hopper at ehopper@staugnyc.org .
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population on
the Lower East Side was diminishing as a result of gentrification. They
became concerned that the African American presence in the neighborhood would
disappear. In response, St. Augustine’s Rector, the Reverend Dr. Errol A.
Harvey formed a committee to preserve and interpret the “Slave Galleries”, and
named the Reverend Deacon Edgar W. Hopper as its chair and “On Site
Coordinator.” “We wanted to show that we were here,” explained Father
Harvey. He and the “Slave Galleries” Committee wanted to show physical
evidence that African Americans were present in the neighborhood as early as the
1820s, and to leave behind a testament to African American struggles and
contributions for the future, when, after more than two centuries, he feared
African Americans would be pushed out of the Lower East Side altogether.
e
to remember a small but significant part of the history of New York City. These
galleries set aside for enslaved people to sit, are an important remembrance of
one of the most shameful periods in American History.