Slavers in New York

In the 1830s Clement Clarke Moore came out as the author of a poem he had written anonymously, “A Visit to St. Nicholas,” commonly known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”  Moore was a professor of theology and also a prominent resident of New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, where a park is named after him. He was also a slave owner and a staunch opponent of abolition.  Moore’s is among the names documented by the brilliant guerilla public awareness project, Slavers of New York.  The group places stickers at sites around the city named for or associated with enslavers.

Started by Ada Reso, Elsa Eli Waithe and Maria Robles, the campaign aims to alert New Yorkers to the extensive history of slavery in the area. According to a story in the New York Times, the group has place around  1,000 stickers so far, some bearing prominent New York place names like Lefferts, Nostrand and Stuyvesant.

The intent is not to strip the names of enslavers from public places but to get the information to people.  I think of it as a paper variant of the Stolpersteine (stumbling blocks), the brass sidewalk plaques in Germany and elsewhere in Europe at places where Jews were deported.   

If you are interested in learning more, Slavers of New York has an excellent Instagram page as well as a gofundme campaign.  It can be found on Twitter at @slaversofny.