On April 6, 1712, a group of enslaved people gathered in Manhattan, setting fire to a building on Maiden Lane, near Broadway. When white people gathered to put out the fire, the enslaved people attacked with hatchets, guns, and swords. This brief incident of violence became known as the New York Slave Revolt of 1712, one of the earliest slave revolts in what became the United States.

New York was a major center for the slave trade, and remained so until after the American Revolution. The Dutch had brought enslaved African people to New Amsterdam, but day-to-day, they had a relatively high amount of freedom, at least compared to other enslaved people in the Americas. In fact, under the Dutch, such people had some legal rights, including the right to marry and the right to own property.

When the English took the small colony over in 1664 and renamed it New York, those rights started to disappear. Moreover, slavery became a bigger part of the city under the English, with the Royal African Company importing enough enslaved people that the city built a slave market near what is today Wall Street.

By 1700, about 20 percent of New York was made up of enslaved people. Slavery was absolutely central to life in New York, something that is largely unknown today. Northerners like to think slavery was a southern thing, but not only were northern ship owners and sailors largely responsible for bringing enslaved people to the American colonies and then the United States, and not only were many northern fortunes for families and institutions that are still wealthy today founded on ripping enslaved people out of their homes, but there were also just generally a whole lot of enslaved people in the North, especially in New York.

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