Opinion
Ethnic Change and Acceptance in the Bronx

Lloyd Ultan
Bronx Borough Historian

 

The following essay appeared in the Spring 2000 issue of the The Bronx County Historical Society Journal and, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is reprinted here with the permission of the society's director, Dr. Gary Hermalyn. The article was originally written by the author for a speech at a panel discussion sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York at the Bronx Museum of the Arts on April 12, 2000.

Following the verdict in the trial of the police officers involved in the Amadou Diallo killing, the mayor of the City of New York praised the people of the Bronx. Perhaps the mayor was surprised that Bronxites expressed whatever anger they may have felt at the outcome merely by making their feelings known verbally and laying wreaths and candles on the stoop where the incident occurred. No mob rampaged through the streets of the Bronx; no one was manhandled; no one was violently assaulted; no one destroyed a single piece of property.

Violence was avoided largely because the Hon. Fernando Ferrer, the president of the borough of the Bronx, and a coalition of clergymen of all faiths, worked together to urge a calm response. Much of the response also had to do with the good sense of the people.

This calm response and the events that led to it may have surprised the mayor. It may have surprised the print and electronic media. But it did not surprise me. I fully expected the steps to be taken that were taken, and the reaction by the people of the borough.

Why? Because as the Bronx borough historian, I am aware of the heritage of the people of the Bronx. Throughout a history spanning more than three centuries, the people of the Bronx have displayed a remarkable willingness to accept people of different and varied ethnic and religious backgrounds. The people of the Bronx, both as individuals and as organized groups, have displayed a remarkable willingness and ability to work together toward a common goal that would advance all of them.

In 1744, a man by the name of Charles McDaniel arrived in the town of Westchester. In those days, that town covered most of what is now the Bronx. McDaniel was a weaver by profession, and the town had a thriving cloth-making industry. He requested town authorities to settle down there. McDaniel, however, was a Roman Catholic, and the town's citizens were Episcopalians, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterians and Quakers. The series of wars between England, a Protestant power, and France, the major Catholic power, were not yet over, and there was some apprehension that the Catholic McDaniel could be a traitor in their midst if he were allowed to come. A town meeting was called. The citizens of the town decided that if McDaniel merely took the oath of allegiance to the king, then he could settle among them. In this way, Charles McDaniel became the first known Catholic ever to live in the Bronx.

Sometime within the following 10 years, Philip Isaacs, a New York City merchant, purchased a farm in the town of Eastchester and moved there. In those days, Eastchester straddled the current boundary of the Bronx and Westchester County. Philip Isaacs was Jewish, and he is the first Jew ever recorded as living in the area. When he arrived, there was no outcry against him coming. No acts of anti-Semitism are recorded. Philip Isaacs simply lived peaceably among the rest of the population until he died in 1755.

In the first decades of the 19th century, large numbers of Catholic Irish fled from the poverty of their homeland. Many found a welcome in the Bronx. It was in the Bronx that they readily found jobs as gardeners and in the construction of the Croton Aqueduct and the High Bridge. In 1841, when the Catholic Church purchased land and began construction of Fordham University (then called St. John's College), not a single Bronxite objected.

During the Civil War, the government introduced a draft to fill the Union army with troops. The law provided that a person could get out of the draft if he gave money for a substitute. The trouble with this provision of the law was that anyone who was rich could avoid the dangers of battle, but anyone who was poor was forced to serve. In 1863, this led to a riot in Manhattan. Not only was property there destroyed, but hapless blacks found walking on the street were lynched by the rampaging mob, and the Colored Orphan Asylum was burned to the ground.

On the second day of the riot in Manhattan, the trouble spread to the Bronx. Draft offices were broken into and the records destroyed. Rails on the railroad lines were twisted out of shape to prevent troops from coming in. But what is most important here is that there is not a single record of any black person being harmed, accosted, or in any way molested in the Bronx. Moreover, a mass meeting was called in Tremont where prominent government officials asked the people to restore peace and order, and the crowd simply melted away.

And there were black people living in the Bronx at the time. What is most telling about how they were looked upon by the majority of population, which was of European stock, can be seen in three photographs. These photographs appear in three books published by The Bronx County Historical Society and date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The first photographs, dating from the 1890s, is found in The Bronx Cookbook. It shows a black businessman wearing a straw boater hat. He owns a clam bar near where Yankee Stadium stands today, and is called Cedar Jack. Around him in the photograph are his customers, all from German and Irish background.

The second photograph is found in Gary Hermalyn's book, Morris High School and the Creation of the New York City Public High School System. Dating from 1905, it is a group photograph of Morris High School's Acorn Literary Society (see photo above). Seated in the front is a teenage boy holding a gavel. He is obviously the person the student members of the Society chose to be their presiding officer. Almost all the members pictured are of European ancestry. The student leader of the group is black.

The third photograph is found in my own and Gary Hermalyn's book, The Bronx in the Innocent Years: 1890-1925. It dates from 1916. It shows the five members of the Clason Point Volunteer Life Saving Service. They were volunteers who manned the life saving station there. All of them are dressed in nautical uniforms. Four are dressed similar to common sailors in white outfits. The fifth, seated in the middle of them, dressed in an officer's blue uniform, is a black man. He is obviously the man they put in charge of the station.

Thus, in the very years when the segregation system was being fastened upon the blacks of the states in the southern part of the country, blacks in the Bronx were not only accepted as equals, they occupied positions as respected businessmen, and leaders of students and of men.

At about the same time, large numbers of Eastern European Jews and Italians began moving to the Bronx. In those days, in the world at large, there was not only anti-Semitism, but also prejudice against Italians. But this was not so in the Bronx. Both groups were welcomed. They both formed the core of healthy, stable neighborhoods and helped build the Bronx in the period of its greatest expansion.

During World War II, there was a nationwide anti-Semitic group called the Christian Front. The Christian Front tried to gain a toehold in the Mott Haven area of the Bronx. At that time, Mott Haven was largely Irish, with many Germans living nearby, and also a large number of Jews. Immediately, the neighborhood organized against the Christian Front. Clergymen - Catholics, Protestants and Jews - banded together to rally the people to reject the Christian Front and to eliminate its influence in the area.

On the heels of this experience, large numbers of blacks from Harlem and Puerto Ricans from East Harlem and the island began to pour into the Bronx. The area organized to welcome them. Local PTAs immediately elected blacks and Puerto Ricans to executive positions in the organizations, along with members of the existing ethnic groups. They took turns meeting in each other's homes.

Bronx merchants realized that the newcomers needed jobs and organized to provide them. Retailers at The Hub began to hire blacks and Puerto Ricans. The family of Alexander Burger, who owned the Art Steel Company in Mott Haven, went out of its way to hire Puerto Ricans. Their factory manufactured steel office furniture and files. This was done at a time when business owners in other boroughs were denying jobs to blacks and Puerto Ricans.

These events were chronicled by Samuel Lubell in a book he published in 1951 called The Future of American Politics. In it, he stated that the Bronx was trying to become the first peacefully integrated area in the United States. And this statement was written three full years before the Supreme Court came down with its Brown vs. Board of Education decision!

Just look at the experience of one person who arrived in the Bronx and grew up on Kelly Street at the time. General Colin Powell, in his autobiography, An American Journey, wrote about growing up in the Bronx in the 1940s and 1950s: "I have been asked when I first felt a sense of racial identity, when I first understood that I belonged to a minority. In those early years, I had no such sense, because on Banana Kelly, there was no minority. Everybody was either a Jew, an Italian, a Pole, a Greek, a Puerto Rican, or, as we said in those days, a Negro. Among my boyhood friends were Victor Ramirez, Walter Schwartz, Manny Garcia, Melvin Klein. ... Racial epithets were hurled around Kelly Street. Sometimes they led to fist fights. But it was not 'You're inferior - I'm better.' The fighting was more like avenging an insult to your team. I was eventually to taste the poison of bigotry, but much later, and far from Banana Kelly."

Indeed, this very lack of bigotry in the Bronx is shown by the fact that the people of the Bronx elected the very first borough president in New York City who was of Puerto Rican background. This was done in 1965, when the Hispanic population of the Bronx was far smaller than it is today. The people of the Bronx also elected the first black district attorney in New York State, and they did so at a time when the black population of the Bronx nowhere approached a majority of the population.

Today, it is common to point to the borough of Queens as being the borough with the most diverse population in New York City. Yet, without fanfare, without fuss, and without the news media noticing it, the Bronx has become very diverse. Moreover, the diversity in the Bronx is often masked by the fact that the newer ethnic groups coming in have peacefully settled among other groups.

From Europe, there are considerable numbers of Albanians, Greeks, Irish and Jews from the former Soviet Union; from Asia, there are large numbers of Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis; from the Middle East, there are both Arabs and Israelis; from Africa, there are a number of people from Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia and other states of Africa; from the Americas, people from Mexico, Honduras and other Central American countries, and even from some of the South American countries have arrived; from the Caribbean, people from Jamaica and some other English-speaking islands have become Bronxites, as have people from the Dominican Republic.

In fact, very peacefully, and without protest, both Buddhist temples and Muslim mosques have been erected in the Bronx to join the churches and synagogues as religious establishments.

Thus, the history of the Bronx reveals a long story of a people who are highly tolerant, who are accepting of the other. In the entire history of the Bronx, there has never been a race riot. The people of the Bronx have always made it their business to get along with their neighbors and to work with them to achieve common goals.

If, as it has often been said, that the United States is the City Upon a Hill, in its human relations, the Bronx must be considered the brightest beacon in that city. It beckons all to follow the lead of the Bronx. Indeed, in the relations among people of varied ethnic and religious background, the Bronx is the first urban area to come closest to making the American motto a reality. E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many: One. By achieving this reality, the Bronx is truly the All-America City.

Ed. note: For more information on The Bronx County Historical Society, which is located in Norwood at 3309 Bainbridge Ave., call 881-8900.