African Americans in New York City

According to the 2010 census, New York City had the largest population of Black residents of any U.S. city, with over 2 million within the city's boundaries, although this number has decreased since 2000, falling below 2 million as of 2020.{{cite web|url=http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000lk.html|title=New York city, New York QuickLinks|publisher=U.S. Census Bureau|access-date=December 1, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131120113510/http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000lk.html|archive-date=November 20, 2013|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}} In fact, New York recorded the third largest Black population decline among American cities from 2000 - 2020, registering a loss of nearly 200,000 Black residents (roughly 9% of the 2000 Black population).{{Cite web |date=2023-01-31 |title=Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City - The New York Times |website=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/nyregion/black-residents-nyc.html |access-date=2024-11-25 |archive-date=January 31, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230131102307/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/nyregion/black-residents-nyc.html |url-status=bot: unknown }} The driving factor for this outmigration appears to be the increasing cost of living in New York, particularly for families. Black families leaving New York are frequently drawn to places where job growth and housing is more plentiful.

The Black community consists of immigrants and their descendants from Africa and the Caribbean as well as native-born African Americans. Many of the city's Black residents live in Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem, and The Bronx. Several of the city's neighborhoods are historical birthplaces of urban Black culture in America, among them, the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford–Stuyvesant and Manhattan's Harlem and various sections of Eastern Queens and The Bronx. Bedford-Stuyvesant is considered to have the highest concentration of Black residents in the United States. New York City has the largest population of Black immigrants (at 686,814) and descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean (especially from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana, Belize, Grenada, and Haiti), Latin America (Afro-Latinos), and of sub-Saharan Africans. In recent decades, as Afro-Caribbean and West Indian populations in the city have shrunk,{{Cite web |title=People of African Descent in New York City – Center for Law and Social Justice |url=https://clsj.org/programs/people-of-african-descent-in-new-york-city/ |access-date=2024-11-26 |language=en-US |archive-date=September 8, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240908170348/https://clsj.org/programs/people-of-african-descent-in-new-york-city/ |url-status=live }} immigration from the African continent has become the primary driver of Black population growth in New York City.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/nyregion/west-african-immigrants-nyc.html|title=African and Invisible: The Other New York Migrant Crisis|author=Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura|newspaper=The New York Times|date=January 13, 2023|access-date=January 26, 2023|archive-date=January 25, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230125220924/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/nyregion/west-african-immigrants-nyc.html|url-status=live}}

The racial and ethnic makeup of Black neighborhoods in New York is also changing. From 2000 to 2010, the Black share of all residents in the average majority Black New York City neighborhood declined by 3.7 percentage points, while the share of Other (+2.4), Hispanic (+1.7), and Asian (+0.4) residents all grew,{{Cite web |title=The Changing Racial and Ethnic Makeup of New York City Neighborhoods |url=https://furmancenter.org/files/sotc/The_Changing_Racial_and_Ethnic_Makeup_of_New_York_City_Neighborhoods_11.pdf |access-date=November 25, 2024 |website=NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy}} suggesting that while Black neighborhoods are becoming more diverse, they may also be losing their quintessentially Black character. As of 2010, Black majority neighborhoods in New York continue to see higher poverty rates and lower household incomes than their White Majority counterparts, but exhibit lower poverty rates and higher household incomes than Asian or Hispanic Majority neighborhoods, bucking national trends. Much of this can be attributed to the unique makeup of Black New Yorkers, with New York's substantial foreign-born Black population - which tend to be wealthier than US-born Blacks{{Cite web |last=Anderson |first=Monica |date=2015-04-09 |title=Chapter 1: Statistical Portrait of the U.S. Black Immigrant Population |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/04/09/chapter-1-statistical-portrait-of-the-u-s-black-immigrant-population/#:~:text=But%20foreign-born%20blacks%20have,is%20South%20Americans,%20at%20$55,000. |access-date=2024-11-26 |website=Pew Research Center |language=en-US |archive-date=August 23, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240823185309/https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/04/09/chapter-1-statistical-portrait-of-the-u-s-black-immigrant-population/#:~:text=But%20foreign-born%20blacks%20have,is%20South%20Americans,%20at%20$55,000. |url-status=live }} - making it a relative outlier compared to other major US cities.

{{More citations needed|section|date=March 2023}}

File:Harlem - Apollo Theater (48555309512).jpg on 125th Street in Harlem is the historic nexus of African American culture.]]

New York residents denied blacks equal voting rights. By the constitution of 1777, voting was restricted to free men who could satisfy certain property requirements for the value of real estate. This property requirement disfranchised poor men among both blacks and whites. The reformed Constitution of 1821 conditioned suffrage for black men by maintaining the property requirement, which most could not meet, so effectively disfranchised them. The same constitution eliminated the property requirement for white men and expanded their franchise.[http://www.archives.nysed.gov/education/showcase/201011afamvoting/index.shtml "African American Voting Rights"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101109220448/http://www.archives.nysed.gov/education/showcase/201011afamvoting/index.shtml |date=2010-11-09}}, New York State Archives. Retrieved February 11, 2012. The African Grove theater served the community until it was shut down by police. Seneca Village was established in 1825. In 1850, the American League of Colored Laborers, the first black labor union in the United States, was established in New York City.{{Cite web |last=Bradley |first=Jonathan |date=January 4, 2011 |title=American League of Colored Laborers (1850-?) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/american-league-colored-laborers-1850/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240205065637/https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/american-league-colored-laborers-1850/ |archive-date=February 5, 2024 |access-date=April 26, 2024 |website=BlackPast.org}}

Following the final abolition of slavery in New York in 1827, New York City emerged as one of the largest pre-Civil War metropolitan concentrations of free African-Americans, and many institutions were established to advance the community in the antebellum period. It was the site of the first African-American periodical journal Freedom's Journal, which lasted for two years and renamed The Rights of All for a third year before fading to obsolescence; the newspaper served as both a powerful voice for the abolition lobby in the United States as well as a voice of information for the African population of New York City and other metropolitan areas. The African Dorcas Association was also established to provide educational and clothing aid to Black youth in the city.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lI5ERUmHf3YC&q=new+york+encyclopedia+african+americans|title=The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition|first1=Kenneth T.|last1=Jackson|first2=Lisa|last2=Keller|first3=Nancy|last3=Flood|date=2010-12-01|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0300182576 |via=Google Books}}{{Cite web|url=https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/EncyNYC/Blacks_for_draft_riots.html|title=Blacks-Encyclopedia of New York City|website=virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu|access-date=2023-12-09|archive-date=May 25, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220525185916/https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/EncyNYC/Blacks_for_draft_riots.html|url-status=live}} "As late as 1869, a majority of the state's voters cast ballots in favor of retaining property qualifications that kept New York's polls closed to many blacks. African American men did not obtain equal voting rights in New York until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870."

Emancipated African Americans established communities in the New York City area, including Seneca Village in what is now Central Park of Manhattan and Sandy Ground on Staten Island, and Weeksville in Brooklyn. These communities were among the earliest.{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/uncovering-nyc-new-york-citys-first-free-black-communities-seneca-village/6613/|title=Uncovering NYC: New York City's First Free Black Communities — Seneca Village | Secrets of the Dead | PBS|first=Benjamin|last=Phelps|date=2023-04-18|website=Secrets of the Dead|access-date=2023-12-09|archive-date=December 9, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209100803/https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/uncovering-nyc-new-york-citys-first-free-black-communities-seneca-village/6613/|url-status=live}} The city was a nerve center for the abolitionist movement in the United States.{{Cite web|url=https://nyheritage.org/exhibits/two-hundred-years-erie-canal/aboltionism|title=Aboltionism | New York Heritage|website=nyheritage.org|access-date=2023-12-09|archive-date=December 9, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209101421/https://nyheritage.org/exhibits/two-hundred-years-erie-canal/aboltionism|url-status=live}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lF_uDwAAQBAJ&dq=new+york+city+encyclopedia+abolitionism&pg=PA3|title=The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition|first1=Kenneth T.|last1=Jackson|first2=Lisa|last2=Keller|first3=Nancy|last3=Flood|date=December 1, 2010|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0300114652 |via=Google Books}}

{{main|Harlem|Harlem Renaissance}}

File:Phillip A. Payton, Outlook.jpg

The violent rise of Jim Crow in the Deep and Upper South led to the mass migration of African Americans, including ex-slaves and their free-born children, from those regions to northern metropolitan areas, including New York City. Their mass arrival coincided with the transition of the center of African-American power and demography in the city from other districts of the city to Harlem.{{cite web |title=Great Migration: Definition, Causes & Impact |website=History.com |date=2010-03-04 |url=https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration |access-date=2023-12-09 |archive-date=February 12, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190212114006/https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration |url-status=live }}

The tipping point occurred on June 15, 1904, when up-and-coming real estate entrepreneur Philip A. Payton, Jr. established the Afro-American Realty Company, which began to aggressively buy and lease houses in the ethnically mixed but predominantly-white Harlem following the housing crashes of 1904 and 1905. In addition to an influx of long-time African-American residents from other neighborhoods,[http://etext.virginia.edu/harlem/JohMakiF.html "The Making of Harlem,"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060615081628/http://etext.virginia.edu/harlem/JohMakiF.html |date=2006-06-15}} James Weldon Johnson, The Survey Graphic, March 1925 the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill (now the site of Lincoln Center), Little Africa around Minetta Lane in Greenwich Village and Hell's Kitchen in the west 40s and 50s."Negro Districts in Manhattan", The New York Times, November 17, 1901."Negroes Move Into Harlem", New York Herald, December 24, 1905. The move to northern Manhattan was driven in part by fears that anti-black riots such as those that had occurred in the Tenderloin in 1900Alphonso Pinkney & Roger Woock, Poverty and Politics in Harlem, College & University Press Services, Inc., 1970, p. 26. and in San Juan Hill in 1905"Harlem, the Village That Became a Ghetto", Martin Duberman, in New York, N.Y.: An American Heritage History of the Nation's Greatest City, 1968 might recur. In addition, a number of tenements that had been occupied by blacks in the west 30s were destroyed at this time to make way for the construction of the original Penn Station.

In 1905, U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt appointed Charles William Anderson as Collector of Revenue in New York City.

{{main|Caribbean immigration to New York City}}

Harlem's decline as the center of the African American population in New York City began with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. In the early 1930s, 25% of Harlemites were out of work, and employment prospects for Harlemites stayed bad for decades. Employment among black New Yorkers fell as some traditionally black businesses, including domestic service and some types of manual labor, were taken over by other ethnic groups. Major industries left New York City altogether, especially after 1950. Several riots happened in this period, including in 1935 and 1943. Following the construction of the IND Fulton Street LineEchanove, Matias. [http://urbanology.org/BedStuy/ "Bed-Stuy on the Move"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170916131340/http://urbanology.org/BedStuy/ |date=2017-09-16}}. Master thesis. Urban Planning Program. Columbia University. Urbanology.org. 2003. in 1936, African Americans left an overcrowded Harlem for greater housing availability in Bedford–Stuyvesant. migrants from the American South brought the neighborhood's black population to around 30,000, making it the second largest Black community in the city at the time. During World War II, the Brooklyn Navy Yard attracted many blacks to the neighborhood as an opportunity for employment, while the relatively prosperous war economy enabled many of the resident Jews and Italians to move to Queens and Long Island. By 1950, the number of blacks in Bedford–Stuyvesant had risen to 155,000, comprising about 55 percent of the population of Bedford–Stuyvesant.{{cite book |last=Newfield |first=Jack |title=Robert Kennedy: A Memoir |publisher=Penguin Group |edition=reprint |date=1988 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/robertkennedyme000newf/page/87 87–109] |isbn=0-452-26064-7 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/robertkennedyme000newf/page/87 }} In the 1950s, real estate agents and speculators employed blockbusting to turn a profit. As a result, formerly middle-class white homes were being turned over to poorer Black families. By 1960, eighty-five percent of the population was Black.

In a reversal from the first half of the 20th century that saw scores of African Americans leaving the South for the North, between 2000 and 2020, many Black families left New York City and moved to the South.{{cite web |author1=Arya Sundaram |title=The African American Exodus from New York City |url=https://gothamist.com/news/the-african-american-exodus-from-new-york-city |website=Gothamist |access-date=July 5, 2023 |date=February 3, 2023 |archive-date=July 6, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230706012845/https://gothamist.com/news/the-african-american-exodus-from-new-york-city |url-status=live }} The Black population of the city over this time declined by 176,062, the third largest decrease amongst US municipalities, after Chicago and Detroit.{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=December 7, 2021 |title=Black People Are Leaving Chicago en Masse. It's Changing the City's Power Politics. |url=https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/07/chicago-black-population-decline-523563 |url-status=live |access-date=November 25, 2024 |website=Politico |archive-date=October 7, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007144805/https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/07/chicago-black-population-decline-523563 }} High rents, cramped living quarters, and the city's high cost of living and raising a family were among the reasons cited for leaving. The decline was greatest among young Black populations, with the number of children, teenagers, and young Black professionals decreasing more than 19 percent in the past two decades.

File:Mortuary Trucks in New York City by Archer West.jpg

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected African Americans living inside the United States.{{Cite web|title=2020 State of Black America|url=https://online.flowpaper.com/78ab0743/NULSOBA2020ESweb/|access-date=2021-02-22|website=online.flowpaper.com}} Black Americans are more likely to contract COVID-19, more likely to be hospitalized, and more likely to die from COVID-19 than White, non-Hispanic Americans.{{Cite web|last=CDC|date=2020-02-11|title=Cases, Data, and Surveillance|url=https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html|access-date=2021-02-22|website=Centers for Disease Control and Prevention|language=en-us|archive-date=November 4, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211104180026/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html|url-status=live}} Many Black Americans work jobs without health insurance coverage, leading to an inability to seek proper medical care when faced with a severe COVID-19 case. Furthermore, Black Americans were overrepresented in jobs labeled essential when governments began reacting to the pandemic, such as grocery store workers, transit workers, and civil jobs. This meant Black Americans continued to work jobs that posed higher risk to exposure to COVID-19.{{Cite news|title=Who are essential workers?: A comprehensive look at their wages, demographics, and unionization rates|url=https://www.epi.org/blog/who-are-essential-workers-a-comprehensive-look-at-their-wages-demographics-and-unionization-rates/|access-date=2021-02-22|website=Economic Policy Institute|language=en-US|archive-date=December 23, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201223114558/https://www.epi.org/blog/who-are-essential-workers-a-comprehensive-look-at-their-wages-demographics-and-unionization-rates/|url-status=live}}

The unique combination of stressors faced by Black people in America during the COVID-19 pandemic has put many Black social systems and crisis-meeting resources under stress. The Black church has historically been a place of community support, recognition, and social connections for African-American communities, a community that provides access to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs that many Black Americans face systematic difficulty in attaining.{{cite journal |last1=Chaney |first1=Cassandra |title=Family Stress and Coping Among African Americans in the Age of COVID-19 |journal=Journal of Comparative Family Studies |date=October 2020 |volume=51 |issue=3–4 |pages=254–273 |doi=10.3138/jcfs.51.3-4.003 |s2cid=226357674 |doi-access= }} The policy of social distancing as recommended for the sake of public health in COVID-19 has contributed to the hardships faced by all humans, but has affected Black Americans and their social systems especially. Black Americans that live within the poor and underserviced neighborhoods rely on complex social and religious organizations, including the Black church, to meet their physical and emotional needs.{{cite journal |last1=Davis |first1=Dannielle Joy |last2=Chaney |first2=Cassandra |last3=BeLue |first3=Rhonda |title=Why 'We Can't Breathe' During COVID-19 |journal=Journal of Comparative Family Studies |date=October 2020 |volume=51 |issue=3–4 |pages=417–428 |doi=10.3138/jcfs.51.3-4.015 |s2cid=226377965 }} Social distancing has led to an increased difficulty in maintaining these essential social relationships, resulting in increased social isolation throughout Black communities.

Within New York City, these issues are present or intensified. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the long-standing systemic racism present throughout New York City's healthcare system, especially in terms of access to critical healthcare resources in underserviced, and often predominantly Black communities.{{cite journal |last1=Douglas |first1=Jason A. |last2=Subica |first2=Andrew M. |title=COVID-19 treatment resource disparities and social disadvantage in New York City |journal=Preventive Medicine |date=December 2020 |volume=141 |pages=106282 |doi=10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106282 |pmid=33035550 |pmc=7536513 }} This inability to properly treat affected Black residents of certain New York City zip codes is especially harsh when contrasted by the abundance of empty hospital beds and available resources of the hospitals in more affluent and well-off communities. The racial inequality between zip codes is further highlighted when examining COVID-19 testing rates, where zip codes of predominantly Black New Yorkers are at a significantly higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19.{{cite journal |last1=DiMaggio |first1=Charles |last2=Klein |first2=Michael |last3=Berry |first3=Cherisse |last4=Frangos |first4=Spiros |title=Black/African American Communities are at highest risk of COVID-19: spatial modeling of New York City ZIP Code–level testing results |journal=Annals of Epidemiology |date=November 2020 |volume=51 |pages=7–13 |doi=10.1016/j.annepidem.2020.08.012 |pmid=32827672 |pmc=7438213 }} Of the ten zip codes in New York City with the highest COVID-19 death rates, eight of them are Black or Hispanic.{{cite news |last1=Schwirtz |first1=Michael |last2=Cook |first2=Lindsey Rogers |title=These N.Y.C. Neighborhoods Have the Highest Rates of Virus Deaths |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/nyregion/coronavirus-deaths-nyc.html |work=The New York Times |date=2020-05-19 |access-date=March 16, 2021 |archive-date=March 18, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210318204229/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/nyregion/coronavirus-deaths-nyc.html |url-status=live }}

{{Expand section|date=April 2023}}

{{Columns-list|

• William Alexander Brown, playwright
• Thomas Commeraw, potter and businessman
• George T. Downing, abolitionist, and activist{{Cite book |last=Washington |first=S. A. M. |url=http://archive.org/details/georgethomasdown00wash |title=George Thomas Downing; sketch of his life and times |date=1910 |publisher=Newport, R.I., Milne Printery |others=Duke University Libraries}}
• James W. C. Pennington, orator, minister, writer, and abolitionist{{Cite web |title=James W. C. Pennington, 1807-1870: Summary of The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States |url=https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/penning49/summary.html |access-date=2023-01-21 |website=Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |archive-date=May 13, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200513212509/https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/penning49/summary.html |url-status=live }}
• Charles Bennett Ray, minister, abolitionist, newspaper editor{{cite journal |last=Work |first=M. N. |year=1919 |title=The Life of Charles B. Ray |journal=The Journal of Negro History |publisher=Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, Inc. |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=361–371 |doi=10.2307/2713446 |jstor=2713446 |s2cid=149464921 |doi-access=}}
• Charlotte B. Ray, pastor, suffragist, and abolitionist{{Cite book |last=Snodgrass |first=Mary Ellen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SWusBwAAQBAJ |title=The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations |date=2015-03-26 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-45416-8 |pages=675 |language=en}}
• Henrietta Cordelia Ray, poet and teacher
• Mary Simpson, former slave of George Washington
• James McCune Smith, physician, apothecary, abolitionist, and author{{cite journal |author=Morgan, Thomas M |date=July 2003 |title=The education and medical practice of Dr. James McCune Smith (1813-1865), first black American to hold a medical degree |journal=Journal of the National Medical Association |volume=95 |issue=7 |pages=603–14 |pmc=2594637 |pmid=12911258}} Note: Glasgow University's matriculation album for 1832 lists Smith as "the first natural son of Samuel, merchant, New York" (translated from Latin)
• Edward G. Walker, politician, lawyer, and leatherworker{{Cite web |title=Edwin Garrison Walker |url=https://coloredconventions.org/black-mobility/delegates/edwin-garrison-walker/ |access-date=2023-01-21 |website=The Fight for Black Mobility: Traveling to Mid-Century Conventions, Colored Conventions Project |language=en-US |archive-date=January 21, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230121041416/https://coloredconventions.org/black-mobility/delegates/edwin-garrison-walker/ |url-status=live }}
• Theodore S. Wright, abolitionist and minister{{Cite web |last=Bowens |first=Lisa |date=2021-10-14 |title=Biographical Reflection: Theodore Sedgwick Wright |url=https://www.ptsem.edu/news/biographical-reflection |access-date=2023-01-21 |website=Princeton Theological Seminary |language=en |archive-date=January 21, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230121041437/https://www.ptsem.edu/news/biographical-reflection |url-status=live }}

}}

{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2023}}

{{Columns-list|

• 50 Cent
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• Eric Adams
• Ashanti
• ASAP Rocky
• Essence Atkins
• James Baldwin
• Angela Bassett
• Mary J. Blige
• Foxy Brown
• Mariah Carey
• Diahann Carroll
• Ruby Dee
• Mos Def
• DMX
• Whoopi Goldberg
• Cuba Gooding Jr.
• James Newton Gloucester
• Ja Rule
• Jay-Z
• Alicia Keys
• Sanaa Lathan
• Nicki Minaj
• Tracy Morgan
• Eddie Murphy
• Nas
• Lynn Nottage
• Carl Hancock Rux
• Reverend Al Sharpton
• Gabourey Sidibe
• Cicely Tyson
• Mike Tyson
• Denzel Washington
• Marlon Wayans
• Vanessa Williams
• Wu-Tang Clan
• James Baldwin}}
• Pop Smoke
• Sleepy Hallow

{{unreferenced section|date=February 2023}}

File:James McCune Smith.jpg, first African American to run a pharmacy in the United States]]

• Adam Clayton Powell Jr. - first person of African-American descent to be elected from New York to Congress; previously, the first person of African-American descent to be elected to New York City Council
• Alonzo Smythe Yerby - first black chairman of a department at the public health school, and the first black to be New York City Hospitals Commissioner, heading the city's hospitals department, namesake of the Harvard Chan Yerby Fellowship Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.{{Cite web|last1=Boston|first1=677 Huntington Avenue|last2=Ma 02115 +1495‑1000|title=Harvard Chan Yerby Fellowship Program|url=https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/yerby-fellows/|access-date=2020-06-26|website=Harvard Chan Yerby Fellowship Program|language=en-us|archive-date=November 2, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211102185213/https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/yerby-fellows/|url-status=live}}
• Arthur Mitchell - First African-American male dancer in a major ballet company: (New York City Ballet); also first African-American principal dancer of a major ballet company (NYCB), 1956
• Brigette A. Bryant - first woman of African-American descent to serve as Vice Chancellor of the City University of New York
• David Dinkins - first African-American mayor of New York City (1990)
• Dr. James McCune Smith - First formally trained African-American Medical Doctor
• Letitia James - first woman of African-American descent to be elected to citywide office (New York City Public Advocate)
• Mary Pinkett, first woman of African-American descent to be elected to New York City Council
• Robert O. Lowery - first African-American fire commissioner of the New York City Fire Department and of any major U.S. City fire department
• Samuel J. Battle - first African-American police officer in the New York Police Department following consolidation of the boroughs (1911). Also the NYPD's first African-American sergeant (1926), lieutenant (1935), and parole commissioner (1941).
• Shirley Chisholm - first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress and first black candidate, male or female, for a major party's nomination for President of the United States.
• Todd Duncan - first African-American member of the New York City Opera
• Wesley Augustus Williams - first African-American officer in the New York Fire Department
• William Grant Still's Troubled Island as performed by the New York City Opera - the first black-composed opera to be performed by a major U.S. company
• Willie Overton - first African-American police officer in present-day New York City (1891){{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4dc5DQAAQBAJ&dq=Willie+Overton+african+american+new+york+police+officer&pg=PA107|title=Introduction to Criminal Justice|first1=Callie Marie|last1=Rennison|first2=Mary|last2=Dodge|date=2015-01-08|publisher=SAGE|isbn=9781452240671 |via=Google Books}}

{{Portal|New York City}}

• Demographics of New York City
• History of New York City
• History of slavery in New York (state)
• Afro-Caribbean people
• Caribbean immigration to New York City
• Medgar Evers College
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
• Black Jews in New York City
• East Coast hip hop
• Universal Hip Hop Parade
• Puerto Ricans in New York City
• Black Lives Matter protests in New York City
• Black Lives Matter art in New York City
• African American Day Parade
• Little Africa, Manhattan
• Land of the Blacks (Manhattan)
• Syrian Americans in New York City
• Belarusian Americans in New York City
• Dutch Americans in New York City
• Dominicans in New York City
• Italians in New York City
• Irish Americans in New York City
• Chinese people in New York City
• Filipinos in New York City
• Japanese in New York City
• Koreans in New York City
• Russians in New York City
• Ukrainian Americans in New York City
• Jews in New York City
• Hispanics and Latinos in New York City
• Jamaicans in New York City

{{Reflist}}

{{African American topics|state=collapsed}}

{{Ethnicity in New York City|state=collapsed}}

{{New York City}}

{{Commons category|African Americans in Harlem}}

• [http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/history.htm History of Slavery in New York]
• [https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/recovering-new-yorks-entangled-dutch-native-american-and-african-histories-an-interview-with-jennifer-tosch Recovering New York's Entangled Dutch, Native American, And African Histories: An Interview With Jennifer Tosch]
• [https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/nys09.soc.k-6.statloc.slaves/slaves-in-new-amsterdam/ Slaves in New Amsterdam]
• [https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/06/29/slave-market New York City's Slave Market]
• [https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/henken08/articles/t/h/e/The_History_of_Black_New_York_864f.html The History of Black New York - Black New York]
• [https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/EncyNYC/Blacks_for_draft_riots.html Blacks-Encyclopedia of New York City]

New York City