REMARKS
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams discusses the importance of marking NYC's first slave market site
0:10:02
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4 min
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams addresses the committee, expressing gratitude for the passage of Intro 833-A, which mandates the placement of a sign at the site of New York City's first slave market.
He emphasizes the historical significance of acknowledging this part of the city's past and its ongoing impact on society.
- Williams recounts the bill's history, including his initial introduction of it in 2014 and the challenges in getting it properly implemented.
- He discusses the broader context of slavery's impact on American wealth and the ongoing effects of systemic racism.
- The Public Advocate stresses the importance of accurately teaching this history, especially in light of efforts in some states to limit such education.
Jumaane Williams
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Thank you, madam chair.
0:10:04
Much appreciated.
0:10:05
Good morning.
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My name is Shamani Williams, a public advocate of City of New York.
0:10:09
Thank you very much, Chair Williams, a member of the committee on civil human rights.
0:10:12
For not only holding and hearing to vote, but actually voting on the bill, and these important legislative matter matters.
0:10:19
I was planning to ask them, so I'm glad my colleagues did vote yes on intro 08838, which will ensure that we place a sign at Berlin Wall Street, which is the current location of where the 1st slave trade market took place in 1711.
0:10:33
The sign will also include it.
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An inscription that describes the role of the slave market in the city's economy.
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The role of the city's government is establishing the market and the use of the market in the sale of African and indigenous persons.
0:10:45
I first introduced this bill in 2014 when I was a council member, and the bill was known as intro 0036.
0:10:51
The bill was never voted on.
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The De Blasio administration agreed to proceed with the placing a sign in Manhattan Park Manhattan Park on the corner of Wall And Water Street.
0:11:00
It has been 10 years since it was installed while I am grateful that a sign was placed conveying all history.
0:11:05
It is not at the correct location.
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In 2022, members of my staff encountered a senior citizen standing in front of the sign.
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She told them she saw a documentary on the New York slave trade on Manhattan Naval Network, M and M.
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She told them that she went searching for the signs on 3 separate occasions and found it on that day on the 4th search.
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She had been looking at the correction.
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She had been looking at the correct location, which is not where the sign was placed.
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The wealth of America to this day was born from violence and greed of human chattel slavery.
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Well after slavery was outlawed in New York.
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Our city remained the center of the illegal national international Daybreak.
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The emancipation proclamation along with 13th amendments ratification in 18 65 began to dismantle the institution of child slavery in America.
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And equity of resources hardly ended there from the adoption of the black holes during reconstruction to the implementation of Jim Crow laws to the fight against a living minimum wage.
0:12:00
We can directly see the ways this violence and deliberate exclusion from economic safety was has provided prosperity to our city today.
0:12:08
At this very moment, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Tennessee introduced legislation to not teach this history.
0:12:13
So it's critical that people can see their connection between what is happening today and what happened at this market.
0:12:18
Slaves were emancipated sorry.
0:12:20
Enslaved New Yorkers were emancipated on paper, but shared no part of the wealth land and the institutions that their labor had financed and created.
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These structures have never been adequately addressed, especially since this nation employed a separate but equal doctrine.
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A doctrine in supreme court said is inherently unequal.
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The centuries that file will clearly show the ramifications of is slavery, continuing through institutional and systemic racism.
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It is vital that we never forget these part of our country's history and addresses impact.
0:12:48
We sometimes talk about the enslavement of America as just part of our past, but communities still feel the crippling generation of FX of the brutal violence that built the wealth of the banks that, to this day, surround the locational placement of this signage.
0:13:02
Passing this legislation will allow us as a city to acknowledge the enslaved men, women, and children, and pay our respects to their descendants.
0:13:09
So I'm glad that folks voted yes to help cement this history into the infrastructure of New York City.
0:13:15
I also know today in in a throughout the country, the people are being lied to about what created our society and the privileges and wealth that is there.
0:13:25
And I think people are being lied to about what caused it to get here so they can be lied to about what it takes to actually maintain it.
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I would like to thank all those who worked on this bill.
0:13:36
Thank you to Kaye Payne, who was my previous legislative director, when I was first when I first introduced this bill in 2014, thank you to a historian Christopher Cobb's who worked with my team and actually brought this to my attention.
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And lastly, thank you to Veronica Avery's my current chief deputy public advocate for policy and Rosie Mendez my current directive legislation and policy who worked on this bill from 2023-2024.
0:13:59
Thank you.
0:14:02
Sorry.
0:14:02
Just one thing I want to add because when we talk about this, I think sometimes folks hear the wrong thing.
0:14:07
And I always wanna make sure I'm clear that there is no one, black, white, brown, responsible for their systemic institutional slave arts systems that have come into play since then.
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But I do believe that all of us are responsible for the systems that we leave to our children and our grandchildren.
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And there's a place for everyone to try to change the impacts.
0:14:27
Thank you.