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Buffalo Massacre Dr. Manisha Sinha’s Monthly Black History University Recap!
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In honor of one of the ten victims, Ms. Pearly Young we ask that you donate food to your local food bank. Mrs. Young ran a food pantry and every saturday, for 25 years she donated food. ***********
R.I.P #BuffaloSaints~ NY state abolished slavery in 1827, but Black people remained in danger of enslavement & kidnappings. In 1835, to fight back, Black abolitionist David Ruggles helped to found the N.Y. Committee of Vigilance an hybrid of the Black Panther Party & The NAACP.
Black New Yorkers remained in danger of enslavement or re-enslavement through widespread kidnappings. Black sailors would go missing from ports. Children would disappear on their way home from school.
In 1835, to fight back against the onslaught of oppression, Black abolitionist and businessman David Ruggles helped to found the New York Committee of Vigilance (NYCV), a multi-racial organization a hybrid of the Black Panther Party and The NAACP, would defend Black New Yorkers from predatory whites.
Jamila Brathwaite, authored “The Black Vigilance Movement in Nineteenth Century New York City,” writes, Ruggles fearlessly boarded ships in the New York harbor in search of Black captives or for signs of participants in the illegal slave trade. He published a list bounty hunters kidnappers and the free black traitors who aided them.
His work would not have been possible without the efforts of the Black community and leaders like William Wells Brown, a promenient Black Aboltitionist from Buffalo. Brown along with unnamed black people passed along intelligence, fed, clothed, and sheltered fugitives. They also noted suspicious activities and people.
Ruggles’ bookstore on Lespenard Street. It is the first known Black-owned bookstore in the United States.