Black and Irish Conflicts in “Gangs of New York”

Martin Scorsese’s 2002 Gangs of New York is not good history. It adapts and further exaggerates Herbert Asbury’s imaginative “historical” monograph, Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Knopf, 1928). Both of these works correctly illustrate some of the gritty and at times greusome textures found in a mid-nineteenth-century American city, through their portrayals of the infamous Five Points neighborhood of New York. Certainly, New York suffered extreme poverty and brutality in the mid-nineteenth century. Violence was real. Theft, brawls, arson, rape, mutilation, and lynching all happened. Amidst this spectrum of historical violence, my own critique of the film is in regard to Black and Irish conflicts. Though Scorsese never hesitates to depict brutalities, he emphasizes the role of non-Irish and non-human entities in racial conflict, and thereby undermines Irish agency in violence against African Americans.

Both Scorsese and Asbury deviate from historical accuracy in service of sensationalist narratives of vice and violence. An excellent scholarly review of the movie and the book is Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s “Scorsese’s Gangs of New York: Why Myth Matters” in The Journal of Urban History. Gilfoyle’s own scholarship has explored metaphorical and literal under-parts of New York (His A Pickpocket’s Tale and City of Eros are two of his excellent monographs). Yet, he critiques both the filmaker and the writer. He notes the extreme and medieval quality of violence anachronistic in the works of both Asbury and Scorsese. Gilfoyle enumerates the historical inaccuracies that include Scorsese’s fictions of catacomb war dens under the city and naval bombing of the Five Points. Asbury’s medieval tropes and Scorsese’s subsequent pornography of violence are overdramatized. But to what end? Gilfoyle suggests conscious evaluation of this historical myth making.

Scorsese is willing to show discrimination and horrific violence against New York’s African American population. However, he subtly distances Irish immigrants from roles of perpetrators in these conflicts and places blame for this violence at the feet of Protestant nativists, bigoted individuals and a militaristic American state. Scorsese highlights experiences shared by poor black and Irish New Yorkers, and not conflict between these groups.  This is a problem.

Scorsese’s treatment could find support in the academic argument for instances of class cooperation among black and Irish New Yorkers as presented by Graham Hodges’, “‘Desirable Companions and Lovers’: Irish and African Americans in the Sixth Ward, 1830-1870,” in The New York Irish, eds. Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996).  Neither Scorsese nor Hodges is ignorant of racism against African Americans. However, Hodges believes scholarship has overemphasized racial tensions between Irish and black New Yorkers. Hodges wants to show that struggles common to black and Irish people resulted in historical instances of community and family cooperation.

Hodges asserts that proximity and poverty forge alliances, an argument that tracks with Scorsese’s depiction of African Americans and Irish-American relations. As Irish immigrant gangs prepare for battle in the film’s opening sequence, African Americans are shown drumming, dancing, and conjuring in the subterranean catacombs. The character of “Jimmy Spoils,” played by Lawrence Gilliard Jr, is an African American whose illicit activities forge partnership with a group of Irish-Americans including Amsterdam Vallon, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Jimmy’s political allegiances remain with the immigrants and the Tammany machine as he works with Vallon to elect an Irish candidate for Sheriff. To this end, Jimmy forces a Civil War veteran to the polls. When the vet argues that his amputated arm was contribution enough to black welfare, Jimmy credits it only as “a start” to what the vet’s vote would continue. Would an African American during the Civil War understand Tammany politics as a step toward racial equality? Unlikely. Eventually, As Vallon rebuilds the “Dead Rabbits” gang to kill Bill “the Butcher” Cutting (Daniel Day Lewis) and vanquish his father’s death, Jimmy joins the reconstituted “Dead Rabbits” Irish gang. Jimmy a perhaps a “desirable companion” as it relates to theft, machine politics, and gang warfare.

For Scorsese, Irish and black sexual relationships only exist in the context of a brothel. One topless black woman accompanies and smokes with Amsterdam in post-theater revelry, but is hardly portrayed as a “desirable” sexual partner for the sake of lasting relationship. Hodges, in fact, does point out the durable relationship of some Irish and black residents of the Five Points who cohabited, partnered, married, and built families. These are specific historical realities omitted by Scorsese. Yet, Hodges overstates the impact of such interactions. He suggests:

“Although they competed economically and lived closely together, Irish and black coexisted far more peacefully than historians have suggested. Day-to-day contact was as harmonious as could be in a tough, urban slum, while nighttime leisure produced a syncretic culture. A few brave souls intermarried. …Although disharmony and conflict abounded, there were also many points of cooperation and exchange. In their mutual experiences in the crowded Sixth Ward, black and Irish found common ground and affection” (p. 124).

Hodges shows instances of intimacy that do not appear in Scorsese, yet both suggest that black and Irish New Yorkers shared struggles and at times cooperated. How do these assertions find a place in the panorama of violence painted by Asbury and Scorsese? How do they square with violent conflict in the historical record?

Scorsese is less concerned with cooperation, but his film diminishes Irish collective agency in anti-black racism.  Rather, Scorsese distances Irish agency from racist violence in the historical record in showing alternate mediating forces.  An Irishman at a Civil War parade beats an African American after a non-immigrant white person’s derides the Irish as friendly to blacks.  A thug outraged at the presence of an African American in a Catholic church happens to be an Irishman who previously and consistently betrayed his own immigrant people. In these cases, conflicts between blacks and Irish New Yorkers are provoked by a nativist groups or a particularly prejudiced individual.

The ultimate instigator in Scorsese’s film is the federal government.  The state’s role in violence is accentuated by the concurrently situated Dead Rabbit riots and the Draft riots in the film.  Though these events did not happen in the same year, viewing them together further renders racist violence coincidental to the Irish/nativist conflict central to the movie.  By the film’s account, the non-human entity of the federal government fosters racial animosity as the product of militaristic exploitation of poor whites.   The government manipulates Irish immigrants into Union army conscription and represents a conflated platform of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass’s political agendas.  Changing racial politics are imposed by the state and by the force of naval shells martial law is indiscriminately imposed upon the Five Points.

Hodges, the historian, avoids conflating the Dead Rabbits riot and the Draft riot.  But regarding the 1857 Dead Rabbits riot, Hodges suggests “no mention of abuse of African Americans or their institutions” (p. 116).  While this may be correct, his singular source examined for these riots is Asbury. Given Asbury’s willful neglect of African American culture and life in his 1928 work, it would be unlikely that he would investigate the impact of the event on African Americans. Hodges’ assertion lacks support and highlights the problems of using Asbury’s narrative in reconstructing black and Irish relations.  Scorsese follows Asbury as well, in depicting the black draft riots as tangential and unrelated to the conflict between Irish and nativist factions in the five points. Despite Scorsese’s willingness to show the brutalization and murder of many African Americans, including the aforementioned Jimmy Spoils, racism in the film is tangential to the brutal daily struggles of the central actors.

Historical narratives of interracial experience and cooperation are important.  Shared spaces and struggles at times featured black and Irish New Yorkers together.  But Scorsese and Hodges diminish Irish agency in anti-black racism and overstate black and Irish cooperation, respectively.  Both problematic assertions contribute to popular and politicized conceptions of an American ‘melting-pot.’  Struggles of immigrant groups displayed honor.  Class solidarity across groups showed the indomitable spirit.  The mythos could easily adopt Hodges’ overstated assertion that “by midcentury, around the Five Points, necessity obliterated racial differences” (p. 113).  But what about pervasive racism and racialized violence?  Mythologies omit that as European immigrants assimilated into privileges of whiteness, people of African descent were denied equal opportunity and basic human liberties.  The exceptional tale hesitates to acknowledge anti-black racism, and avoids the examination of specific white groups’ active contributions to brutal racial oppression.  This remains a problem in the telling of American history, historically based fiction, and popular historical imagination.  An appropriately complicated study of nineteenth-century New York demands that common spaces or experiences of class did not distance real historical actors from the oppressive social constructs of race and racism.

Where can I get a pint in early-nineteenth-century Pittsburgh?

Map of Pittsburgh, 1817, with points of Interest by Fordham. In Elias P. Fordham, Elias Pym Fordham, Extracts from letters written, on a journey to the western parts of the United States: and during a residence in the Illinois Territory by an English farmer [Unpublished Manuscript], 1818. Manuscript property of the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois.

Before digital platforms such as yelp, analog media provided recommendations for food and lodging.  Though an early-nineteenth-century letter or book could not link to google maps, Elias Pym Fordham’s 1818 manuscript embedded a hand drawn map, to ensure his readers could find his recommended hotel and O’Hara’s brewhouse in Pittsburgh.

Fordham’s prospective readers would have been English immigrants to the early American republic.  They would follow his route through the United States to seek new opportunities for “free” industry and society in locations such as Edwards County, Illinois, where Fordham’s group of migrants settled.  But, a more basic pursuit – the question of where an Englishman could get a pint in an early-nineteenth-century city – had to be addressed by Fordham.

I wish to explore a basic question for the  early-twenty-first-century historian who ‘follows’ Fordham and other people, cities, and movements of the nineteenth century:  How do analogue and digital processes impact historical investigation, as one finds, examines, and presents an archival source?  In this post I will reflect on my own process to discover and share the unpublished “Extracts” of Fordham.

One of my ongoing research interests is non-conformist English dissenters who migrated to the “Old Northwest” in the late 1810s and early 1820s.  I have been fascinated with their commentaries on freedom and slavery in the early American republic, and this groups’ networks and activities as they concerned Illinois’ hotly-contested slavery debates in the 1820s.  This research interest prompted me to search for documents related to this community at the Newberry Library, here in Chicago.  Though I was not specifically searching for Fordham, his manuscript surfaced in my explorations of works by his relatives and friends with whom he emigrated from England and settled in Edwards County, Illinois.

The Newberry’s catalog actually had distinct but related call numbers for the manuscript itself and the detailed maps included in the bound volume.  The inter-textuality and multimedia nature of the unpublished work struck me as highly interesting.  An unnamed editor or compiler had cut graphics directly out of another source or sources; Fordham’s journals or letters.  I am currently working on a paper for publication that explores the manuscript, its interesting hybrid genre, and its intended function.

However, sources such as this have a value beyond the focus of my intended study.  Maps of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati drawn or copied by Fordham may reveal details about those cities important to the study of those cities.  The landmarks highlighted by Fordham may speak to practical needs of the author, his companions, and similar immigrants.  City maps in particular stand in contrast to the planned yet underdeveloped settlements of Wanborough and Albion, Illinois that Fordham also includes.  These may speak to the role of the city in the ideological considerations and founding visions for these communities.  Were riverside urban locales models for the English cosmopolitans’ new developments?  Or were these cities the antitheses of settlements on the prairie?

Digital technologies assisted my access of the Fordham manuscript, and digital technologies will likely provide valuable tools in answering these remaining questions.  I stumbled across the document to the credit of the Newberry’s excellent digital catalog.  Online search functions led me through a series of related subject queries, and to the manuscript by an author I would not have found through randomly ventured Boolean search terms.  Though this could have taken place in analog through explorations of a card catalog system, the search process would have required much more labor and time.    Also, I captured digital images from the document quickly and efficiently with the use of my smartphone’s camera (with no flash, of course).  In this way, I easily transferred images for digital storage and filed them on my own computer.  Maps, color pictures of the binding, and images of handwritten pages can be easily edited, transported, attached, embedded, and posted (all adherent to the Newberry’s policies, of course).   I hope to use digital media to map the journey of Fordham, and perhaps compare it with other immigrants to Edwards county.  Digital technologies also offer myriad possibilities for visualizing the journeys, social networks or correspondence of these travelers, and re-creating in multiple dimensions images astute migrants created or copied.

I must reflect, however, on the value of my analog investigations of the subject.  I enjoyed my sensory interactions with the manuscript (Yes, I’m a geek.  No, it did not reek of O’Hara’s brewhouse.).  But to see, feel, and smell the manuscript also contributed to my engagement with it.  In a digitally scanned copy, I may not have so quickly noticed how much more recent the binding was on the volume.  I also may have missed the different inks and pencils used throughout the manuscript, or the different paper textures of maps cut from other sources and pasted into the compiled work.  Indeed, my analog exploration of the archival manuscript served as a critical hinge.  Between speedy digital retrieval, and a smooth digital capture for storage or presentation, the analog interaction was the site for meaningful interpretation, and will prove integral for any new media representation.

Review of “The Church in the Southern Black Community” Collection, Documenting the American South

http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/morris/ill311.html

African American churches served congregants, visitors, and communities in many ways.  They remain a valuable resource for the historian.  “The Church in the Southern Black Community,”  one collection included in Documenting the American South online, is a valuable resource that uses a digital platform to archive and present histories of those religious institiutions and African American history more broadly.

I have long marveled at the wealth of information made available in the Documenting the American South collections.  This digital publishing initiative was a project of theUniversity Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  It has digitized massive volumes from the libraries rich holdings, with special attention given to works that highlight the American South.

Digitization began for the project in 1996 with a pilot project of well-known slave narratives.  The project grew to include many other collections, and the number of separate digitized collections stands at 17 as of this blog’s post.  Many of the collections digitize printed texts, but most contain some fascinating digital access to material culture from North Carolina and the south; examples include oral histories and music that can be heard online, colonial records, North Carolina maps, and even representations of monuments.  A central list of all the collections, with concise summaries of each collection assist the student or researcher.

As of the most recent google analytics report run for the project as a whole, the site hosted  more than 68,000 visitors in July of 2012.  The site allows visitors to not only browse the archives, but also view past analytics data for the project as a whole.  As these numbers might suggest, the project remains a great success.  They accomplish their stated aim to supply “teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research.”

I am curious, however, to know how regularly “The Church in the Southern Black Community” resources are utilized.  The longevity of the project (and the number of years this section of the project has been completed)  has contributed to widespread awareness of the resource in academic circles.  But recognition is also a result of the quality of the archive itself.  It recieved an award from the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Libraries Competition.  Three scholars are credited for extensive work with the collection:  Reginald Hildebrand, Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies and History; Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Adjunct Professor of American Studies; and Donald G. Mathews, Professor of History and American Studies.  More information about this collection is available.

The project has two labels which artificially limit the audience and interest for this collection – Church and Southern.  This is in no way a critique of the project or its leadership.  These terms define the categories by which material was included in the archive.  However, many of the works contained in the archive have a much broader relevance.  Rather than critique the collection, I wish to draw attention to its resources among other scholars whose research is not confined to African American churches or Southern culture and life.  In addition to information about the collection, “The Church in the Southern Black Community” collection’s home page contains links to an introduction written by Professor Maffly-Kipp, an alphebetical index to the collection, an index of digitized images in the collection, and a cross reference guide to religious content in the related “Slave Narratives” collection.  The entire collection can also be searched by keywords as well. The presence of images, and a related collection of documents highlight at the onset the diversity of materials that are included or referenced in this resource.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/johnson1/ill47.html

To literally illustrate my point that many texts function in historical interpretation beyond the bounds of the collection’s self-identification, the image to the left is easily found in the index of images under the place name: England.  In the case of this image, it was included in  Thomas Lewis Johnson’s Twenty-Eight Years a Slave, or The Story of My Life in Three Continents, published out of Bournemouth, England in 1909.  This is perhaps not the “who,” “what,” or “where” one might expect to find depicted in a collection relating to African American Churches and the American South.  The Atlantic world in which people, ideas, and commerce passed can be seen in this and other sources, even though that is not an explicit aim of the collection.

Other locations, such as New York or Pennsylvania, represent additional departures from the geographic boundaries set by the collection’s functional organization.  These locations offer the ways in which American religious life was not altogether divergent along the lines of sectionalism in the nineteenth century.  A scholar studying these cities, African Americans theirin, or American history more broadly would do well to consult these easy to access digital sources for unexpected windows into American life.

The links to slave narratives also function in a similar way, providing a lens on lived religion in and beyond church and parachurch institutions.  Subjects that can easily be searched and accessed accross many texts include deathways, conjuring, and religious motivations for resistance to slaveholders.

The collection does a wonderful job presenting a wealth of information, and makes it easy to access that information a number of ways.   It highlights the lived religious experience of many African Americans, and presents that value of studying both the informal and the institutional.  It ought to remind the historian how churches both shaped and recorded African American life and culture.   As it aids explorations on both of these axes, “The Church in the Southern Black Community” is an excellent resource for scholarship, teaching, and exploration.

a blog’s potential… a potential blog

What is a history blog’s potential?  How should that shape my potential blog?

In order to examine what a blog can do, I am looking at the blog of Trevor Burrows, a fellow PhD graduate student interested in American Religious History.  You can follow his blog, “No Religious Islands.”

Burrows a PhD student at Purdue University, who studies American Religious History.  In November, he presented his research on a panel I moderated on Race and Religion in American History at the Loyola University HGSA Conference.   I impressed by his proposal and had seen him without really meeting each other at another event.  But in advance of his presentation, a quick google search revealed his blog.  Just a simple glance at the bio page revealed some similar academic interests and made me excited to hear his talk.

Burrows’ blog illustrates some of blog media’s potential as it relates to a young historian and those who might be interested in his work.

Right away, it is easy to get a feel for who he is.  As I already mentioned, searching his name online does not dead end at scholarly publications and a university website.  He is transparent and accessible.  A few personal details on his “about” tab reveal that he is a real person with a real life.

I find that his clean format and straightforward style choices are clean and non-pretentious.   I really like that.  I also feel his tone and language follows suit – he avoids jargon, and remains very accessible.  I think that is important.

Burrows’ posts include many different types of entries.  I want to discuss just a few.

One entry discusses his anticipation for “another conference weekend” and his preliminary thoughts about the paper he presented at the Loyola HGSA conference.  As I heard Burrows’ polished presentation, I found this preliminary reflection very interesting.  If I had carefully read the blog, with his questions and working interpretations in advance I would have been a more thoughtful listener and better able to ask useful questions.  This seems a very useful function of the blog.  I like the idea that his preliminary thoughts can be questioned in a public format that may encourage feedback and enhance his own more formal process.

Another entry is a list discussing the making of lists.  It is a list of resources, that include a book review Trevor recently wrote for a group blog on Religion in American History, and an academic blog put together by Linford D. Fisher and a graduate seminar at Brown surveying the historiography of Religion in the Early Modern Atlantic World.  These are great resources I would have not encountered otherwise.  But it is more personally an outlet for his  genuine (and understandable) frustrations about devising his comprehensive exam lists. It is also a forum for others to hear him out and voice some advice or encouragement.  The entry also includes a video Burrows’ found appropriate given his content.  I can see how some feedback during a frustrating time in graduate school is very uplifting, not only to him but also for others in that situation.  Also, I feel that his blog collects multiple resources that someone in that comprehensive exam process or of similar interests would be happy to find.

A final entry I wish to discuss is his discussion of Edward Blum’s NPR interview regarding his recent book with Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ.  As another type of post, this entry offers Burrows’ excitement about the interview and his candid reflections on being only halfway through the book.  This is a promising alternative to a formal book review, and moves discussion into more flexible, multimedia ways to access scholarly work.  As someone myself who is eager to read the book and unfortunately missed a chance here in Chicago hear the authors discuss their book at an event at the Newberry Library, this was useful to me.  Also, I believe that this function of the scholar’s blog could potentially open the conversation to non-specialists and non-academics.  Someone reading his blog to see how he is doing could easily see the title, the book’s graphic, and Burrows’ introduction to the work.  As a result, they may be drawn to hear the NPR interview or read the book.

These functions of a blog are really quite valuable, especially for those within the academy.  It opens up thought processes and opportunity for feedback and encouragement.   It helps the scholar keep current with and connect with their field in meaningful ways.  It also can help a scholar think about and use diverse media to facilitate wider dialogue.  In reviewing Burrows’ blog, I am convinced I need to read them even if own abilities, interests, and dedication as a blogger are limited.

As for my own future as a blogger, we shall see.

A questions remains:  Can a blog help me be a more transparent and public voice, for and among the people?  Maybe.  Perhaps it could have the opposite effect. The blogosphere could further saturate my mind and life with more narrow, parochial, academic concerns.  It could further remove me from the struggle, the prophetic, and the praxis of justice.  But I don’t know.

The blog is a useful tool, for sure.  I should figure out how to use it before I judge the value of its function.  So, here’s giving it a try…