24 July 1686
New York reserves waterfront portering for sworn porters and excludes Black and Indigenous slave labor
New York City, colonial New York
New York’s Common Council excluded Black workers and enslaved Indigenous workers from handling imported and export-bound goods at the bridge, weighhouse and market house. The detailed order complained that enslavers’ use of their own workers harmed the city’s sworn porters and reserved receipt and delivery of those goods to the sworn porters.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The short minute says “noe Negroe or Slave”; the fuller order names “Negroe or indian Slave” and describes people employed by masters. Its racial wording did not expressly exempt free Black workers, but the record does not establish enforcement against particular free people. The order supplies no fixed penalty and concerns specified waterfront work, not all Black employment.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 3; supplied pp. 39–58 and bibliography pp. 690–691, edition/year unidentified
- Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1675–1776, vol. 1 (1905), pp. 179–180: short minute and full order of 24 July 1686, scan checked ↗