Newsday from New York, New York • 82

63 Japan Bashing BIAS from Page 55 Unearthing History: Little Africa BLACKS from Rage 61 York the black z-prepare citys erected members. We saw a rash of incidents in December, but its hard to draw direct links. The Leagues Los Angeles office received a telephone bomb threat from a woman on Jan. 14 who ranted that the Japanese are filthy animals and what we remember is Pearl Harbor You just watch out for bombs planted around your Day of Remembrance. Police are investigating the threat.

The hate crimes that the Bias Prevention and Response Team and other agencies here tally may not reflect the actual numbers. Japanese and Japanese-Americans seldom come forward when incidents do occur, says Cho. If there were an attack upon a visiting Japanese businessman, she says, I dont think hed make a big deal about reporting it. And of New York area residents about 40,000 Japanese Americans live in the tristate area, approximately 15,000 in New York City, according to the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence she says, I think theyre pretty disconnected from the social service and advocacy organizations in the dty. A lot of them are based in New Jersey and travel into Midtown.

That the Japanese community here is spread out actually works as a deterrent to hate crimes, says Lillian Kimura, president of the New York chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. Most agencies consolidate all Asian groups into one category because a lot of people probably cant tell a Chinese person from a Japanese person, Bays Cho. That factor, ironically, carries over to Asian bashers. In December, for instance, two Korean grocery store owners on Staten Island were verbally abused and assaulted by a Hispanic man after they told him they couldn't change a bill for him. The man threw food at them and punched the store owner, knocking him out.

You Chinese get out of the he shouted, among other ethnic Blurs, police reported. He was arrested for second-degree assault. Weve seen people die over mistaken identity, Cho says. Some Japanese Americans say Japan bashing has been overhyped by the media. It the media raised the feelings of Americans against Japanese, says Fumi Matsuda, 26, an NYU student.

She adds that anti-Japanese sentiment was stronger in 1989, when New Yorkers lambasted the 51 percent buyout of Rockefeller Center by Mitsubishi Estates as another case of the Japanese taking over." Him Sato, director of research at the Japan External Trade Organization, also sees the situation as not that serious. As recently as 20 years ago, he says, anti-Japanese factions placed New York subway ads that read: Remember Pearl Harbor. I dont really think this is a big deal. I think it will fizzle very quickly, he says. Most of the Japanese support groups in the city are taking a wait-and-see stance.

We have been monitoring the media, monitoring the comments by American corporate executives as well as made by Japanese officials, Bays Morimoto. I don't know how effective that is, other than to make sure people aren't saying things that are inflammatory. Were doing that, and trying to be pro-active. Were often in the position of being reactive." Cho thinks that staging protests, whenever Japan-related racist comments are made by business and government leaders, could help. But we have limited resources." John Wheeler, vice president of the Japan Society, says: Hopefully, coed heads are going to prevail.

II To report bias-related crimes against Asian people in the New York contact the Human Rights Commission hotline at (212) 662-2427 or the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence at (212) 473-6485. Steve Garbarino is a frequent contributor to Part II. There were black military marching bands like the Hannibal Guards and the Velvet Blues. In the 1820s at a theater called the African Grove, on Bleecker and Mercer Streets, actor James Hewletts played Othello and Richard III. Through the next generation, many in the black community went to places like Pools Drinking Saloon on Thompson Street and the Arch Block on the Lower East Side, where a huge, black woman called Sue the Turtle, kept order.

They also went to Dickens Place in Five Points in the middle of Cow Bay Alley. It was so named because one night in 1842 the author Charles Dickens came to hang out there, accompanied by two police officers. A basement dive with whitewashed walls and a large worn wooden door, it was owned by a street-tough, but highly cultured black man named Pete Williams. His customers were served by waitresses black and white, who doubled as singers, dancers and sometimes tripled as prostitutes. On busy nights extra women would be called in from the streets.

Dickens Place attracted a large and mixed clientele. On the weekends the best black bands in the dty would appear, as would dancers like the legendary jig dancer Juba. The description of a jig dancer in Dickens American Notesis probably based on one of Jubas stellar performances. By the 1840s New York was expanding. The Church Street- Noho area became a business district, and black people moved north, first to what is now Little Italy and then to Greenwich Village.

During the Civil War racial tensions exploded in the draft riots. Over a three-day period some 70 black people were lynched by predominantly Irish mobs. The sympathy and guilt these heinous acts produced may well have helped propel New York, dty and state, into the war solidly on the side of the Union. After the Civil War, the northward black migration continued to the Tenderloin, now midtown. By the 1880s the huge migration northward by southern blacks had begun, and New York was a prime destination.

At this time, the West 60s, or San Juan Hill, was the hugest black enclave. In the early 1900s, at first slowly and then en masse, blade people moved up to Harlem, and by the 1920s it was the most populated black area in Manhattan. Back at the Negro Burying Ground, Mike Par-rington and his crew are working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. After the field work is done, the sdentific analysis will be conducted by Parrington and others at Lehman College. Well do demographic profiles figure the average age of male and female death learn about their stature and physiques, says Parrington.

Through bone chemical analysis we can determine things about diet. There are many more bodies here, Parrington claims. He estimates 300-400 skeletons remain to be found. This part of the Foley Square Project was supposed to end on Dec. 15, but after many battles a new deadline of March 31 was set for the completion of work on these grave sites.

They do want to build a building hoe, Parrington says with a shrug. I suppose, he says, some might ask, Is it right to disturb the dead? Hopefully, were raising peoples consciousness. African-American slave history in New York has been a closed book. Were opening it up and turning a few pages. Sen.

David A Paterson (D-L-Manhattan) is spearheading a movement to turn the site into a national monument with a commemorative memorial in the lobby of the federal office building that will rise on the site. The importance of this find is of national significance," says Dan Pagano, the citys only archeologist. Its as important as Ellis Island or the Statue of liberty." II Walking tours of New Yorks early black (downtown) neighborhoods are given by Reclaim the Memories. For more information, call Dr. Sherrill Wilson at (212) 799-2011.

Rodger Taylor is a free-lance writer. public school black school. In -f Manumission African Free children A few years help, a brick recalled the abolitionist James McCune Smith, writing in 1860. For decades African-American businesses and stores dominated the area: W.P. Johnsons leather goods shop at 64 Frankfort William J.

Wilsons Boot and Shoemakers shop at 67 Lispenard, John Carters family groceries at 156 Church, John Mitchells tailor shop at 233 Church. On Broadway and Lispenard was the Union Diner, a black hotel. Drugs and medicines were available at Josiah and John Hoppers shop at 365 Broadway; while the abolitionist Smith was busy healing people at 93 W. Broadway. From that location he also sold his Shaker Herbs.

On West Broadway was the Phoenix Society. Black abolitionist Sam Riggold Ward called it the most progressive and democratic organization in the country. It was interracial, pro-womens rights, and provided adult education, a high school for boys and girls; a library and a labor, training and placement center. Mental feasts was how abolitionist Lewis Tappan described the debates, lectures and forums regularly held there. At 150-152 Church Freedoms Journal (1827) and later The Colored American (1836), the citys earliest and most influential black newspapers, were published.

New Yorks first public school, historians say, was probably a black school, started in one room at 245 Williams St. In 1787 the New York Manumission Society, led by genteel white men like John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, created the African Free School to help black children prepare for freedom. A few years later, with the citys help, a sturdy brick building was erected on Williams near Duane. The school was equipped for 100 students; 300 regularly attended. Reading, penmanship, arithmetic and geography were stressed, and before accepting each student the trustees visited his or her family.

Eventually there were seven of these schools in lower Manhattan, and in 1853 they were incorporated in the citys school system. Even after emancipation in New York in 1827, the Little Africa communities were still affected by slavery. As early as 1786 mercenaries called black-birders had been kidnaping free black New Yorkers and shipping them into bondage down south. By the 1820s blackbirding was a brisk business. The Colored American newspaper warned, We are informed the notorious Daniel P.

Nash has returned from the south and is prowling about for more victims keep your children as much as possible out of the streets especially after nightfall. In 1835, with enthusiastic support from the black community, the Vigilance Committee was formed. Its purpose was to track and expose blackbirders and to free kidnaping victims. The committee in its first three years was involved in 522 cases; in its first seven, 1,373. The AME Church used its facilities to hide and help settle runaway slaves, as did the African-American insurance company (white companies would not insure blacks).

Their building, the Mutual Relief Hall on Baxter Street, bad a large trap door which led to a secret chamber extending the length of the building. New York, already a throbbing metropolis where one could hide or disappear fairly easily, became a bustling stop on the underground railroad. Despite slavery, poverty and other suggests that early African-American New Yorkers still found a way to party. Shane White, in his recent book on the end of slavery in New York, Somewhat More Independent, talks about the number of Negro dancing cellars that were prevalent after the Revolutionary War. Free and enslaved blacks from all parts of town would come to Bancker Street (now the southern tip of Madison Street) and not far from Fi 3 Points to gamble, drink, listen to music, socialize and do dances like the mazurka, quadrilles, the double lancer and le galop.

Its said that black people from Long Island developed a reputation for being exceptional in the art of dance. New Yorks first was probably a 1787, the New Society created School to help for freedom. later, with the building was NEW YORK NEWSDAY. THURSDAY. FEBRUARY 6.

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