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Little Africa was an African American neighborhood inGreenwich Village and particularly theSouth Village, from the mid-19th century until about the turn of the 20th century. The dominant African American center in Manhattan of its period, as part of a general northwardmarch uptown it was preceded by theFive Points (also known as "Little Africa" or Stagg Town), and succeeded by theTenderloin,San Juan Hill and eventuallyHarlem. Its main thoroughfare wasThompson Street, and also the complex of Minetta Lane/Street/Place, and much of its historic area lies with the current Sullivan-Thompson Historic District.[1]
The name Little Africa was given to several black communities in New York City, it was first applied to what became the Five Points. It was the original site of theAbyssinian Baptist Church, opened onWorth Street - now inTriBeCa - in 1808 by free Anglo-Africans andEthiopian sailors. During the 1890s the name Little Africa was also applied to the area near Broadway and Harrison streets inWilliamsburg.[2]
Little Africa in Manhattan initially developed as a reaction to the violence of the 1834anti-abolition riots in the Five Points. It formed a demographic contrast to the smaller, more rural and middle-classSeneca Village located farther north until its razing in 1857.[3] The urban neighborhood suffered great violence itself during the 1863draft riots, although in the aftermath of the Civil War its African American population grew with the migration of Southern freedmen.
Two centuries before the urban neighborhood, under Dutch colonial rule there was acomplex of African-owned farms in approximately the same area north of New Amsterdam. The territory had been given to eleven Africans in 1644 by theDutch West India Company and played as a buffer for the Dutch colony against local Indians.[2]