Center for Race and Law

New York in the early 1800s is described as a "chaotic and haphazard" town growing into a metropolis. Looking ahead to the destruction of Seneca Village, how did early city planning use systemic racism to reshape the Manhattan we know today? How are the effects of this reshaping and displacement continued today through gentrification?

Chapter 1: The author argues that New York’s "rise to prominence and prosperity harbored a somber and sinister side" because its banks, brokers, and insurance companies were the primary financiers of Southern slavery. How does this information challenge the Northern abolitionist narrative many of us learned in school? What are your thoughts on the city’s complicity in the institution of Southern slavery?

Chapter 2: The author describes a nineteenth century New York police force that "violated Black civil rights at every turn" because the city’s wealth depended on maintaining favorable relationships with Southern slaveholders. As the foundations of policing in New York were tied to the surveillance and control of Black bodies to protect economic interests, how does that history shape present-day trauma and mistrust of these institutions within the Black community?

When discussing slavery, the author mentioned how Garrison and Douglass believed that “the immediate end to slavery was the best and only course to rid the nation of its original sin.” The author further states that the vast majority of White people believed that subjugation of people of color was designed by God and should remain unquestioned by men. What did they draw on/ what context did they use to justify this thinking?

Think about the relationship between Irish immigrants and African Americans. What, in your opinion, complicated the relationship between these groups? Was it solely race and the misconceptions that came with it? Was it culture?

Wells describes the Tombs and Bridewell Prison* as overcrowded, unsanitary, and violent. Even after the original Tombs was demolished, the city rebuilt a new jail, what eventually became the Manhattan Detention Complex, known to generations of New Yorkers simply as “The Tombs.” That facility operated until 2021, when sustained pressure from organizers, advocates, and directly impacted communities forced the city to shut it down as a broader fight to close Rikers Island. Given this historical context, how does the story of the Tombs complicate the claim that new jails will be more humane or more just? As you consider today’s debates over closing Rikers Island and building borough-based jails, how does the city’s decision to repeatedly replace one jail with another shape the way you understand New York’s long relationship to incarceration.

Hester Jane Carr’s kidnapping exposes how deeply slavery’s economic logic permeated the Northern cities. The logic that Black people who were not enslaved, could be tricked, sold, and profited with little legal consequence. What does her story reveal about who the law was built to protect, and how does it challenge the myth of the benevolent North? Reflect on her experience. Her kidnapper told her to claim that she was a person who was enslaved, was sold for $750, and needed White witnesses to validate her freedom.

Wells describes early police officers who wore no uniforms and carried no visible badges. This structure blurred the line between state authority and surveillance. What does this reveal about the origins of policing, and how do you see echoes of these practices in modern policing tactics? Think about plainclothes units, the use of stop-and-frisk and how much discretionary power officers still hold. How does upholding these tactics across centuries shape your understanding of what policing is designed to do, and who it is designed to control?

*The Tombs and Bridewell were technically jails, not prisons. Modern terms, it functioned like a jail, not a prison. But the people at the time called them prisons.

As you read this section, consider the themes of exhaustion and the feeling of facing insurmountable odds facing resistance groups or any activist group advocating for justice/equal rights/social justice, etc. When those you are opposing hold all or most of the power, how can activists find ways to progress and what lessons can modern readers take away from Ruggles’ determination and persistent dedication to justice? How has this kind of determination informed future movements?

This chapter focuses on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and how New York City and wealthy people in New York were instrumental in subverting the United States’ ban on international slave trading. Exampled are given of local officials’ lucrative passivity and Wells highlights that despite a national ban on international slave trading and the anti-slavery reputation that many today believe New York City to have had, capitalistic incentives led many to disregard Federal law and moral justice. While reading, think about how often our capitalist society rewards lawlessness and the horrific treatment of others. How often do law enforcement officials turn the other way from obvious injustices for economic benefit? How often do these incentives stand in the way of progress in the areas of civil rights, social justice, etc.?

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 essentially turned Northern citizens into active participants in the Southern slave system by legally requiring them to assist in the capture of runaways. In New York, the business community responded by forming the Union Safety Committee to champion the law, arguing that the city’s prosperity depended on maintaining a peaceful Union with slaveholders. This pro-business ideology was famously summarized by editor Gerard Hallock, who praised the crop's ability to bind the republic together with the phrase, "Blessed be cotton!". How did the economic reliance on cotton Picked by enslaved labor shape the legal and social arguments used by New York's White elite to justify the sacrifice of Black residents' liberty under the Fugitive Slave Law?

The 1850s witnessed deep internal divisions within New York's power structures, as illustrated when Mayor Andrew Mickle deployed 900 NYPD officers on a massive "slave hunt" for George Kirk even after a judge had declared him free. Conversely, the case of Joseph Belt showed a rare instance of NYPD officers Russell Hulse and Samuel Wolven acting to protect a Black resident from Maryland slave hunters. This era also saw the rise of the Committee of Thirteen, which replaced David Ruggles’s individual activism with a more organized and better-funded system for coordinating resistance and legal defense. In what ways do the contrasting actions of public officials in the cases of George Kirk and Joseph Belt illustrate a shifting or fracturing of New York’s institutional support for the slave system during this period?

Chapter 10 details the operations of the "Portuguese Company," a secretive network of merchants in Lower Manhattan who used legitimate businesses as a cover for a massive, illegal transatlantic slave trade. These traffickers operated with near-impunity because of Judge Samuel Betts, who consistently made prosecutions impossible by demanding overly specific proof of guilt, and aggressive law firms like Beebe, Dean, and Donohue that specialized in defending slavers. Despite the federal ban on the slave trade, these merchants and captains were almost never convicted, allowing New York to remain a central hub for kidnapping African peoples. How does the successful operation of the "Portuguese Company" in the heart of Manhattan challenge the traditional narrative of New York as a "free" city on the eve of the Civil War?

The author details a massive gathering known as the “Pine Street Meeting” that took place shortly after Lincoln’s election. Thousands of New York merchants and bankers came together not to support the incoming president, but to appease the South. They passed resolutions explicitly telling slaveholders that “we have asserted your rights as earnestly as though they had been our own.” This was driven by a terrifying prediction from Southern economists that if the cotton trade stopped, “grass would grow” in the streets of Manhattan. The desperation was so intense that they sent these resolutions to the South as a form of apology for Northern democracy. The text even notes that Wall Street financiers likely staged a “fake economic panic” in October 1860 just to give voters a taste of the disaster that would follow a Lincoln victory. This is a historical example of capitalism trying to overrule democracy. Do you see similar tactics used today where economic fear is weaponized to block social justice movements? Does this history challenge the idea that the “free market” is politically neutral?

Even after the war began, the motivations of New York’s elite remained complicated. While they supported the Union militarily, their financial interests were still paramount. The New York Chamber of Commerce actually petitioned Lincoln to use the military to force Southern debtors to pay back the $200 million they owed to New York banks. At the same time, the New York Weekly Caucasian began publishing White supremacist propaganda specifically designed to incite the working class, which the author links directly to the violence of the Draft Riots. The text reveals that the Chamber of Commerce explicitly asked the President to use military tribunals to extract debt payments from the South. They seemed far more concerned with recovering their $200 million than with the moral cause of ending the rebellion. Does this suggest that New York’s support for the Union was less about patriotism and more about a “hostile takeover” to recover lost assets? The editors of the New York Weekly Caucasian intentionally weaponized economic anxiety to turn the Irish working class against Black New Yorkers. This directly fueled the Draft Riots. In our current age of polarized media, what parallels do you see in how economic fear is still used to pit marginalized groups against each other?

The author concludes by connecting the “Kidnapping Club” to modern issues like mass incarceration and the “criminalization of Blackness”. He argues that the wealth of modern New York was generated by the specific theft of Black bodies and labor. He references Ta-Nehisi Coates and argues that reparations are necessary to compensate for these specific thefts of rights and property. Wells moves beyond the general argument for reparations and frames them as compensation for specific crimes like kidnapping and illegal imprisonment. Does framing reparations as “damages for specific thefts” rather than “compensation for historical slavery” change how you view the legal or moral obligation of the city?

The text argues that the police were used as a tool to control a community whose only crime was wanting to live freely. Wells draws a direct line from the “Kidnapping Club” to modern policing issues. Do you agree with his assessment that the function of policing in New York has not fundamentally changed since the 1830s, or is that comparison missing important nuances?

2025 Symposium

Race, Law, and Artificial Intelligence

In March, the Center for Race and Law brought together a diverse group of legal scholars, practitioners, and thought leaders virtually to engage in discussions at the intersection of race, law, and artificial intelligence (AI). 

Program

Welcome & Opening Remarks

• Renee Nicole Allen, Associate Professor of Law; Director, Center for Race and Law, St. John’s School of Law
• Jelani Jefferson Exum, Dean & Rose DiMartino and Karen Sue Smith Professor of Law, St. John’s School of Law

Keynote Speaker

• Ruha Benjamin, Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies; Founding Director, Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, Princeton University

Panels

Panel I: AI & Racialized Harms

Panelists:

• Diego H. Alcalá Laboy, Assistant Professor, Albany Law School
  Presentation: “The ‘Founder’s Gaze’: How the Fourth Amendment is a Surveillance Technology That Enables AI to Scale Control Over the Subaltern”
• Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, Professor, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law
  Presentation: “The Legal Syllogism as Racial Algorithm: Bias, Generative AI, and the Objectivity Trap in Legal Writing”

Panel II: AI & Racialized Surveillance and Predictions 

Panelists:

• Raquel Coterillo Laso, Affiliate Scholar, Georgetown University
  Presentation: “From The Myth Of Technological Progress To The Reality Of Inequality And Algorithmic Surveillance”
• Christian Powell Sundquist, Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
  Presentation: “Surveil and Suppress: The Role of AI in Racializing the Right to Protest” 

Panel III: AI & Racial Identity

Panelists:

• Costanza Nardocci, Professor in Constitutional Law, Department of Italian and Supranational Public Law, University of Milan
  Presentation: “Minorities and Minority Rights in the Era of Artificial Intelligence”
• Shatrunjay Bose, PG Researcher, University of Southampton
  Presentation: “Artificial Intelligence and Insurance Contracts: Rethinking the Duty of Disclosure for Enabling Transparency”

Symposium Recording

A recording of the Center for Race and Law's 2025 Symposium is now available at the St. John's Law Scholarship Repository.

Access the recorded symposium

In October 2024, the Center presented Race, Law, & Popular Culture. For this informative event, Center Director Renee Nicole Allen moderated a panel of experts in the field as they engaged in conversation about the intersections of race, law, and popular culture. The panelists were Alisa Payne, Producer, Stamped from the Beginning (Netflix), and St. John's Law Professors Philip Lee and Cheryl Wade.

In November 2023, the Center hosted Rest as Resistance: A Two-Day Retreat. On the first day, participants came together for a virtual book club exploring and actualizing Tricia Hersey's New York Times best-selling book, Rest is Resistance, A Manifesto. Day two was an in-person retreat offering an interactive workshop on Rest, Wellness, and Racial Justice. Then, St. John’s Law alumni shared insights on Rest in Practice before the group spent the rest of afternoon enjoying yoga and rest together.

In March 2023, the Center held its first symposium on Racialized Notions of Professionalism. You can view the symposium online at the St. John's Law Scholarship Repository.

For its first-ever event, in September 2022 the Center presented a screening of the feature-length documentary film Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. In the film, criminal defense/civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson chronicles anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America. After the screening, members of the Law School community engaged in a virtual conversation with Jefferey Robinson.