On November 20, 1835, David Ruggles, a Black abolitionist living in New York City, founds the New York Committee of Vigilance, an interracial collective working to protect free Black New Yorkers and fugitive former slaves from kidnappers and police. Its stated goal: to “protect unoffending, defenseless and endangered persons of color, by securing their rights as far as practicable.”
Though New York State had abolished slavery in 1827, the city’s economy depended on its trade with the Southern plantation economy. Wall Street financiers and merchants, who depended on the shipping of slave-grown cotton, encouraged New York Police Department officers to operate “kidnapping clubs,” which sought to arrest as many Black men, women and children as possible and ship them south for sale without even a trial by jury. They were enabled by corrupt judges, politicians, highly paid bounty hunters and others.
