On March 31, 1647 in New Amsterdam, African Emanuel Neger had his twin children Adam and Eva baptized by Pastor Emoradus Bogardus into the Christian faith. His and his wife’s choice of names for his children evoked the hope of a Garden of Eden for Africans in a new land. Most of the early African residents of New Amsterdam had roots as Christians from Africa or soon became such. Many, as signified by their last name Congo, came from the Kingdom of the Kongo, where Christianity was the official religion. New Amsterdam was renamed “New York” in 1664.
The Dutch pastor Everardus and his Norwegian wife Anna (Anneke/Anetje) Bogardus were strong advocates for African education and participation in the church.
Two-thirds of African baptisms in New Netherlands came while the Bogardus’s were leaders of the local church. Africans in New Amsterdam were a mix of free, slave, and half-slave residents. Up to half of the Africans had some sort of free status. The Christian church leaders were in constant conflict with the local political leadership over the treatment of Africans. The Bogarduses were advocates for better treatment of the Africans and for their full incorporation into the church, even for those who were slaves. The pastor urgently appealed for a teacher to be sent from the Netherlands to come to teach both the White and Black students. There was no mention of teaching them separately.
By 1645, a group of free and enslaved Africans were going to church and mutually supporting each other. This exceptional development did not last after Bogardus died.
New Yorkers have spoken on both sides of the history of America’s two traditions regarding race and freedom. On the one hand, New Yorkers like Pastor Everardus and Anna Bogardus promoted an anti-racist, liberty tradition during the founding period of the city. Later, President Abraham Lincoln also spoke for this liberty tradition in his 1860 speech at Cooper Union.
Bogardus was opposed by the political leaders of New Amsterdam who promoted a racist tradition. Lincoln was opposed by the Columbia University medical school-trained Joseph LeConte, who advocated slavery as a pure form of socialism. America was blessed by the anti-racist liberty tradition that systematically affected all of society. It was cursed by the racist tradition that battled liberty at every turn. So far, after a great deal of tumult and deaths, the anti-racist liberty tradition has prevailed. The promise of Edenic liberty to Adam and Eva Congo was marred but is being fulfilled.
