A Moment in the Sun: Black Manhattan Before the Civil War

Review Quotes:
Here is a masterpiece of the historical imagination that only Shane White could have written. From a lifetime of research, White knows every inch of a long-ago Black Manhattan, no scene of squalid misery but of enterprise, endurance, and revelry, with its high steppers, con men, investors, fiddlers, fortune tellers, preachers, and many more--a city within a city, making the most of newly found, hard-won freedom. A Moment in the Sun renders it all beautifully.--Sean Wilentz, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rise of American Democracy

Review Quotes:
Shane White has devoted more than half of his life studying this great city, and the result has been truly great history. A Moment in the Sun is a landmark contribution, the product of a rare historian attentive to the texture of everyday life, the adventures of everyday people, and the mingling of cultures that made Manhattan the greatest urban island in the world. This is one of those books that should never go out of print.--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk

Review Quotes:
Shane White's A Moment in the Sun: Black Manhattan Before the Civil War provides a wonderful new perspective on nineteenth-century New York, a book that bustles with a fascinating cast of characters who made the city come alive with art, commerce, music, and literature.--Greg Grandin, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The End of the Myth

Review Quotes:
Readers are always in safe hands with Shane White. A Moment in the Sun displays the combination of archival range and narrative skill that have long distinguished his work. With such empathetic attention to the details of the lives lived, he rebuilds the vibrant world of Black Manhattan before the Civil War.--Caleb Gayle, author of Black Moses

Publisher Marketing:

Dispelling the persistent narrative that abject poverty followed the end of slavery in New York City, acclaimed historian Shane White finally sets the historical record straight. A Moment in the Sun, a revisionist and immersive retelling of antebellum Manhattan, depicts a long-forgotten, nineteenth-century era when ordinary Black men and women, now free, "stood a brief moment in the sun" (W. E. B. Du Bois), ushering in a roughly half-century period when New York City bulged and thrummed with Black creativity and achievement nearly a hundred years before the storied Harlem Renaissance.

Culling a narrative from thousands of fragmentary sources gathered over three decades of research, White conjures the distant world of these Black New Yorkers, from the streets where dandies flaunted their signature style to a rollicking dance cellar on a Friday night in the Five Points neighborhood. "In a city still rife with racism and violence," White writes, "ordinary African New Yorkers--among them oystermen, petty entrepreneurs, fortune-tellers, and 'confidence men'--brought into being a free urban Black culture." Along the way, White introduces us to a notable parade of characters who helped transform Gotham into a booming urban metropolis, among them Thomas Downing, the "Oyster King of New York"; Mary Thompson, who ran a cookshop out of her cellar; and Cato Alexander, whose tavern provided cocktails and carriage races to a diverse clientele.

As these people, languages, and cultures mixed in the so-called amalgamated city, racial tensions heightened and often exploded, but this friction helped facilitate a cultural melding that was extensive. To a startling degree, White reveals the myriad ways this first attempt at integration in New York City actually worked.

A triumph of historical reclamation, A Moment in the Sun paints a pointillist portrait of this time in New York history, one that presents an entirely different story that was waiting to emerge from the archive. And in bringing to vivid life these Black New Yorkers and their eponymous moment in the sun, this shimmering history preserves their memory and, in the words of Caleb Gayle, "takes us into the experiment in freedom whose possibilities could have and should have lasted generations."

Review Citations:

• Library Journal 06/01/2026 pg. 98 (EAN 9781324095088, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Contributor Bio:White, Shane
Shane White is the Emeritus Challis Professor of History at the University of Sydney, specializing in African American history. White has authored or coauthored six books, including Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire. He lives in Sydney and Brunswick Heads, Australia.