When the Civil War riots, depicted in Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” exploded 150 years ago, black New Yorkers caught the brunt of it.
For four days in July 1863, a group of largely Irish immigrants ransacked, pillaged and lynched – ostensibly in response to the newly instituted Civil War draft.
But the riots were also a backlash against blacks, another group in the same social class who competed for the same lower-rung jobs and rooms.
When the insanity petered out, 105 people were left dead in what was the deadliest riot in American history.
“They attacked the Colored Orphans Society [now the site of the Fifth Avenue library], but luckily the kids got out OK,” said Cynthia Copeland, education curator at the New-York Historical Society.
The city’s black population decreased after the riots as blacks moved to safer areas. It wouldn’t increase significantly until the great migrations north after World War I.
During the time depicted in “Gangs of New York,” many blacks were living in Seneca Village, shortly to become Central Park, and some in the fabled Five Points in today’s Foley Square – where Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis faced off in Scorsese’s epic.