The London Coffee House at Front and Market Streets, 1854.

Above Image: Pepper Pot, A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, by John Lewis Krimmel, 1811.

From the time the Isabella, carrying 150 Africans, arrived from Bristol, England, until 1780, when Pennsylvania passed the first emancipation law in the United States, the city had watched enslaved Africans disembark onto its docks in chains, to be sold on the corner of Front and Market Streets in front of the London Coffee House. Today on that corner you’ll see only a shuttered brick building; this is often the way—we must see beyond the long-gone structures and tangible survivals to revive this other history.

As in many Northern towns and cities, whites who could afford to own slaves did so—even the city’s Quakers until they decided to own slaves was hypocrisy and banned it from its members in 1776. Often, even in the best households, here were no more than two or three. In the 1760s one in six white families in the city had slaves. Enslaved blacks in Philadelphia had a relatively easier time of it than their plantation-bound brothers and sisters. They lived, as did indentured servants, in the family home, were better fed and clothed, and had more freedom to move about the city—at least in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—as their tasks often required them to be out and about. This freedom to move around likely aided individuals like Hercules, by all accounts a highly skilled cook enslaved at George Washington’s presidential home—located on Sixth and Market Streets in the shadow of Independence Hall—in his successful escape from Washington and his wife Martha. The mansion is not there, but the National Park Service has built open-air footprint of the house that includes the “servant’s” quarters.

Free blacks in Philadelphia, as elsewhere, had to make a living on their own and it was often difficult to obtain work beyond the more menial jobs was available if one was unskilled, and many were. Free African-American women worked as domestics in the homes of middle and upper-class whites; others took in laundry and mending, or became milliners and seamstresses, working at home so they could care for their children. Some women were street vendors, plying foods such as Caribbean pepper pot and other snacks and treats. A smaller group of women became teachers or managed boarding houses.

“Presumed Portrait of George Washington’s Cook (Hercules)” attributed to Gilbert Stuart, date unknown

Many black men worked alongside whites and picked up trades and skills, some of them becoming artisans in their own right. A number of African-Americans—after the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act there were few Africans in the city—learned carpentry, tailoring baking, and the like. Many did the hard work of domestics, porters, stevedores and longshoremen on the docks; others mastered the maritime trades, putting up with the hardships of a life at sea for decent pay—a highly skilled seamen was paid a larger percentage than one who was less so, and skin color mattered little. And there was the chance to see the world.

Despite the signs of black enterprise, many remained enslaved—the manumission act had called for gradual emancipation, meaning all children born to enslaved women after 1780 gained their freedom as adults, 25 for women, 28 for men. All enslaved people born before 1780 had their status change from slave to indentured servant, often in name, but not in practice.

By 1790 the first official U.S. census showed some 2,000 free blacks living in the city, and under the state’s constitution, African-Americans could vote until that right was rescinded in 1838. Still, by that year a healthy black middle class had been established. A listing of black tradespeople in the city and surrounding areas counted 656 individuals engaged in 57 vocations.

Tailors, shoemakers, builders, furniture makers, undertakers, outstanding among women entrepreneurs was Hetty Burr, a highly skilled and successful dressmaker who was married to a well-known community leader, John Burr. Mrs. Burr also spent a good deal of her time with other affluent women of color who worked with white social reformers Lucretia Mott and Sarah and Angelina Grimké to plan an abolitionists convention in 1838 in the City of Brotherly Love. Among the African-American women who had jointed Mott’s Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society were Amy Cassey, Charlotte Forten, and Forten’s three daughters.

Philadelphia businessman, James Forten, date unknown.

Charlotte’s husband James Forten, was counted among the 19 black sail makers in the city. He became one of the wealthiest Americans of his day, and one time employed 40 people, white people as well as black. Born free in 1766, he went to sea at age 14 on a privateer, was captured by the British and was eventually released. He apprenticed to a master sailmaker named Robert Bridges, and when Bridges retired, Forten took over the business. His fortune by the early 1830s was estimated to be $100,000 (the equivalent of some few million dollars today). Forten championed the cause of immediate, rather than gradual, abolition and fought to change the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed bounty hunters to seize blacks without a warrant.

Two trades that were almost the exclusive territory of African-American men were that of barber and caterer, both of which could be very lucrative professions. Barber, wigmaker, and perfumer Joseph Cassey (married to Amy Cassey) built his fortune dressing the hair of the white upper class, investing his earnings in real estate. For more than 80 years, starting in 1845, the Cassey House at 243 Delancey Street held three generations of the family. The house still stands but is now privately owned. Robert Bogle was one of several successful caterers working in Philadelphia in the early 1800s. An ex-slave who who started out as a waiter, he opened a business providing meals for various occasions, frequently catering a funeral on an afternoon and a party that same evening. Bogle’s establishment, located on South Eighth Street off Sansom Street, where a pub named Coco’s now stand, mostly served Philadelphia’s white elite. Nicholas Biddle, director of the United States Bank, so appreciated Bogle’s service that he wrote an eight-verse “Ode to Bogle.”

For more on the lives of African-Americans in early Philadelphia, visit the Library Company of Philadelphia. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, the library has extensive archives on the city’s black founders, including images and other ephemera, as well as a Program in African American History (PAAH). You can also visit the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University. Named for the noted black studies scholar and author, who donated the majority of his personal archive, the collection contains more than 500,000 items on the black experience.

Elsewhere in Philadelphia . . .

Tides of Freedom: The African-Presence on the Delaware River at the Independence Seaport Museum

May 4, 2025 – 2016

The first thing people say when they learn about this exhibit is usually, “Slave ships came to Philadelphia?”. This exhibit, curated by the host of History Detectives Dr. Tukufu Zuberi, tells the lesser-known story of Philadelphia’s connection to The Middle Passage. The exhibit features original artifacts such as slave shackles and a business ledger documenting 90 slave sales between 1763-1764. This is thought to be one of few books left that depict how Africans were converted from individuals to property.

The African-American Heritage Tour Project: 7th Ward

Ongoing self-guided walking tour W. E. B. DuBois was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania to conduct a study on the American Negro. The neighborhood of interest, also known as the 7th Ward, became the subject matter for his famous book The Philadelphia Negro. Stops on the tour include DuBois’s Philadelphia residence; Mother Bethel A.M.E., the oldest piece of land continuously owned by African-Americans; and the Benjamin Banneker Institute.

Black Bodies in Propaganda: The Art of The War Poster

June 2, 2025 - March 2, 2014, Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology

Also curated by Dr. Tukufu Zuberi, Black Bodies is a unique collection of 33 war posters from all over the world displaying the hauntingly beautiful images of Africans and American-American people in war recruitment posters. The posters are part of Dr. Zuberi’s personal collection and this is the first time they have ever been on display.