The Tobacco Riot: Brooklyn, 1862

Working in a tobacco factory was hard work. But who "deserved" to work?

(One of Brooklyn’s medium sized tobacco factories, long gone.)

Yesterday’s story about cigar manufacturing has a large footnote that reflects the times and society in mid-19th century New York.

The biggest issue of the middle of the 19th century was the Civil War. In 1862, as the war heated up, one of Brooklyn’s medium sized tobacco companies was Lorillard Tobacco, with a factory in what is now Cobble Hill. Right next door to Lorillard’s was Watson’s Tobacco Company. Lorillard Tobacco went on to become one of America’s largest tobacco companies. They manufactured Kents and Newports, among other products until they were bought out by British American Tobacco in 2014. Today, the street they were on no longer exists, and the factories are long gone.

Both businesses made cigars, as well as other kinds of tobacco products. Both companies also employed black people, one of the few industries in Brooklyn that did at the time. In a rare case of slavery producing a skill that could be marketable in the North, many of both companies’ black workers had experience working with tobacco and knew the cigar production business. They worked side by side with their white co-workers, but because of their experience, were actually paid more than those white male counterparts.

Over at Lorillard, the workforce consisted of 220 people, out of which 50 were black. At Watson’s, which was much smaller, the work force of 75 included 50 black people. In both establishments, black men, women and girls, worked as cigar rollers, the most skilled job in the factory, while the white men were employed as tobacco pressers and worked in the other jobs in the plant. The white men were paid $10/week, the white women $ 4 to $9 a week. By contrast, the black men earned more; $14 a week, while black women and girls only made between $2 and $6 per week.

Everything was going well in both factories, but all was not well outside. Unlike the white factory workers, none of the black employees lived in the neighborhood, they all came from other parts of Brooklyn, and some came over from Manhattan on the ferry. The local people were not happy that the factories had hired outside of the neighborhood, and hired black people, to boot. But the fact of the matter was that both factories had been using black workers for years, and in the case of Watson’s, the black workers had been hired when the plant opened about eight years before, and had always been there. Both factories had hired the African Americans for their experience and speed making cigars.

One Saturday night in August of 1862, a couple of locals went to a neighborhood liquor establishment called Grady’s. Two black factory workers were standing near the doorway talking, and the white men told the men to get out of their way. The blacks told them they had just as much right to stand there as anyone, and before one had finished speaking; one of the men knocked him down. This led to a fight, which brought a crowd, as well as the police. Rumors started to fly about how the Negroes had insulted a white woman, and soon there was a very large and ugly crowd of people in the street. The black men were escorted out by police, but the angry crowd remained.

They had all of Sunday to really work themselves up, and that night, someone told the Lorillard manager that Negroes would be attacked at the factory the next day. That Monday morning, the black workers came to Lorillard at 7 in the morning, and the manager, Mr. Hignet, sent them home to avoid trouble. At 8 am, two white men came into the factory “looking for Negroes.” They were told there were none there, and the men left. Mr. Hignet went next door to the Watson factory and advised the black workers there that they should go home, and that they might be attacked if they stayed. But the black workers refused to leave.

There were only about 25 black workers at Watson’s that day. It was the annual celebration of West Indian Independence Day, and about half of the workers, mostly men, were at the celebration. That day, the black workforce consisted of five men and about 20 women and girls. At noon, the factory broke for lunch, and the white workers, who all lived nearby, went home to eat. The black workers were used to bringing their meals and stayed in the factory to have lunch. This was when the mob had planned to storm the factory, when half the workforce was gone, and everyone was off-guard.

At about quarter after twelve, a mob of about 400 men and boys, many quite intoxicated, began making their way to the Watkins factory. They surrounded the building, and several came into the office, looking for black people. They were all shouting racial insults, and cries of “Kill the n*****s” filled the air. They overpowered the sole policeman on site and began their search. They began throwing bricks and wrecking the factory, while the 25 black men, women and girls ran to the top floor and barricaded themselves on the stairway, building a wall of tables, boxes and boards. When the would-be assailants came within sight, they kept them back by throwing boxes, tools and other objects at them.

They were able to hold them off for about an hour, waiting for the police to arrive. They finally showed up with a large contingent of men, but they were vastly outnumbered. Charles Baker, one of the besieged black workers who had been at the stair barricade, had been grabbed by the mob and dragged outside, where dozens of men tried to beat him to death. Because there were so many of them, most of the blows did not land, and the police were able to rescue him before he was badly hurt. They promptly arrested him, because in defending the stairway, he had accidently hit one of the cops.

The leader of the mob was a man named Patrick Keenan, the owner of a “low groggery,” and a candidate for city alderman from that district. As the fight between the police and the rioters spread throughout the entire first floor of the factory, Keenan gave the order to fire the building, to drive the black people out. The rioters found barrels of black liquid on site, and thought they were pitch, but they turned out to be liquorish and whiskey, used to flavor tobacco. It was not flammable. They tried to set the building on fire with other factory substances, but the police were able to put the fires out, although it was difficult, and the mob could very well have succeeded. There is a lot to burn in a tobacco factory.

As the police battled fires as well as rioters, the other rioters threw bricks and rocks at them, injuring several seriously. Many of the rioters had pitchforks, which they brandished in the air, shouting “Kill the black sons of bitches.” By the time the police were able to get all the rioters out of the factory, and the building contained, there were over 4,000 people in the street, shouting, throwing things, and continuing to call for the deaths of the black people inside. The police arrested Patrick Keenan and seven other men, as well as Charles Baker, who was later released. The frightened black workers were escorted out of the building and to their homes by the police. Many of the women and girls had cuts and were slightly injured and bleeding.

The next day, crowds still gathered in front of Lorillard and Watson factories. Reporters wrote that people in the crowds had been told that after the riot, black men had gone down to the gun shops on Court Street and had armed themselves and ordered more guns for delivery that day. One rumor was that over 50 men, all factory workers, had gone to this Clinton Street gun shop and bought enough weapons to start a war, and were coming back to finish up the battle. When the reporter went to the gun shop to check the story out, the owner reported that there had been no black customers in his shop, and no one had ordered any guns. The truth didn’t much matter.

 None of the black workers at either Lorillard or Watkins showed up for work that day. Hardly any of the white workers showed up either. Two days later, Patrick Keenan and his cohorts were in court. More arrests had followed, and there were now 14 defendants. They justified their actions by saying it wasn’t fair that outsider blacks were “taking their jobs,” and were getting paid more than white men. They were only standing up for their rights. When various policemen testified as to the events, the defense tried to get the testimony thrown out because none of the black people involved had filed any complaints against anyone. The Brooklyn Eagle called the incident the “one of the most disgraceful riots which has ever happened in this city.”

Patrick Keenan testified that he was there to stop the violence, not start it. He stated that he had nothing to do with any of it and was being singled out because of his status as a community leader. His testimony was contradicted by almost all the police at the scene. The police were not blameless in this affair either, according to sources. While most had been heroic in their duties, there were a few who got to the scene, looked around, and then started whaling in on the black people, figuring that they must be the cause of the trouble.

The top brass in the precinct were the target of the editors of the New York Times, who stated that there were long standing rumors that blacks in factories, especially the tobacco factories, were the targets of Irish agitators backed by the Democratic Party. These agitators were whipping up the flames of resentment and anger in the Irish communities by telling them that blacks were going to take their jobs, and that the Civil War was being fought to bring even more blacks up from the South to take their livelihoods and way of life away from them.

Knowing this, the police should have been more prepared, and had more men stationed at the factories in the first place. Charges were brought against Captain Holbrook of the 43rd Precinct and against his superior, Inspector John S. Folk, who was charged with gross neglect of duty. Folk’s Superintendent had ordered him to have more men available at the tobacco factories, but Folk did not follow that order.

The police therefore were not on the scene until after people had been assaulted and the factory had been attacked and set on fire. Folk also did not report the initial incident at Grady’s to his superiors, which should have put them on alert, and to the day of the hearing, almost a week after, his superiors still had no reports about the incident.

Hearings and investigations went on, but I saw no records of any convictions or any consequences to anyone. Everyone just went back to work, but the social tensions remained. The papers opined as to the fate of the Negro in America, and the struggle for a place at the bottom of the economic ladder between poor blacks and poor Irish continued.

As horrible and frightening as the Tobacco Riot, or the “Anti-Negro Riot,” as the papers called it, was, it was only a small taste of the horrors to come. A year later, the Draft Riots in Manhattan would claim many lives, destroy property, and change the face of New York City and Brooklyn forever.