Phillip A. White

          

The Gilded Age

Dr. Philip A. White – Black Aristocrat 

History 20

Christopher Cherry

Black Aristocrats (Gatewood)

   The Gilded Age (1870 – 1890), was marked by the growth of industry, innovations, wealth and a wave of immigrants. The names commonly associated with this time were prominent White men, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan.  These men and their families were the hallmark of this time period. However, often excluded and not discussed are those prominent, elite Black men and their families. Philip A. White was part of New York’s Black elite, third generation. He was born free in 1823, despite the fact that slavery was still legal in New York during this time (Peterson). He was described as a studious, temperate and methodical self-made man (The Late P.A White). A White newspaper in the 1880s did report that there was “a colored aristocracy in this city as distinct and as exclusive as that of Murray Hill” (Gatewood).  In 1901 W.E.B DuBois approximated that less than ten of New York’s Black elite owned over $50,000 worth of real-estate. This indisputably solidified your membership into what was commonly known as the “black 400”. However, during this period of time, few could be considered wealthy. 

Code of Ethics

            Great emphasis was placed on education, a Protestant work ethic, and a strict adherence to a code of respectability not so different from high class Whites.  Adhering to this code was crucial, in order to avoid retaliation of those who did not agree with the 14^th Amendment, which stated that everyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of color, was granted citizenship. Despite the fact that they were citizens, there was still a great divide over how they were able to contribute to society. Furthermore, due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, if at any time they were accused of being a slave, they could be returned to slavery. This would mean losing any wealth obtained as well as being separated from their families indefinitely.  “...Upper-class black New Yorkers, many of whom were well educated, cultured, and refined, sought to avoid being ‘classed with the most degraded and brutal element of their race’ by keeping to themselves and trying to ‘make their standards as high as they can’” (Gatewood).  With all this in mind, Black aristocrats kept their families and social affairs private and out of site from the rest of the world.   Given that they were not welcome into the popular New York restaurants of the time (such as Delmonico’s and Sherry’s), they instead spent their money on their own homes, dinners, and parties as compared with White men of the same income, because they did not have the same opportunities to spend it outside their home (Gatewood).  

Biography

            African Free School No. 2 educated and produced the heads of many prominent, wealthy Black families, such as the Whites, Scottrons, Marses, Guigons, and Lansings, just to name a few.  Philip A. White attended the African free school system which was established in 1790 by the New York Manumission Society.  At the age of 16 he began an apprenticeship in the pharmacy of James

Black Aristocrats (Gatewood)

McCune Smith who was an alumni of the African Free School No.2 (Peterson, 2012), who later became the first Black doctor in the United States.  Philip A. White attended the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York and graduated in 1844. He was noted as being the first Black man to receive a diploma from that school. The same year as his graduation, he opened his own drugstore in Lower Manhattan, which later grew in to a large retail business (Peterson). Philip White became a member of the city’s major professional pharmaceutical societies as well as the Academy of Sciences and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Legacy

            In 1883 Philip A. White was appointed by Mayor Seth Low to the Brooklyn Board of Education. In this position he championed for the Black schools to be on the same par as the White schools. “What we contend for, and what Dr. White and every other colored man of sense contends for, is not that colored schools should be abolished but that no more inhibitions should rest upon colored children than upon White ones, that the same laws which govern one class of citizens should govern every other class, that discrimination should not be applied to one class while another is allowed every immunity – that a sign-board which proclaims that my child shall go this far and no further, while no such sign-board proclaims the limitations of my neighbor’s child’s rights is an outrage not to be borne in silence” (Dr. Philip A. White).  He successfully advocated for the improvement of education for African American children. He was responsible for a resolution being adopted by the Brooklyn School Board which directed White schools to accept Black children to their schools by using the same criteria as they would for other races (Dr. Philip A. White). He held this position on the school board until his death in 1891, at the age of 68. Dr. Philip A. White died in his home in Brooklyn, New York with his family and closest friends by his side.

Works Cited

“Dr. Philip A. White.” New York Globe. 22 December 1883.

Gatewood, William B. (1993). Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880 – 1920. Indian             University Press.

Peterson, Carla L. (2011). Black Gotham A Family of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City. University Press: New Haven and London.

Peterson, Carla L. “Answers About Black History in 19^th-Century New York, Part 1.” New          York Times. 15 February 2012.

“The Late P.A. White. One of the Most Prominent of Our Men Passes Away.” New York Age.    21 February 1891.