I'm surprised but pleased that the Schuyler statue is coming down--never thought that wd even be on the table. Besides being one of Albany's major slaveowners, Schuyler was also one of the architects of the 1779 Sullivan Campaign against the Six Nations. https://twitter.com/MayorSheehan/status/1271170214399533056

At the time it was launched, the Sullivan Campaign was the single largest expenditure of the Continental Congress, and was explicitly intended to terrorize neutral and British-allied Haudenosaunee communities.

In planning the campaign, Schuyler wrote that "should we be so fortunate as to take a considerable number of the women and children of the Indians I conceive that we should then have the means of preventing them from acting hostily against us."

Violence against Indigenous women and children was always a part of American territorial expansion from the very start, coordinated and planned by slave owners and aimed at destroying Indigenous sovereignty to seize Indigenous land.

I really applaud @MayorSheehan for having the Schuyler statue taken down. So here's some possible alternatives to put up in place of the Schuyler statue!

Not exhaustive and based in my expertise in 17th/18th c NY history, rather than African American history, so limited. Some of these are also from the wider region around Albany, but now seems as good a time as any to highlight the long and wide range of AfAm history in upstate!

1/ Bastien Piters, a black man enslaved in Schenectady who warned the Mohawk at Caughnawaga in 1669 of an approaching attack https://books.google.com/books?id=xWsq2NPeYRcC&lpg=PR9&ots=ofFXacNvsm&dv=onepage&q=piters&f=false

2/ The Sunfish, a formerly enslaved black man in 18th century NY who was adopted by the Seneca and became an important diplomat and translator

https://books.google.com/books?id=wvXGDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT95&ots=EyKoaUr36d&dq=the%20sunfish%20iroquois&pg=PT95#v=onepage&q=sunfish&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=wvXGDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT95&ots=EyKoaUr36d&dq=the%20sunfish%20iroquois&pg=PT95#v=onepage&q=sunfish&f=false

3/ Primus, Elizabeth Powel, Anthony Speck, and Rachel Speck, all enslaved by British diplomat and trader Sir William Johnson, who all acted as translators and go-betweens to the Mohawk in the 1730s-1760s

http://maevekane.net/wmq-uc/  and my forthcoming book

5/ Sam Tony, a formerly enslaved black man who was accused in 1764 of travelling among the Susquehanna and Mohawk and spreading "evil influence" among them by telling them about English slavery

6/ Dinah, Bett, and Pompey; enslaved teenagers who were forced to confess to a 1793 arson in the shadow of the Haitian Revolution and American fears of slave uprisings. They were all hanged and enslaved people in Albany were put under curfew as a result. https://hvmag.com/life-style/history/history-of-the-1793-fire-in-albany/

7/ A different Schuyler - Samuel Schuyler, free black riverboat captain who purchased his freedom from the white Schuyler family in 1804, settled in the South End, and ran a towboat service from Albany to NYC.

https://www.albany.edu/arce/Schuyler26.html

(NY nominally ended slavery in 1799 with gradual emancipation, but Samuel Schuyler and others born before 1799 remained enslaved until a later law freed them in 1827)

8/ Benjamin Lattimore, free black man who fought for the Continental Army during the Revolution who helped found the first school for black children in Albany and Albany African Methodist Episcopal Church

https://exhibitions.nysm.nysed.gov//albany/bios/l/blattimore8200.html
https://www.curtinarch.com/blog/southend1  https://oxfordaasc.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.001.0001/acref-9780195301731-e-35795

9/ Dinah Jackson, one of the first black property owners in Albany, who purchased a lot in Arbor Hill in 1779 and helped establish Albany's free black community

https://www.albanycounty.com/home/showdocument?id=322

10/ Arabella Chapman, the black first graduate of what is now @albanyschools

(h/t @marthasjones_ and her students: https://news.umich.edu/u-m-students-uncover-story-behind-19th-century-african-american-selfies/)
https://www.albany.edu/arce/Miller100.html

11/ Thomas Elkins, doctor, abolitionist, and underground railroad conductor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Elkins

12/ Stephen and Harriet Myers, abolitionists and underground railroad conductors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_and_Harriet_Myers_House

(Better yet, the city of Albany could help fund the https://undergroundrailroadhistory.org/  @UndergroundRREd that owns the Myers and Elkins homes, some of the only known existing underground railroad stations in the US)

13/ William Henry Johnson, journalist, underground railroad conductor, and Civil War veteran who drafted NY's 1873 Civil Rights act, two years ahead of the federal civil rights act

https://hoxsie.org/2013/02/14/the_autobiography_of_william_henry_johnson/
https://hoxsie.org/2013/02/15/an_aggressive_and_intrepid_advocate/
https://aaregistry.org/story/abolitionist-william-h-johnson-born/

14/ Thomas Van Rensselaer, born enslaved but self-emancipated in 1819, abolitionist and underground railroad conductor https://oxfordaasc.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.001.0001/acref-9780195301731-e-38087

15/ Phebe Jones, abolitionist, suffragist, business owner and single mother

https://www.albany.edu/arce/Jones112.html

16/ Adam Blake, owner of Pearl Street's Kenmore Hotel and abolitionist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenmore_Hotel

17/ James Matthews, first black law school graduate in NY, who successfully sued in 1872 to desegregate Albany public schools on behalf of William Dietz, black business man in Arbor Hill

https://www.albany.edu/arce/Matthews101.html

18/ Edmonia Lewis, sculptor and abolitionist who celebrated black women in her art as symbols of courage and humanity

https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmonia-lewis-2914

Anyway my point is #BlackLivesMattters and I hope @MayorSheehan and the Albany Common Council use this as an opportunity to find a great Black artist to celebrate Albany's very long African American history

x/ I forgot Sibbie, the last person who was enslaved by Phillip Schuyler and his family. She was born enslaved in the late 18thc and nominally freed by law in 1827, but remained employed/indentured to the Schuyler family until her death in 1862

https://www.albany.edu/arce/SibbieXX.html