Ruggle’s grocery shop at One Cortlandt Street was also a circulating library and reading room for African Americans who were denied access to New York’s public libraries. Ruggles also sold anti-slavery publications here. The first African American bookstore and printshop which became a temporary haven for people like Frederick Douglas and a stop on the Underground Railroad by anti-slavery activists.&nbsp;

David Ruggles store at 1 Cortlandt Street was the nation`s first black bookstore until it was destroyed by a mob.

By the early 1830s, David Ruggles became involved in the growing anti-slavery movement in New York. White radicals, disenchanted by reform measures, now joined blacks demanding the immediate end of slavery.&nbsp;

Three men at left, one saying, "Verily friend Darg since we have returned thee thy money, I claim the reward of $1000 - Brother Barney Corse was merely my agent, verily!" Another "Yea verily I was but thy instrument Brother Hopper as Brother Ruggles here knoweth!" Man at right, brandishing chair and holding bag marked $6908, rails at their impudence and tells them to "get out of the house." &nbsp;This 1838 lithograph commented on David Ruggles' arrest and imprisonment for encouraging a slave to escape. According to historian Eric Foner's 2014 article in Harper's " This unusual case arose when John P. Darg, a slave trader from New Orleans arrived in New York with a slave named Thomas Hughes, who had stolen $7000 from his former master, sought refuge at the home of the Quaker abolitionist Issac T. Hopper and Barney Corse, an abolitionist Isaac T. Hopper. Hopper and Barney Corse, an abolitionist and leading light of the New York Manumission Society, offered to repay the money if Darg would grant Hughes his freedom. Darg had them all, including Ruggles, who had nothing to do with these events, indicted for complicity in theft.'

The 1st African American bookstore

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