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By Root 534 0

by his son, George Thomas Downing, who continued the culinary legacy and opened his own restaurant in New York in 1842. In 1846 he established a branch of the family business in Newport, Rhode Island, where in 1854 he opened the crowning glory of his culinary empire, the Sea Girt Hotel. Ironically, but representative of the times, the five-story building was restricted to a white clientele. The hotel also included Downing’s residence, a restaurant, a confectionery, and a branch of his catering business. A fire on December 15, 1860, destroyed the building, causing him to suffer an estimated loss of forty thousand dollars. The son’s career did not end there. A “race man” like his father, he was keenly interested in the treatment of African Americans, especially Civil War soldiers. This concern led him to Washington, where he became the manager of the dining room of the House of Representatives, a position that he held for twelve years, during which time he worked for the passage of public accommodations laws in the capital city.

When Thomas Downing, the father, died in 1866, the oyster craze was still going strong. New Yorkers consumed fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of them daily, and more than one thousand boats plied the waterways in search of the bivalves. In 1855, the New York Evening Post wrote of Downing, “His private character is above reproach; he has made a large fortune as the keeper of a refectory, which is frequented daily by throngs of the principal bankers and merchants of Wall and Broad streets and their vicinity.” Through his skill as an oysterman and his acumen as a businessman, Downing became the elder statesman of black New York in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like the Philadelphia caterers, he understood the value of catering to the white elite in his career and used his position to create his personal fortune as well as to provide jobs for other blacks.

With their understanding of the formality of service and their mastery of the manners of others, the caterers—whether in Philadelphia, New York, or elsewhere—in serving a white upper class, demonstrated the same cultural fluidity that had been evidenced by African Americans since their entry into the country. Their ability to seamlessly flow between several class and cultural levels was a testimonial not only to their culinary abilities and their good taste but also to their finely honed social instincts and their well-developed survival skills. That they used these talents to contribute to the growth and uplifting of the entire African American community of their period is testimony to their humanity.

Most African Americans in the North were free by the time that Bogle, the Augustins, Dorsey, and the Downings were operating in Philadelphia and New York. Their enslaved urban brethren in the South may have demonstrated the same culinary skills, but they garnered little or no pay for their labors. While caterers in cities in the Northeast oversaw lavish entertainments and created personal wealth, in cities in the South gala events were directed by house slaves who were unacknowledged and unpaid. Free blacks did occasionally work in catering, but with houses staffed by unpaid slaves, there was scant money to be made in the field. Money could be earned by blacks vending fresh produce and prepared goods in the street. It was a track that blacks had used for decades in the North.

As early on as the colonial period, women of African descent had cornered the street-food market, selling goods that they’d created from homegrown ingredients; a black woman sitting on a small stool selling sweetmeats or savories was a ubiquitous sight. Free, they worked for themselves; enslaved, they worked for their masters and mistresses and were occasionally allowed to keep a small portion of their earnings. More often than not, slaves were hired out by their masters, who were paid for their services; they received little or no remuneration, hence the term “slave wages.” Blacks, both free and enslaved, dominated street vending until newly arriving European immigrants