Demons of Discord:
Two NY Riots from Five Points to Astor Place
A Lecture by Kathleen Hulser

Join Kathleen Hulser, public historian and senior curator of history at the New York Historical Society, as she discusses how New Yorkers of the 19th century acted out their political passions in the streets. Fears of racial mixing and abolitionist activity touched off a round of race rioting in 1834 that left houses and churches in flames and targets running for their lives. A mere 15 years later ethnic and class tensions crystallized in the personalities of dueling Shakespearean actors, igniting protests that drew tens of thousands to the Astor Place Riot. More than 22 died and five times that many were injured, when the mayor called out the state militia for the first time to quell the disorder. Probing the causes and contexts, Hulser will illuminate the face of urban disorder in a period when politics out of doors often spelled blood on the cobblestones.