Alliances and Allyship

Black Brooklynites have always resisted racism, and they have never done so alone. 

Multiracial and multicultural alliances have been crucial to the long history of Brooklyn’s resistance. Sometimes, however, those alliances contained elements of condescension and manipulation. 

Sally Maria Diggs was a light-skinned enslaved girl in the South known as “Pinky.” Her grandmother secured her own freedom but was unable to purchase Sally. Sally’s grandmother asked Brooklyn’s famous abolitionist minister the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the pastor of Plymouth Church, for help. In 1860, Beecher used his pulpit and held a mock “slave auction” to inspire his congregation to donate money. Beecher’s well-intentioned gesture used the degradation of Sally Diggs’s enslavement to promote abolition and uplift his status as a savior. This image of a 1930s painting of the mock auction shows Beecher laying hands on Sally, baptizing her into freedom by parading her in front of the wealthy congregation. 

During the civil rights era, Brooklynites also struggled to develop meaningful alliances and allyship between Blacks and Whites, Muslims, Christians, and Jews. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Brooklyn, Muslim men joined in solidarity with other protesters and prayed. These demonstrations featured expressions of alliances and allyship that drew inspiration from the different experiences—racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gendered, and sexual orientation—that can come together when Brooklyn’s robust democracy resists systemic injustice. 

To learn more about alliances and allyship in Brooklyn, visit our More Resources page.