Venue: Theatre B117, Melbourne School of Design
Presenters: Mr Shane White
“On Wall Street, Jeremiah Hamilton was a Master of the Universe. For the rest of the day and night he was barely a second-class citizen.”
In mid 19th century Wall Street, blacks were expected to carry goods, not buy and sell them. But not Jeremiah Hamilton, a broker whose very existence flies in the face of our understanding of African American life in New York in the decades before and after the Civil War. Far from being some novice on the fringes of the financial world, Jeremiah Hamilton was a Wall Street celebrity; a skilled and, at times, ruthless manipulator. He wheeled and dealed in the lily white business world, married a white woman, bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, and owned railroad stock on trains he was not allowed legally to ride. He outsmarted his white contemporaries and generally set their teeth on edge. Jeremiah Hamilton was "perhaps the most finished villain the city ever harboured", railed one commentator. He brazenly "assumed the privileges of a white man", seethed another. Outraged by his audacity, the penny press branded him the "Prince of Darkness".
Prince of Darkness is a groundbreaking and vivid account of Jeremiah Hamilton's remarkable life. For the first time, historian Shane White reveals the larger than life story of a man who defied every convention of his time.
Professor Shane White is the Challis Professor of History, an Australian Professorial Fellow and a Research Associate of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney specializing in African American history.
from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/6423-prince-of-darkness-the-untold-story-of-jeremiah-hamilton-wall
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