Black, Puerto Rican, and Chinese Mutual Aid Movements of the Lower East Side

1. Black Mutual Aid on the Lower East Side (1800s–1970s)

Long before the Great Migration brought Southern Black families to Harlem, free and fugitive Black New Yorkers carved out spaces of autonomy in in and around our neighborhood. By the 1830s, thousands of Black residents lived in the area. Here are a just a few solidarity movements.

• African Society for Mutual Relief (1808–1940s): Founded by abolitionist James McCune Smith (the first Black American to earn a medical degree) at 42 Baxter Street, this society pooled dues to fund burials (denied by White cemeteries), support widows, and secretly finance Underground Railroad activities.

  

• St. Philip’s Church Mission (1850s–1880s): At 204 East 2nd Street, this Black Episcopal church mission hid freedom seekers in tenements near Avenue B. Laundress Mary Simpson, an organizer, smuggled escapees onto boats bound for Canada via the East River.
• Colored Women’s Progressive Association (1892–1910): Based at 55 Rutgers Slip, this group—led by suffragist Victoria Marshall—installed streetlights on dangerous docks and partnered with Chinese workers to protest police brutality, organizing a 1905 march from Pell Street to City Hall.
• White Rose Mission, founded by Black activist Victoria Earle Matthews in 1897 at 217 East 86th Street, later expanded to the LES, offering job training and shelter for Southern Black women fleeing violence.
• The Bialystoker Synagogue at 7-11 Bialystoker Place (built 1826) is rumored to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad during its early days as a Methodist church. While historical evidence is scarce, oral histories suggest its basement tunnels sheltered freedom seekers en route to Canada.

Harlem Renaissance and the Lower East Side (1920s–1940s)

• Negro Writers’ Club (1935–1945): At 35 East 3rd Street, Harlem Renaissance figures like novelist Claude McKay and poet Helene Johnson hosted free writing workshops and published critiques of racial capitalism in their newsletter, The New Challenge. Copies circulated in LES cafeterias like Casa Latina on Avenue C, linking Black and Puerto Rican activists.
• St. Benedict the Moor Church (1883–1950s): This Black Catholic church at 210 Bleecker Street ran a food pantry at 161 Mott Street and helped Southern migrants find jobs in the neighborhood’s wealthier households.

Black Panthers (1969–1973)

The Black Panther Party opened an LES chapter at 237 East 3rd Street, focusing on cross-racial solidarity:

• Free Breakfast Program: Partnered with the Young Lords to feed children at 544 East 11th Street.
• Health Clinic at 335 East 5th Street: Tested kids for lead poisoning in crumbling tenements near Avenue D, expressing neglect by landlord Metropolitan Life.
• Rent Strikes: Panther Joan Bird organized tenants in Alphabet City to withhold rent until repairs were made.

2. Chinese Exclusion-Era Mutual Aid (1880s–1965)

• Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (1883–Present): At 16 Mott Street, the CCBA provided healthcare, legal aid, and funeral services for immigrants barred from citizenship. Its Chinese Free School (11 Chatham Square) resisted assimilationist public education.
• On Leong Tong’s Labor Solidarity (1893–1940s): Based at 41 Mott Street. Though this controversial organization is often though of as being an organized crime outfit, I am including it here because its mission overlaps with the theme of the article, be it for altruist reasons or not. They unionized laundry workers, distributed rice during the Depression, and paid bail for those arrested in anti-Chinese raids.

  

• Enslaved Chinese girls known as mui tsai were brought to the LES as domestic workers. In the 1920s, groups like the Chinese Women’s Association (founded 1926 by Dr. Margaret “Mom” Chung, the first Chinese American female physician) covertly rescued these girls, housing them in tenement “safe rooms” near Bayard Street.
• In 1933, amid the shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Lei Zhuofeng, Zhu Huagun, Sui Woo, and 250 fellow Chinese laundry workers banded together to form the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York (CHLA). This defiant collective emerged as a direct response to a racially targeted bill proposed by New York City’s Board of Aldermen, which sought to impose exorbitant licensing fee hikes and other restrictions.

Cross-Racial Labor Strikes

• 1934 Kwong Wah Laundry Strike: Black socialist Frank Crosswaith and the Negro Labor Committee (NLC) picketed 32 Mott Street alongside Chinese workers, demanding fair wages. The NLC’s bilingual pamphlets (distributed from 128 Madison Street) declared: “Black and Chinese workers unite!”

3. Puerto Rican Mutual Aid (1960s–1980s)

Postwar urban renewal pushed Puerto Rican families into tenements and public housing east of Avenue C (“Loisaida”).

• CHARAS/El Bohío reclaimed abandoned buildings like the former PS 64 (605 E 9th Street) in 1977, transforming them into community centers offering bilingual education, drug counseling, and Plena music workshops.
• The Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) ran clínicas populares (people’s clinics) at 317 E 8th Street, staffed by volunteer doctors treating tuberculosis and lead poisoning endemic in neglected housing.
• During the 1980s AIDS crisis, groups like Hispanic AIDS Forum (founded 1985) distributed bilingual harm reduction kits and fought stigma in Loisaida, while Casa de Salud (1992) at 61 E 3rd Street provided holistic care blending traditional curanderismo and Western medicine.
• Today, mutual aid still thrives through Loisaida Festival’s free meal shares and grassroots collectives like Loisaida Mutual Aid Projects, which tend community gardens at Campos Plaza—a direct descendant of the Young Lords’ urban farming legacy.

 Young Lords Party and community action

• People’s Church (1969): At 326 East 4th Street, the Young Lords converted a church into a community center, launching free breakfasts for 300 kids daily at 245 East 3rd Street and testing residents for tuberculosis.
• Garbage Offensive (1969): Dumped trash on 110th Street to protest the city’s neglect, forcing sanitation upgrades in Loisaida and other Puerto Rican enclaves.
• Lincoln Hospital Takeover (1970): LES activist Iris Morales helped occupy the Bronx hospital, later founding the Lincoln Detox Center, which pioneered acupuncture for heroin addiction—a model adopted in LES clinics.
• 1970s Panther-Lords Alliance: Shared offices at 202 East 103rd Street and free food programs fed Black, Puerto Rican, and other working-poor families from the neighborhood.

Legacy (1980s–Present)

The LES’s solidarity lives on in modern initiatives. To name a very few:

• GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side), founded in 1977 and headquartered at 169 Avenue B, provides free legal aid to combat evictions, pressures landlords to preserve affordable housing, and mobilizes against luxury rezoning projects
• Chinatown Tenants Union (2019–Present): Fighting evictions at 85 Bowery, they echo the CCBA’s exclusion-era battles.
• Two Bridges Mutual Aid (2020–Present): Delivering groceries to Black and Chinese elders from 82 Rutgers Slip, they revive 1930s cross-racial solidarity.
• BAN (Bowery Alliance of Neighbors), founded in 2015, fights to preserve the Bowery’s cultural and architectural legacy amid rapid gentrification. BAN organizes protests, advocates for landmark protections, and amplifies the voices of longtime residents and small businesses displaced by soaring rents.

Conclusion

From Underground Railroad initiatives to storefront synagogues, the LES’s mutual aid history goes back nearly 200 years. These people and organizations remind us that solidarity—not handouts—build neighborhoods.

[IMAGE COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.]

Eric Ferrara

Eric is a 4th generation Lower East Sider, professional NYC history author, movie & TV consultant, and founder of Lower East Side History Project.