George Thomas Downing was a successful businessman, a persuasive civil rights leader in the struggle for fair and equal justice for Black troops during the Civil War. Downing was born free in New York City on December 30, 1819. George's father, Thomas, was a successful businessman. He sold oysters and provided catering services to rich clients. His parents who had been freed from slavery when their master, John Downing, a prominent planter, converted to Methodism. Downing started out oystering, but soon showed a landward entrepreneurial streak, establishing an elegant Manhattan oyster bar that elite Whites came to favor. By 1825, he bought a restaurant in Manhattan. He made it a fancy oyster house that attracted powerful businessmen.
Thomas Downing taught his children to be active in the fight for freedom and George Downing followed in his father’s footsteps. In 1836, Thomas Downing cofounded the American Anti-slavery Society in New York City, and in the damp cellar where he stored shellfish he sometimes harbored fugitive slaves. In 1836, he presented a 20-foot-long, 620-signature petition to legislators in Albany asking that New York State grant voting rights to all “without distinction of color.” The gesture failed. Thomas Downing founded schools for Blacks in New York City, also trying but failing to get New Haven, Connecticut, to permit a college for Blacks to open there. He was among many Blacks to challenge segregation as practiced on streetcars in New York City.
George's parents believed education was very important. George and his brothers went to school in New York City. George first attended a school on Orange Street. Then he studied at the Mulberry Street School, also known as the African Free School. As a child, George was known for protecting other Black students from harassment. When George was 14, he started a student group which organized a literary society. They decided not to celebrate the Fourth of July. They felt it was wrong to celebrate freedom when African Americans in the United States were not yet equal. Many of his classmates in this group became important leaders later, including James McCune Smith, Alexander Crummell and Henry Highland Garnet.
Attending Hamilton College in upstate New York, he met his future wife, Serena DeGrasse, enrolled at a female seminary nearby. Her father, George de Grasse, was born in India. He was believed to be the son of a French naval officer and an Indian woman. This officer, François Joseph Paul de Grasse, was a hero of the Revolutionary War. He helped the American forces win at Yorktown. As a young man, Downing also started working for the Underground Railroad. Along with Frederick Douglass, Downing strongly opposed the American Colonization Society. This group wanted to send free Black Americans to a colony in west Africa called Sierra Leone. Downing and his friends argued that Black people should have equal rights right here in the United States.
On December 30, 1840, Downing was asked to exit one of New York’s whites-only segregated railroad cars and refused. He was beaten and forced violently out of the car. The following year George opened up a catering business in New York City, then he began to branch off into Rhode Island. By 1847, he began working for equal education for Black children. He became a member of the first board of trustees for a society that promoted education for Black children in New York. He eventually moved to Newport in 1848. A street in Newport was later named Downing Street in his honor. There he also opened up a catering business in Providence. In 1849, Downing bought a large property in Newport. The following year in June, Downing together with Frederick Douglass, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and others formed the American League of Colored Laborers as a union to organize former slaves working in New York City.
During the same year, he was a part of a “Committee of Thirteen” in New York, which worked publicly, and behind the scenes, to raise support and money for those who had been captured under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This group included James McCune Smith, David Ruggles, James W. C. Pennington, and Henry Highland Garnet. This law made it easier to capture and return escaped slaves. Now you were required and were paid for information to runaway slaves. Downing helped many escaped slaves pass through New York City to freedom. His distaste for that bill was such that when he once met Millard Fillmore, he excused himself rather than shake the former president’s hand, as he did not wish to touch the hand which signed that bill.
In the fall of 1854, George opened the luxury Sea Girt Hotel in Newport, RI. George Downing counted among his friends and correspondents abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, Gerritt Smith, and U.S Sen. Charles Sumner. A year after John Brown was hanged, Downing sponsored a commemorative event in Boston. Though threatened by a mob, he did not flinch. In 1857 he took up the charge, along with others, to desegregate the public school system in Rhode Island. In Providence, RI for example, the city operated separate schools for Black children as Black students were not permitted to enroll in the high school at all. Community organizers petitioned the General Assembly and Downing was a leading part of the campaign.
As the Civil War got closer, Downing became a central figure in the civil rights movement. He was elected President of the New England Convention of Colored Citizens of Boston in 1859. During the Civil War, he was among a handful of highly effective Union Army recruiters highlighting the need and opportunity for Blacks to enlist. Downing and other private recruiters were key to filling musters in some states because unlike state workers they could cross state lines to meet enlistment quotas. Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew offered George Downing a rank of colonel in a colored militia. Downing refused unless the term “colored” were stricken from the unit’s name. The governor sent the commission again after removing the unfair label.
In 1865 George Downing was invited to manage the Members’ Dining Room in the U.S. Capitol. During his time in D.C., he made his presence felt. He was instrumental in getting the ban on African Americans removed from the Senate gallery (which is the viewing area). He also fought against the mistreatment of Blacks on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and he actively supported the outlawing of discrimination in places of public accommodation in the nation’s capital. After the war, Downing moved to Washington, D.C. He became close friends with many politicians, especially Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner used Downing's words in his arguments for the Civil Rights Bill in 1872. This bill aimed to give all citizens equal access to public places. Although Downing did not hold a high office in Washington D.C, the depth of his influence over Sumner’s political decisions and his political network helped advance racial uplift.
Downing co-founded the Colored National Labor Union, along with Isaac Myers in 1869 and supported the Kansas Exodusters in 1879. In the late 1870s, Downing opposed Frederick Douglass on migration. Together with John Mercer Langston and Richard T. Greener (the first Black graduate of Harvard University) at meetings and conventions, Downing supported the cause of Blacks migrating from the South to the North for more opportunities. The main cause of Black migration out of the South was to escape racial violence or "bulldozing" by White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Douglass believed and felt that Exodusters, lead by Benjamin “Pap” Singleton and others, should stay in place and work to develop the area where they were born.
When it came to politics, he broke with republicans of the day and refused to be committed to one party. Downing preferred to go with whomever was best suited, in his opinion, to advance the causes of equality and desegregation in his area. Downing always considered Newport, Rhode Island, his home. He remained active in politics there. He was a Republican for most of his life. However, he became more independent when James G. Blaine ran for president. Downing felt Blaine was not strong enough on civil rights. Downing supported a Democratic candidate for a local office in Newport. In return, a African American man was appointed to the school committee. Downing also worked to repeal laws against mixed-race marriages in Rhode Island.
George Thomas Downing helped organize the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows and was Grand Master of the group for some years. He was also involved in freemasonry and was a Royal Arch Mason. He was an activist for Black civil rights in America while building a successful career as a restaurateur in New York city, Newport, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. Throughout his life, he served as a political activist for racial justice. Downing also became an important helper to Newport. He gave a large amount of money to buy land for Touro Park in the city. The Downings had six children, some of whom continued in the restaurant industry. Downing died in 1903 in Newport, where Downing Street honors his 1854 donation to help buy land for Touro Park.
