The Story Behind The Suits: A Brief History Of Brooks Brothers Before Bankruptcy

The New York Draft Riots could be accurately described as an Anti-Black Lives Matter protest. Righteous indignation about the inequity of the military draft was channeled into racist violence against African Americans and the New York upper class and its institutions. On July 13th, 1863 a mob of mostly working class Irish Americans attacked the favorite charities and institutions of New York society up and down Fifth Avenue, beat Police Superintendent John Kennedy to a bloody pulp, and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street to the ground as NYPD evacuated 237 orphans from the building surreptitiously.

Leonard Jerome, the father of Winston Churchill’s American mother, allegedly manned a Gatling gun to protect the New York Times. The riot continued into a second day as rioters attacked New York Establishment landmarks and Black-owned businesses and dwellings. On July 14th, the original Brooks Brothers location at Catherine and Cherry Street was looted by rioters. Harpers described it, “from the first of the riot, clothing appeared to be a great desideratum among the roughs composing the mob. On Monday evening a large number of marauders paid a visit to the extensive clothing-store of Messrs. Brooks Brothers, at the corner of Catherine and Cherry Streets. Here they helped themselves to such articles as they wanted, after which they might be seen dispersing in all directions." 

The riot was not quelled until 6,000 soldiers quickly rushed back to New York after a victory in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Eleven Black New Yorkers were murdered by the rioters. At the Brooks Brothers centennial in 1918, there was still an active employee alive that was working during the 1863 riots as a youth.