A History of Black People in Scarsdale and Edgemont

By Jordan Copeland

Black people have lived in Scarsdale and Edgemont continually since New York was a Dutch colony. In 1712, two-thirds of Scarsdale’s inhabitants were enslaved Black people. In 1790, an estimated one fifth of Edgemont’s population consisted of enslaved Black people, and the evidence of slavery in Edgemont can still be seen today at 221 Old Army Road, where a small red mid-18th century shed is one of the few remaining slave quarters in New York.

After slavery was banned in New York in 1827, Black people continued to reside in the area, often as farm laborers. In 1856, one formerly-enslaved Black man named Robert Purdy bought five acres of farmland on Saxon Woods Road in Scarsdale, establishing an area that has been lived in by his descendants (and other Black families) til the present day. One notable Black family that arrived in Edgemont in the late 1800s was the Stewart family: husband and wife Abraham and Sadie and their sons Charles and Louis. The family lived originally on Fort Hill Road and attended the Greenville Reformed Church, which was then on Central Avenue.

Louis became a significant member of the Edgemont community. He worked as a farm hand for the nearby Dederer dairy farm and joined the Greenville volunteer fire company—which changed its bylaws to allow him in as a Black man—eventually serving for over a quarter century. He also partnered with a white man and ran a dairy farm on the site of Greenville School on Ardsley Road, and purchased and lived on 2.5 acres of land off Old Army Road.

As Scarsdale and Edgemont transformed into suburbs in the 1920s, Black people came, often from the mid-Atlantic states, to be domestic workers. In the context of the area’s rapid development came one particularly unjust episode of then-legal discrimination. In 1932, Joshua Cockburn, a wealthy steamship captain, and his wife Pauline purchased land and built a house in Edgemont. After the house was built, they were sued by a neighbor because the original deed covenants for the development said that “Negros” could only reside in the neighborhood as servants and could not own property. The Cockburns ultimately lost their case in 1937, forfeiting the right to live in the house that they had built. (Discriminatory deed covenants were not found by the U.S. Supreme Court to be unconstitutional until 1948).

The surprising contrast between the apparent acceptance of Louis Stewart and the later rejection of the Cockburns reflected a negative side of suburbia, in which the pursuit of higher property values could take precedence over fairness and acceptance. As a consequence, suburbanization in Edgemont largely excluded Black people, with a Black residents in Scarsdale largely confined to isolated Saxon Woods Road. Other Black residents were domestic servants living in their employers’ homes, and as such didn’t build equity by owning a home in the community, and generally didn’t send their children to the public schools.

Starting in the late 1960s, the topic of racial integration came to the forefront. There were several efforts in Scarsdale to combat illegal housing discrimination and to remedy bank discrimination and financial inequity by providing loans to Black families who could not otherwise provide down payments on their homes. In Edgemont, there was a growing awareness that the underrepresentation of Black people had a negative impact on both Black and White people, and many community members urged the board of education to take further steps to diversify the schools. On the other hand, an (unsuccessful) Edgemont incorporation effort in the late 1960s was criticized as a means to exclude Greenburgh public housing.

Today, while Scarsdale and Edgemont are substantially diverse, particularly with respect to people from other countries and those of Asian and Pacific Islander descent, Black residents make up only around 2 percent of the local population. In recorded interviews, many Black former residents have spoken warmly about the friends, education, and opportunities they enjoyed from growing up in Scarsdale, while also highlighting the difficulties of being in such a small minority.