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Jeremiah G. Hamilton was Wall Street’s first Black millionaire, and the only African American broker to join mid-19th-century New York’s millionaire’s club. He escaped Haiti in 1828 and began building his fortune by selling to both white and Black entrepreneurs. He was known as the “Prince of Darkness” by most and Ni**** Hamilton by others and was considered the wealthiest African American of the 19th century. Hamilton used questionable tactics to amass his considerable wealth and was reportedly despised by both Black and White businessmen. In the midst of a segregated New York, Hamilton worked freely out of an office on Wall Street and participated in the city’s real estate boom. He invested in land and property around the Hudson River, and owned stock in railways that denied access to members of his race. One of Hamilton’s contemporaries observed that he brazenly “assumed the privileges of a white man,” but he and others were unable to check Hamilton’s ambitions. Hamilton ignored, denounced, or outsmarted racial attacks, even thwarting a lynch mob during the Draft Riots of July 1863. Hamilton’s 40-year Wall Street legacy is either frowned upon because of his alleged dishonest business practices or admired for his creative business acumen in a time where a Black man prospering on Wall Street seemed impossible. African American contemporaries were scandalized by Hamilton’s relentless financial scheming, and in turn, the broker made a point of ignoring New York’s black community entirely.

During his career as a stockbroker on Wall Street, Hamilton was the only Black millionaire in New York City. During his lifetime, Black intellectuals disparaged his relentless pursuit of wealth as crass and undignified. American historians would shun Jeremiah Hamilton, ignoring his prominence in Wall Street during the 1840s and 50s. Today he is all but forgotten. #princeofdarkness #jeremiahghamilton #jeremiahghamiltonwallstreet

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