The New York City Draft Riots and the Colored Orphan Asylum 4th grade · age 9

The Judgment Lab asks: What do we think about that? When we work on the Judgment Lab, our ultimate goal is to articulate our own principles and values in a thoughtful and respectful way.

As you learned in the reading, the Colored Orphan Asylum was a home for two hundred and thirty-three Black children on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Quaker women started it in 1836, and the staff there fed, taught, and cared for the children every day. Some of those children were sons and daughters of Union soldiers fighting in the Civil War. The asylum was one of the clearest signs that some White New Yorkers cared for children of color.

In July 1863, angry mobs rioted across Manhattan. Rioters were furious about an unfair draft law and believed Black workers would take their jobs. The mob marched to the orphan asylum and broke down the front door with an axe. While the crowd was busy at the front, the superintendent, William Davis, and the head matron, Jane McClellan, quietly led all the children out the back. The children walked to a police station, and from there they were taken to Blackwell's Island. Behind them, the rioters stole everything they could carry and set the building on fire and destroying it. Every child was alive, but the home those children had known was gone.

After the riots ended, the orphanage's leadership tried to rebuild on Fifth Avenue where the Asylum had always stood. But the neighboring residents pushed them to go somewhere else. The board was forced farther and farther away — first to a small temporary building on Fifty-First Street, and then all the way up to 143rd Street, nearly a hundred blocks from the old spot. None of the rioters who burned down the asylum were ever punished. There is still no marker at the spot today. In April 2026, the City Council heard a bill called Intro 496. It asks for a study of ways to mark the draft riots. The bill is still waiting in a committee, a small group that looks at a bill first. The Judgment Lab asks you to think about whether the city should have let the orphanage rebuild in its old neighborhood even though the neighbors objected.

The Judgment Lab asks about majority rule and minority rights, so let's make sure we understand those terms. Majority rule means that when a group makes a decision, the side with the most people gets its way — like when a class votes and the choice with the most hands raised wins. Minority rights are protections for smaller groups of people so that the bigger group cannot treat them unfairly, even if most people want to. In the reading, the neighbors around Fifth Avenue were the majority, and the Black orphan children and the people who cared for them were the minority.

Should the city have let the Colored Orphan Asylum rebuild on Fifth Avenue, even though most of the neighbors did not want it there?

Follow the steps below to complete this Judgment Lab. By the end of the lab, you will have decided whether you think the city should have let the orphanage rebuild in its old neighborhood even though the neighbors objected. You will also articulate and test your principles about when majority rule should be limited or minority rights protected.