Black Friday was the nickname for the 1869 U.S. gold-market crash involving speculators Jay Gould and James Fisk.
Gould and Fisk attempted to corner the American gold market by buying large quantities of gold while trying to prevent the U.S. Treasury from releasing more of the metal. Their plan helped drive the gold price sharply higher in September 1869. President Ulysses S. Grant eventually ordered Treasury gold sales to break the attempted corner.
On September 24, 1869, the price fell rapidly, causing major losses for speculators and disrupting financial markets. The episode became known as Black Friday, although it was primarily a gold-market panic rather than a modern exchange-wide stock crash.
The event is sometimes confused with later “Black” market days, including Black Thursday in 1929 and Black Monday in 1987. Gould avoided criminal conviction, while Fisk was later killed in an unrelated dispute.