The History of Gambling and the Future of Marijuana
By Matthew Vaz
With recreational marijuana crossing over to legalization in New York State, there is authentic optimism that the new system of regulation will be of benefit to the communities that have long been targeted by discriminatory policing. While these developments are encouraging, New York’s history with transforming illicit activity into budgetary salvation gives reason for caution. The largest endeavor of this kind was the tortured legalization of numbers gambling by the New York State Lottery, a historical process which featured many of the same themes of race, exclusion, and budget crisis.
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Willie Mack speaks to filmmaker and geographer Brett Story about her book, Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America. Story reexamines the prison as a set of social relations which includes property, race, gender, and class across the urban landscape. In this way, Story demonstrates how carceral power is distributed outside of the prisons walls to include racially segregated communities, gentrifying urban spaces, and even mass transit.
Explaining Amelia Norman’s Murder Attempt: Julie Miller’s Cry of Murder on Broadway
Reviewed by Lindsay Keiter
On the steps of the Astor Hotel on a fall evening in 1843, Amelia Norman plunged a small knife into her former lover’s chest. Immediately apprehended, Norman’s subsequent trial for attempted murder caused a media sensation. Championed by an unlikely coalition of middle-class moral reformers, including abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, and working-class political activists, Norman’s story did not “change history.”
The Unequal City: A Review of Racial Inequality in New York City since 1965
Reviewed by Kenneth S. Alyass
New York City is a nexus of racial and class inequality. The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout has made this all too clear. Nearly one in four New Yorkers of color have lost their job since March. City institutions like the MTA and CUNY, which the majority-minority population of the city rely on in their daily lives, are facing apocalyptic budget cuts. And while the media’s attention is often on the abandonment of corporate offices in downtown Manhattan, thousands of small businesses owned by people of color — the lifeblood of neighborhoods — have shut down, usually for good.
“The Scourge of the ‘90s:” Squeegee Men and Broken Windows Policing
By Jess Bird
There is perhaps no other bogeyman of New York City’s “bad old days” that has incited greater ire than the squeegee man. Cars created a sense of safety, of separation from the unruly world of the street, but a window washer approaching a car stopped at a red light ruptured that sense of safety, incited panic, and demonstrated, to some, a breakdown in law and order. Squeegee men, “the scourge of the ‘90s,” symbolized the need to be tough on crime, regardless of the costs. Unsurprisingly then, the so-called squeegee pest featured heavily in the mayoral race of 1993, a rematch between incumbent Mayor David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.
Those Who Know Don’t Say: Interview with Garrett Felber
Interviewed by Kenneth M. Donovan
Today on the blog, Kenneth Donovan interviews Garrett Felber about his recently published book Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, The Black Freedom Struggle, and the Carceral State. Those Who Know, which reevaluates the civil rights activism and legacy of the Nation of Islam, was shortlisted for the 2020 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award.
The World That Fear Made: Interview with Jason T. Sharples
Interviewed by Madeline Lafuse
Today on the blog, Madeline Lafuse speaks with Jason T. Sharples, author of the recently published The World That Fear Made : Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in Early America, about how the fear of slave conspiracies shaped New York City and early America.
Interview with Douglas J. Flowe on Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York
Interviewed by Willie Mack
African American men in early 20th-century New York City faced social and economic segregation, and a racist criminal justice system punctuated by violence by the police and white citizens. In Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York, Dr. Douglas Flowe interrogates the effects that segregation, crime, and violence had on black men, and how these men were forced to navigate the “crucible of black criminality” in Jim Crow Era New York City in order to survive.
Prohibition New York City: An Interview with David Rosen
Interviewed by David Huyssen
Today on the blog, editor David Huyssen speaks with David Rosen, independent writer and historian, about his new book Prohibition New York City:Speakeasy Queen Texas Guinan, Blind Pigs, Drag Balls and More (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2020), his third book on transgression in American life, and second focusing on New York City.
At this moment, the United States confronts multiple crises. COVID-19 has killed more than 200,000 people and infected more than six million, though these numbers are certainly undercounted. The virus’s impact, though indiscriminate, is disproportionately felt in communities of color who are more likely to experience serious illness, hospitalization, and death.
