The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn: An American Story
Reviewed by Jon Butler
Between the Civil War and 1900, "old" Brooklyn both prospered and declined. Real estate developers and the new Brooklyn Bridge swelled Brooklyn's tony neighborhoods with middling and upper-class commuters to Manhattan….The New York Times may have been condescending when it labelled Brooklyn "that moral suburb" before the Brooklyn Bridge dedication, as Blumin and Altschuler put it. But it hadn't missed the Protestants' aim.
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots that Shook New York City
Reviewed by Aaron Welt
With The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902, Scott D. Seligman offers the first book-length treatment of the campaign of Jewish housewives against the “Beef Trust.” … Seligman provides a highly readable chronology of the events between May and June of 1902 that, at the time, earned the title of “a modern Jewish Boston Tea Party” and, later, the Kosher Meat Boycott. He succeeds in bringing to life the largely forgotten and primarily female leaders of the consumer campaign, their roles within the collective effort to bring down the price of kosher beef, the internal divisions that developed, and their significance for American Jews.
Boukary Sawadogo’s book Africans in Harlem: An Untold New York Story resonated with me as an African migrant living in Harlem. From the introductory section, “Africa in Harlem,” to the conclusion of the last chapter, “Searching for Africa in the Diaspora,” the writer allowed me to understand the genesis, formation, and growth of this community.
In 1988, director Elia Kazan recalled a story in which he and Broadway scenic designer Boris Aronson drove cross-country together on a research trip for their latest theatrical collaboration. According to Kazan, as they entered New Mexico, Aronson pointed to a single tree growing atop a chain of hills barren of any other vegetation and said, “Without this tree, these hills would not exist.” As single elements, neither the tree nor the hills attract notice. But when taken together, it is the tree that draws the eye to the hills, bringing them into focus, making them relevant.
“Fellow Citizens Too”: Puerto Ricans and Migration Politics in the New York Amsterdam News, 1954
By Daniel Acosta Elkan
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on the members of the House of Representatives from the gallery of the body’s chamber in Washington DC. This was but the most dramatic event in an important year for the Puerto Rican diaspora, and its effects were felt in profoundly local ways. In East Harlem, the most prominent stateside Boricua community, the FBI conducted a number of raids on bars, restaurants, and other community spaces. The New York Amsterdam News, the city’s leading Black newspaper, reported that “Negroes and Puerto Ricans are reportedly being rounded up, searched, and subjected to other indignities.”
Since the late 1950s, New York City has been an epicenter of rumba outside Cuba. For more than six decades, a rumbacircle in Central Park has embraced those of African descent from Spanish-speaking islands (Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans) and Latin America (Panamanians, Colombians), local African Americans, AfroLatinxs (Nuyorican, NuyoDominicans, Cuban Americans) and those from other diasporas including American Jews. A focus on Central Park rumba illustrates the intricacies and ancestral functionings of the African Diaspora present in contemporary New York.
Rethinking Ellis Island: A History of Asian Detention and Deportation
Reviewed by Maria Paz G. Esguerra
Anna Pegler-Gordon’s Closing the Golden Door: Asian Migration and the Hidden History of Exclusion at Ellis Island offers a glimpse into the very interesting career of Ellis Island and traces its evolution from an immigration station into a detention and deportation center. This evolution unfolds in multiple chapters that focus on the relatively small number, but diverse group of Asian immigrants and nonimmigrants who have often and long been overlooked by scholars of migration: stowaways, smugglers, and sailors, Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans detained during World War II, and Chinese accused of pro-Communist activities in the Cold War.
Tong Kee Hang: A Chinese American Civil War Veteran Who Was Stripped of His Citizenship
By Kristin Choo
May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage month, an appropriate time to recognize the Chinese Americans whose lives were disrupted, constricted or uprooted by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and other racist laws and policies. Tong Kee Hang did not suffer the most egregious mistreatment meted out to Chinese immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was not beaten, lynched, or driven from his home like many others. But the loss of his citizenship and right to vote was a cruel blow for a man who had served his country in wartime and who took deep pride in being American.
Book Review: Catherine Collomp’s Rescue, Relief, and Resistance
Reviewed by Natalia Dubno Shevin
Catherine Collomp’s Rescue, Relief, and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee’s Anti-Nazi Operations, 1934-1945 is the first monograph to uncover the rescues and aid that the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) provided to trade unionists, socialists, and Jews trapped in Europe after the rise of Nazism and fascism during the Second World War. The emergence of the JLC in 1934 and its successful rescue of 1,500 individuals from occupied France, via Spain and Portugal, and Polish Bundists from Lithuania, via the Soviet Union and Japan, reflected the strength of World War II-era Jewish labor in New York City.
Interview: Anthony Tamburri on the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
Interviewed by Adam Kocurek
Today on the blog, Gotham editor Adam Kocurek speaks with the dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Anthony Tamburri about the history of the Institute, and the work it does for supporting Italian American scholars and the history of Italian Americans.
