Spectacular Ruins: Conservation and Boosterism in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park
By Melissa Zavala
On either side of debates over development and progress is the need to protect public health and open space belonging to us all equally. The borough of Queens faces a future of sinking developments just a short walk from each other. The funding and political will to preserve a prized structure have been missing for over half a century despite public interest. Now, the city considers losing 65 acres of parkland to a capitalist venture as its best option for preservation, especially as a response to flooding and rising temperatures, as has happened along the waterfront in Long Island City. It does not matter that LaGuardia Airport and nearby Arthur Ashe Stadium are also sinking or that a casino can very well mean more tumbling ruins. Will the city soon inherit another shrine to consumption in need of rescue from the fate of a neighboring sinking relic, if not in Flushing, then near the airport or elsewhere? Which world of tomorrow is worth preserving? This is an ongoing challenge facing the city.
Mobilizing the Metropolis: An Interview with Philip Mark Plotch
By Robert W. Snyder
Mobilizing the Metropolis closely charts the evolution of the Port Authority as it went from improving rail freight around New York Harbor to building bridges and managing real estate. At the same time, the book explores the evolution of the authority’s internal culture in the face of actions by elected officials in New York and New Jersey that have reduced the agency’s autonomy and affected its operations. Mobilizing the Metropolis also extracts from the history of the Port Authority useful lessons about how organizations charged with solving governmental problems can win support and engage opposition.
How the Catholic Church Drove Suburban Expansion Within and Outside New York City
By Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C.
Often overlooked, therefore, is the role that Catholic leaders, associations, and media played in spurring suburbanization, shaping the pattern of suburban development, and establishing the necessary infrastructure to sustain suburban communities. The Catholic bishops of metropolitan New York cooperated with urban planners and developers in order to maximize the Church’s real estate holdings and to anticipate where the Church would need to expand in order to serve its suburbanizing flock. They also moved financial resources from well-established urban parishes to newly established suburban parishes and oversaw massive building campaigns in suburban areas.
“‘The World’s Most Arrested Lesbian:’ Corona Rivera and the New York Gay Activists Alliance, 1970-72.” An Interview with Marc Stein
Interviewed By Ben Serby
I think historians of LGBTQ+ activism should become more familiar with Corona’s story because it’s fascinating in and of itself, but also because it might change the way we think about the history of GAA-New York and the broader history of LGBTQ+ activism in the 1970s. More generally, I think GAA-New York was responsible for one of the most creative and powerful waves of direct action ever seen in the United States, with lessons for LGBTQ+ and other activists today. Corona was a leading GAA-New York activist for two years and we should know more about her.
The Case of Ernest Gallashaw: Achieving Justice in an Earlier Era of White-Backlash Politics
By Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy
The episode proved to be a revelatory moment in a city whose conceit of tolerance was belied by stark economic inequality as well as segregation in housing, employment and schools. Now virtually forgotten, the eruption on poor and working-class streets 15 miles from City Hall was—and still remains—historically significant for signaling New York City’s seething racial tensions and the potential for intense right-wing reaction.
“Serving Canada in His Majesties Armies”: A Staten Islander in the Canadian Expeditionary Force
By Phillip Pappas
Across the United States, immigrant communities voiced their opinions about the wartime activities of the European nations and the American government’s policy towards the conflict. In the five boroughs of New York City, where three-fourths of the nearly 5 million residents were immigrants and their children, ethnic groups held rallies, parades, and demonstrations, sponsored public lectures, raised funds, and used the press to respond to the declarations of war in Europe and to promote the plight of their homelands. Many New Yorkers sought opportunities to join the fight in Europe. Some were resident aliens who were registered reservists in the militaries of their respective homelands, while others were U. S. citizens with cultural ties and ideological sympathies to the combatants.
Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers in New York
Review By J.J. Butts
Jordana Cox’s excellent study Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers in New York explores the history of the New York Living Newspapers (NYLN) unit, revealing its complex engagement with news and performance. The focus on journalism within the FTP separates her book from many others on New Deal writing and performance arts. Scholars highlighting the value of the FTP and Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) have often made a case for them around the artistic innovations or careers they nourished. However, journalists constituted one of the major categories of writing professionals seeking work relief, and journalism prepared them for the kinds of fact-based work that typified many of the FTP and FWP productions. In consequence, Cox’s focus on the way the newsroom shaped and was reshaped by the Living Newspapers refreshingly spotlights a crucial element of the story of New Deal culture.
An Excerpt from Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America
By Scott Gac
The Great Strikes of 1877 are recognized as a significant example of forceful labor protest in the United States. But, if we only look at what the workers did, we miss the important role of the state and state-backed violence in controlling workers and supporting the growth of American industrial capitalism. And it is this revolution of industrial capitalism, a revolution of contracts, wages, and courts backed by federal, state, and local force, that workers resisted during the Great Strikes. The following excerpt from Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America details how Social Darwinism helped buttress worker suppression in the post-Civil War era and how, in 1874, the brutal treatment of peaceful working-class protesters in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park foreshadowed the militant response to workers seen three years later in the Great Strikes.
Basketball was especially popular in New York City and by the turn of the century, nearly every public school were sponsoring teams. The Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL), founded in 1903, was initially a private organization whose primary function was to supervise physical education and interscholastic athletics in all New York City public schools. With about fifteen high schools throughout the city, the PSAL sponsored its first formal basketball tournament in 1905. In that inaugural championship game on March 4, 1905, DeWitt Clinton defeated Boys High in Brooklyn to lay claim to the first ever PSAL tournament champion. In other words, Clinton was crowned the first king of basketball.
Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II-Era New York City
Review By Douglas Flowe
This work is not only timely but reflective of growing scholarship on law enforcement that places New York City front and center; rightfully so considering how influential Gotham is in terms of law enforcement and penology. With resources like the La Guardia papers, court record books, oral histories, and NAACP papers from the Library of Congress, Brooks has crafted a major contribution to the history of the often overlooked mid-twentieth century development of America’s criminal justice system; a story that will be relevant to all students of law, urban history, criminality, and twentieth-century politics.
