Astor Place, though barely five hundred feet long, is a hectic street of cafes and stores, with the bustling Astor Place subway station as the centerpiece and Cooper Union at its eastern end. But 175 years ago this month, the state militia confronted an angry mob on Astor Place and blood was spilled. It was one of the deadliest riots in New York’s history. How did it happen, and why did it happen there?
“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.
Joyful Resilience: Celebrating Untold Stories of Civil Rights History in New York City
By Judy DeRosier, Jas Leiser, and Errol C. Saunders II
The New York City Civil Rights History Project (NYCCRHP) aims to document the crucial and often neglected histories of Black, Brown, and Disability Rights activists who worked tirelessly to promote conversations and policy changes that are diverse and in line with the city’s population. […] By presenting these narratives, the NYCCRHP offers an invaluable resource for understanding the multifaceted nature of civil rights activism and expands beyond the commonly recognized figures and events to include a broader range of activists and movements. This diversity reflects the true breadth of the struggle for rights and equality in New York City.
Opening Credits: Urban Redevelopment, Industrial Policy, and the Revitalization of Motion Picture and Television Production in New York City, 1973-1983
By Shannan Clark
With the city’s fortunes reaching their nadir in the mid-1970s, a disparate coalition of union activists, creative professionals, cultural advocates, public officials, media executives, and real estate developers began to coalesce to rebuild the motion picture and television production industry in New York. The participants in this process acted at a pivotal conjuncture, working at the dawn of an era of austerity, the duration of which they could not foresee, but with a consciousness that was still shaped by their formative experiences in an earlier era of abundance that was coming to an end.
Frances Goldin and the Moses Threat to Cooper Square
By Katie Heiserman
Less remembered than her West Village counterpart Jane Jacobs, Frances Goldin deserves attention and further study as a model of both forceful and joyful neighborhood organizing. An activist with a distinctive style, she brought the community together and sustained engagement over many years. In her 2014 oral history interview with Village Preservation, Goldin highlighted the egalitarian, community-centered approach at the core of her work with CSC: “Fifty-nine years ago, dues were a dollar a year, and today, dues are a dollar a year.”
The Valentine’s Manuals, as the books came to be known, started life in 1801 as informational pamphlets. In 1818, they were renamed the City Directory. That title lasted until Valentine came along and transformed the volumes. “The idea was to make the books interesting to the public as well as to city officials,” he explained in 1865. Armed with new-old material, Valentine enlivened the dry data with excerpts from founding documents, essays about old buildings and parks, and anecdotes about New Amsterdam.
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.
The Eight tells the story of the Lemmon slave case, a dramatic legal battle over the freedom of eight enslaved people who were brought to New York City while sailing from Virginia to Texas, at which point New York abolitionists initiated a freedom suit on their behalf. The eight-year legal saga that followed reflected escalating political tensions over the fate of American slavery and highlighted the legal contradictions that complicated a half-slave, half-free nation.
Mobilizing the Metropolis: How the Port Authority Built New York
Review by Elizabeth M. Marcello and Gail Radford
The New York City metropolitan area boasts an impressive infrastructural network that moves people, trains, motor vehicles, freight, ships, and airplanes. At the center of this network is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the subject of Philip Mark Plotch and Jen Nelles’s Mobilizing the Metropolis, which they offer as a “reflective history” of this particular agency, but also as a series of “lessons” for other agencies around the country built on the public authority model.
Solidarity Across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-Imperialism
Review By Edgardo Meléndez
For Power, Puerto Rico’s colonial status greatly undermines the honesty of America’s “Good Neighbor” policy towards Latin American countries in the 1930s. She recounts the PRNP’s continued efforts to obtain support for its cause into the 1940s and argues that it was crucial in getting important sectors in several Latin American countries to challenge US policy towards the region.
