When the Cops were Spies, and the Terrorists were Everywhere

By David Viola

Just after dawn on February 16th, 1965, two men drove a late-model Chevy through cold, quiet Bronx streets. Robert Steele Collier, twenty-eight, was an Air Force veteran who had received an other-than-honorable discharge after slashing a man in a London knife fight. In the years since his discharge, he had made his way to New York City and become involved in the more militant side of the Civil Rights movement. Even the belligerent Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), which he joined, proved too faint-hearted for his taste.

Postwar New York, Crime & PolicingPeter-Christian AignerOctober 10, 2019Comment

Desire & Documentary in the Photography of Alvin Baltrop

By Jeffrey Patrick Colgan and Jeffrey Escoffier

Documentary photography in New York City has a long history, going back to Jacob Riis in the 1880s and Lewis Hine in the early twentieth-century with their documentation of poverty and slums. During the 1930s and 40s, Weegee covered the criminal underworld and the world of high society for the tabloids, while Helen Levitt shot scenes of the everyday life of housewives, children and working men. In the 1950s and 60s, Roy de Carava, Garry Winogrand, Fred McDarrah and Nan Goldin managed to capture both the grit and the glamour of New York’s post-war period. By the seventies, however, the glamour was gone, though the grit remained, as New York was overtaken by its industrial collapse and fiscal woes.

Postwar New York, Gender & SexualityPeter-Christian AignerSeptember 24, 2019Comment

The Red Line Archive: An Interview with Walis Johnson

Interviewed by Prithi Kanakamedala

Today on the blog, editor Prithi Kanakamedala sits down with artist Walis Johnson to discuss her current work, The Red Line Archive Project, which activates conversations about the personal and political effects of redlining using her own family’s story growing up in Brooklyn.

Bad Faith: Teachers, Liberalism, and the Origins of McCarthyism

Reviewed by Clarence Taylor

For decades, pundits, conservative writers, and political officials have obscured the political and ideological differences between liberals, democratic socialists and communists. It is quite common for both rightwing Republicans and those in the mainstream media to label liberals as the “far Left,” in order to imply their ideas pose a danger to the country. In the 1988 presidential election, for example, George H. W. Bush called his Democratic opponent, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, a “card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union,” equating membership in the ACLU with membership in the Communist Party. Several Republicans and members of the Tea Party have accused former President Barack Obama of being a “socialist.” President Donald Trump has labeled Democrats as “radicals” who have adopted a “far-left agenda.”

Business & Labor, Education, Politics, Postwar New York, ReviewsGuest UserAugust 20, 2019Comment

The 51st State: Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, and the Politics of Imagination

By Gabe S. Tennen

It was early April in 1969, and Norman Mailer, holding court on the top floor of his Brooklyn Heights brownstone, was in his element. Surrounding the forty-six-year-old author, social commentator, and rabble-rouser were an array of the city’s writers, activists, and politicos, and, probably to the liking of the notoriously egotistical Mailer, the topic of the night concerned him.

Stonewall at 50: A Roundtable

Today on the blog, we mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots with a series of short essays by activists, writers, and scholars whose lives and work have been shaped by the events of June 1969 and their aftermath. This year, the scale of celebration and commemoration in New York is larger than ever — more than 4 million people are expected to attend this weekend’s festivities, and an estimated 115,000 people will be marching at Pride.

What Stonewall Means to Me

By Perry Brass

People often ask me if I was “at Stonewall,” and I’m one of the few people who will definitely say, “No.” I was actually around the corner at an old bar called Julius’, when some young men raced in to tell us that “the girls are rioting at the Stonewall!”

From the CUNY Digital History Archive: The Five Demands and the University of Harlem

By Chloe Smolarski

The CUNY Digital History Archive, founded in 2014, collects and makes available primary source documents that address the history of the City University of New York, the system of public colleges that serves New York City. Many of the collections date from the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of radical ferment at CUNY. Following a historic wave of student protest, the university embarked upon a radical experiment that offered low-cost public higher education to all graduates of city high schools. In the piece that follows, CDHA Program and Collections Coordinator Chloe Smolarski highlights and contextualizes some key documents from the struggle of Black and Puerto Rican students at City College to build a university that responded to the needs of their communities. This year marks the fifty-year anniversary of those struggles. –Ed.

A Documentary History of Stonewall: An Interview with Marc Stein

Interviewed by Katie Uva

Today on the blog, we talk to Marc Stein about his new book, The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. In it, he compiles 200 documents that shed light on the years immediately preceding and after the events at Stonewall.

The Rebel Cafe: Sex, Race and Politics in Cold War America's Nightclub Underground

Reviewed by Burton W. Peretti

Stephen R. Duncan’s new book admirably fills a void in the historiography of 20th century American culture. We long have recognized that between the storied nightclub era of Prohibition days and the age of rock ’n’ roll, there was a perceptible but elusive set of nightlife entertainment venues that kept radical left-wing political values percolating during the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Historians have explored chapters in New York City’s interregnum — David Stowe, for example, covers Cafe Society in the late 1930s, Patrick Burke describes the jazz clubs on 52nd Street, and James Gavin chronicles European-style cabaret — but a comprehensive history, with more of a national perspective, has been lacking. Duncan’s ambitious and wide-ranging work makes a terrific new contribution toward defining the paramount significance of radical and intimate performance venues of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s.

When the Cops were Spies, and the Terrorists were Everywhere

Desire & Documentary in the Photography of Alvin Baltrop

The Red Line Archive: An Interview with Walis Johnson

Interviewed by Prithi Kanakamedala

Bad Faith: Teachers, Liberalism, and the Origins of McCarthyism

Reviewed by Clarence Taylor

The 51st State: Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, and the Politics of Imagination​

By Gabe S. Tennen

Stonewall at 50: A Roundtable

What Stonewall Means to Me

By Perry Brass

From the CUNY Digital History Archive: The Five Demands and the University of Harlem

By Chloe Smolarski

A Documentary History of Stonewall: An Interview with Marc Stein

Interviewed by Katie Uva

The Rebel Cafe: Sex, Race and Politics in Cold War America's Nightclub Underground

Reviewed by Burton W. Peretti

The 51st State: Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, and the Politics of Imagination