Did All Jews Become White Folks?: A Fortress in Brooklyn and Hasidic Williamsburg

Did All Jews Become White Folks?:
A Fortress in Brooklyn and Hasidic Williamsburg

Reviewed by Gabe S. Tennen

In A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Makings of Hasidic Williamsburg, Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper add an important wrinkle into prevalent understandings of American Jewish history. Deutsch and Casper focus their text on the Hasidic Satmar sect and its creation of a “holy city of Jerusalem” in one corner of north Brooklyn, tracing that community from its nascent beginnings in the 1940s into the 21st century. By offering a detailed and crisply written account of this often discussed but largely underexamined group, the authors provide a caveat to nearly fifty years of scholarship.

Brooklyn, Contemporary Era, Housing & Realty, Immigration, Postwar New York, Race & Ethnicity, Religion, ReviewsGuest UserAugust 31, 2021Comment

“We Accuse”: The Harlem Rebellion, Bill Epton’s Anti-Carceral Activism, and the rise of the Surveillance State

By Joseph Kaplan

On July 16th, 1964, a mere three weeks after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, off-duty police officer Thomas Gilligan shot and killed fifteen-year-old Black student James Powell outside of Harlem’s Robert Wagner Junior High School. Gilligan claimed that he shot the 5’6” 122-pound Powell in self-defense when the teenager charged him with a knife, a claim disputed by several of Powell’s classmates. While the events of that day remain contested, there is firm agreement that this was the spark for the first major urban rebellion of the 1960s.

Crime & Policing, Manhattan, Postwar New York, Race & EthnicityGuest UserAugust 24, 2021Comment

“Completion by Contrast”: Architecture and Sculpture in Postwar New York

By Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins

In the March 30, 1963 issue of the New Yorker, art critic and historian Calvin Tomkins profiled sculptor Richard Lippold, whom he described as “by all odds, the busiest artist now working predominantly in collaboration with architects.”

Arts & Culture, Built Environment, Metropolitan Region, Postwar New YorkGuest UserAugust 19, 2021Comment

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.

Crime & Policing, Postwar New York, Race & EthnicityGuest UserJuly 22, 2021Comment

“Working-Class New York Revisited” Conference Honors Joshua Freeman, Discusses the History and Prospects of Working-Class Power and Social Democracy in New York City

**“Working-Class New York Revisited” Conference Honors Joshua Freeman**

By Marc Kagan

“I do hope that this book illuminates the possibilities for ordinary people to play a greater role in shaping their city and nation than they do today.” Joshua Freeman, Working-Class New York, 2000.
New York City’s working-class had real political, economic, and social power for almost thirty years after World War II. That power, expressed primarily through private- and, increasingly, public-sector unions, made life substantially better not just for their own members, but millions of other working-class New Yorkers.

Business & Labor, Postwar New York, Politics, Race & Ethnicity, Reviews, Urban Decline & Fiscal CrisisGuest UserJune 29, 2021Comment

Review: David Paul Kuhn's The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution

Friday, Bloody Friday: David Paul Kuhn's The Hardhat Riot

Reviewed by Steven H. Jaffe

David Paul Kuhn’s The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution focuses on May 8, 1970, a symbolic date in the exodus of such voters from the “New Deal Coalition.” On that day hundreds of blue-collar workers — many of them construction workers building the World Trade Center — converged in the streets of lower Manhattan, chanting “U—S—A. All the Way!” as they physically attacked students protesting the Vietnam War. Over one hundred students, bystanders, and others were injured in the melee on the streets.

Review: Timo Schrader's Loisaida as Urban Laboratory: Puerto Rican Community Activism in New York

Claiming the Right to the City: Timo Schrader's Loisaida as Urban Laboratory

Reviewed by Hongdeng Gao

In the 1970s, New York City witnessed an unprecedented level of housing abandonment and disinvestment, especially in low-income neighborhoods including Harlem, the South Bronx, Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and the Lower East Side. Amid the citywide housing crisis, one local newspaper in Loisaida — a term coined by the activist and poet Bittman “Bimbo” Rivas in 1974 to refer to the largely Puerto Rican and low-income community on the Lower East Side — proclaimed a “Miracle on Avenue C.”

The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York

The Invention of Public Space: An Interview with Mariana Mogilevich

Interviewed by Katie Uva

Today on the blog, editor Katie Uva speaks to Mariana Mogilevich about her recent book, The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York. Mogilevich discusses the 1960s and 1970s as a uniquely inventive time in the city for defining and conceptualizing the use of public space. At a time when New York was dealing with deindustrialization, economic decline, and suburbanization, the Lindsay Administration made a conscious effort to develop inviting public space and support public interaction in city spaces, an attempt to lift up the city’s density and shared space as an asset rather than a liability.

Built Environment, Housing & Realty, Nature & Environment, Parks, Postwar New York, InterviewsGuest UserApril 29, 2021Comment

“She Wiggled Her Body in the Most Suggestive and Obscene Manner”: Sexuality and Respectability in the West Indian Labor Day Parade

By Marlene H. Gaynair

During the long 20th century, Caribbean carnival traditions and celebrations dispersed throughout the Atlantic World as West Indians migrated and settled in new locales. Carnival was not just limited to the Lenten period like in Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, and New Orleans, but also took place around August 1st in the British Caribbean diaspora as a celebration for harvest and Emancipation. In New York City, the significant Caribbean community would recreate carnival celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago as the world-famous West Indian Labor Day Parade.

The Privatized City from Below: Benjamin Holtzman’s The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism

Reviewed by Bench Ansfield

“Ford to City: Drop Dead” weighs in as one of the most legendary headlines in US history, and its notoriety likely owes to the apparent disjuncture between the New York City of the 1970s fiscal crisis and the supertall glass-scape of today.[1] These two urban archetypes, apparently worlds apart, are intimately linked, and few books have done more to shape how we conceptualize the dawning of a new metropolis than The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, by the late geographer Neil Smith.

Did All Jews Become White Folks?:A Fortress in Brooklyn and Hasidic Williamsburg

Reviewed by Gabe S. Tennen

“We Accuse”: The Harlem Rebellion, Bill Epton’s Anti-Carceral Activism, and the rise of the Surveillance State

By Joseph Kaplan

“Completion by Contrast”: Architecture and Sculpture in Postwar New York

By Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins

In the March 30, 1963 issue of the New Yorker, art critic and historian Calvin Tomkins profiled sculptor Richard Lippold, whom he described as “by all odds, the busiest artist now working predominantly in collaboration with architects.”

The History of Gambling and the Future of Marijuana

By Matthew Vaz

“Working-Class New York Revisited” Conference Honors Joshua Freeman

By Marc Kagan

Friday, Bloody Friday: David Paul Kuhn's The Hardhat Riot

Reviewed by Steven H. Jaffe

Claiming the Right to the City: Timo Schrader's Loisaida as Urban Laboratory

Reviewed by Hongdeng Gao

The Invention of Public Space: An Interview with Mariana Mogilevich

Interviewed by Katie Uva

“She Wiggled Her Body in the Most Suggestive and Obscene Manner”: Sexuality and Respectability in the West Indian Labor Day Parade

By Marlene H. Gaynair

The Privatized City from Below: Benjamin Holtzman’s The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism

Reviewed by Bench Ansfield

Did All Jews Become White Folks?:
A Fortress in Brooklyn and Hasidic Williamsburg

**“Working-Class New York Revisited” Conference Honors Joshua Freeman**