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.

Recovering New York’s Entangled Dutch, Native American, and African Histories: An Interview with Jennifer Tosch

By Andrea Mosterman

Many of New York’s Dutch colonists and their descendants relied on the labor of enslaved people. Some historic sites have struggled to address this part of their history and looked for ways in which they can share it with their visitors. For example, an exhibit at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn, built in 1699 by Hendrick Claessen Vechte, includes a brief discussion of the home’s enslaved residents. Yet, much of the Dutch history of slavery in New York City and its surroundings is still little known, especially among the general public.

The State Versus Harlem

By Matt Kautz

Over the past few years, Americans have paid greater attention to the harm caused by opiates and rising heroin use, specifically in white, rural areas. The New York State Department of Health has dedicated a large portion of its website to sharing statistics of opioid overdoses in the state, warning signs about what addiction looks like, information on the state’s program for monitoring doctor’s prescriptions, and how those addicted can receive treatment.

“White Tigers Eat Black Panthers:” New York City’s Law Enforcement Group

By Jarrod Shanahan

In September 1968, three young members of the Black Panther Party (BPP) were arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court on charges stemming from a raucous Brooklyn street demonstration where uncollected garbage was set afire. BPP members and supporters rallied outside the court, hemmed in by New York Police Department (NYPD) cops who arrested two Party members for refusing to move behind a barricade. Upstairs, supporters were dramatically outnumbered by roughly 150 off-duty cops, many coming directly from the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, “barely concealing the guns and blackjacks tucked into their belts,” recalled mayoral aid Barry Gottehrer. “Some wore police badges.” The raucous crowd shouted “Win with [George] Wallace!” and “White power!”[1]

Dreaming Diaspora in Chinatowns Around the Globe: An Interview with Diane Wong

Today on Gotham, Minju Bae interviews Diane Wong, co-curator of Homeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns, a recently-concluded exhibition at Pearl River Mart. Homeward Bound displayed photographs from thirteen Chinatowns around the world. These photographs came from the curators’ personal projects to learn from the people who have built homes, families, and communities in a global diaspora. The exhibit will travel to a number of other locations starting in the spring of next year.

Contemporary Era, Interviews, Manhattan, Race & EthnicityGuest UserMarch 7, 2019Comment

Teaching Lenape History: An Interview with Pilar Jefferson

Today on the blog, Coordinator Katie Uva speaks to Pilar Jefferson, Education Coordinator at the Museum of the City of New York, to discuss the museum’s recent efforts in interpreting New York’s indigenous history.

Lenape, Interviews, Race & EthnicityGuest UserFebruary 28, 2019Comment

Tre Donne: Kitty Genovese, Diane di Prima, Virginia Apuzzo and the Roots of Italian-American Feminism in 1960s New York

By Marcia M. Gallo

Kitty Genovese, Diane di Prima, and Virginia Apuzzo are iconic Italian American New Yorkers who came of age in the 1950s and challenged familial and social expectations. All three present novel perspectives on women’s oppression and liberation in the 1960s and beyond. Yet rarely are they considered together as examples of ethnic “gender rebels.”

Gender & Sexuality, Race & Ethnicity, Postwar New YorkGuest UserFebruary 26, 2019Comment

The Emptying of Darby's Patch

By Joseph Alexiou

Brooklyn, Gilded Age, Race & EthnicityGuest UserFebruary 14, 2019Comment

The Black Eagle of Harlem: An Interview with Billy Tooma

Today on the blog, editor Kelly Morgan talks to Billy Tooma, writer and producer of the 2017 documentary, The Black Eagle of Harlem. The film examines the life of Hubert Julian, an immigrant aviator living in Harlem during the 1920s.

Interviews, Manhattan, Race & EthnicityGuest UserFebruary 7, 2019Comment

(Podcast) Clarence Taylor's Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City

In his most recent book, Clarence Taylor, dean of the history of the civil rights movement in New York, looks at black resistance to police brutality in the city, and institutional efforts to hold the NYPD accountable, since the late 1930s and '40s.

Listen to this interview here.

Crime & Policing, Interviews, Podcasts, Postwar New York, Race & EthnicityGuest UserJanuary 22, 2019Comment