The World That Fear Made: Interview with Jason T. Sharples
Interviewed by Madeline Lafuse
Today on the blog, Madeline Lafuse speaks with Jason T. Sharples, author of the recently published The World That Fear Made : Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in Early America, about how the fear of slave conspiracies shaped New York City and early America.
Interview with Douglas J. Flowe on Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York
Interviewed by Willie Mack
African American men in early 20th-century New York City faced social and economic segregation, and a racist criminal justice system punctuated by violence by the police and white citizens. In Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York, Dr. Douglas Flowe interrogates the effects that segregation, crime, and violence had on black men, and how these men were forced to navigate the “crucible of black criminality” in Jim Crow Era New York City in order to survive.
Thomas J. Shelley has added to his already substantial oeuvre of New York Catholic history with the publication of Upper West Side Catholics: Liberal Catholicism in a Conservative Archdiocese: The Church of the Ascension, New York City, 1895-2020 (New York: Empire State Editions, 2020).[1] His deep and broad understanding of New York’s Catholic institutions provides the context for his study of the Church of the Ascension, which was founded in 1895 on the Upper West Side. While his history of Ascension starts from its founding, Shelley’s book offers an extended view of the neighborhood during the 1960s and 1970s, a period when demographic transition overlapped with economic decline and produced immense political conflicts that destabilized New York’s institutions, including the Catholic Church.
“Ten Thousand Bigamists in New York”: The Criminalization of Jewish Immigrants Using White Slavery Panics
By Mia Brett
The late 19th century and early 20th century saw a huge influx of Jewish immigrants settling in New York City. Eastern European Yiddish speaking immigrants fled the Pale Settlements due to violent pogroms and punitive decrees after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.[1] This rise in immigration created a backlash of nativism and criminalization. In particular, anti-Jewish bigotry in New York City’s criminal justice system began to take the form of large-scale stereotypical assumptions as police, judges, prosecutors, and investigators became more familiar with Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland.
Monuments of Colonial New York: The Tulip Tree and 'Signal'
Lisa Blee and John C. Winters
This week Gotham presents a six-part series on monuments, statues, and commemorations in / about colonial New York City. Recognizing that one of the more recent debates over public memory has been the conflict over Columbus / Indigenous People’s Day, we begin with Lisa Blee and John C. Winters, who examine monuments of and by Native peoples in Manhattan.
“Traitors In Our Midst”: Race, Corrections, and the 1970 Tombs Uprising
By Willie Mack
In 1966, newly elected New York City Republican Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed George F. McGrath as Commissioner of Correction. McGrath was previously the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction and was widely known as a respected and progressive liberal penologist. But by 1969, the New York City jails were in worse condition than ever before.
“The Colored People Have Dispersed”: Race, Space, and Schooling in Late 19th-Century Brooklyn
By Judith Kafka and Cici Matheny
“The doing away with the distinctively colored schools and … bringing about mixed classes,” wrote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in September of 1899, “has done more toward the education of the race than any other individual effort.” Brooklyn’s Board of Education had officially ended racial segregation in schooling in 1883, by requiring all district schools to admit any student living within their enrollment boundaries.
“Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty”: Resistance to Segregated Seating in New York City’s Theaters
By Alyssa Lopez
In 1924, Walter White, the assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), sent a letter of warning to several New York City-based black newspapers. “There have been... numerous complaints regarding the denial to colored people,” he explained, “of service in various places of public accommodations,” especially theaters on 125th Street, Harlem’s main thoroughfare.
"Sorry Junior, Recess is Over": Integration, White Backlash and the Origins of Police in New York City Schools
By Rachel Lissy
On the morning of September 19, 1957, 17 year old Maurice Kessler walked into an American History class at Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York, Brooklyn and tossed a bottle of lye. The bottle exploded, splattering 18 pupils and the teacher with corrosive liquid. The attack was aimed at 16 year-old David Ozersky, whose face was described by other students as "melting off," and who was reported to be partially blinded in the attack.
On a summer evening in June 1945, 200 performers took to the aquatic stage at the former New York State Pavilion at Flushing Meadow Park. Spread throughout the 8,500 seats at the northern tip of Meadow Lake, spectators watched swimmers and a choreographed “water ballet” fill the pool, while divers sprung from the diving towers at each end.
