The AIDS crisis peaked in New York City from 1987 to 1993. In those six years, thousands of HIV-positive men and women died of opportunistic infections from weakened immune systems. While the disease has become linked to gay white men in the public imagination, women, people of color, and intravenous drug users made up the majority of people with AIDS (“PWAs”) in New York City. Anger over the slow response by government and drug companies, as well as lack of the public’s disinterest, prompted many advocates to form groups that sought to raise awareness and promote research into effective treatments for HIV-related conditions.
“For the Use of the State”: Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan and the Work of New York’s Archives
By Derek Kane O’Leary
In mid-winter of 1847, Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan was a historian with an unfinished book manuscript who needed a decent-paying job. He was hip deep in his two-volume History of New Netherland; or, New York under the Dutch (1846-1848), the first major historical account of the state’s Dutch colonial period aside from Washington Irving’s satirical History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809) — which O’Callaghan and many other history-conscious New Yorkers were keen to forget.
The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
Van Gosse interviewed by Jessica Georges
It may be difficult to imagine that a consequential black electoral politics evolved in the United States before the Civil War, for as of 1860, the overwhelming majority of African Americans remained in bondage. Yet free black men, many of them escaped slaves, steadily increased their influence in electoral politics over the course of the early American republic. Despite efforts to disfranchise them, black men voted across much of the North, sometimes in numbers sufficient to swing elections.
Puerto Ricans who migrated to the United States in the early 20th century were not the first to do so. Trade and commerce linked Puerto Rico and the United States before the 19th century and movement between the two has continued since then. Piecing together the migration stories of Puerto Rican women who came to New York City after the Great War is quite challenging. These women were regular people, and until the 1960s and 1970s, there was little incentive to collect or archive their experiences.
The Cat Men of Gotham: An Interview With Peggy Gavan
Interviewed by Robb K. Haberman
Today on the Blog, Gotham editor Robb K. Haberman speaks to journalist and editor Peggy Gavan about her book, The Cat Men of Gotham: Tales of Feline Friendship in Old New York. Gavan discusses the prominent presence and activities of cats in New York City and their interactions with the city’s human residents during a period marked by decades of industrialization, immigration, and urban growth. In telling these stories, Gavan provides unique perspectives on the history of Gotham’s civic, cultural, financial, and social institutions.
Podcast Interview: All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York
Rob Snyder Interviewed by Bruce Cory
All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Robert W. Snyder (Columbia University Press, 2019) covers almost 500 years of New York City’s still unfolding story of cultural diversity and political conflict, economic dynamism and unmatched human diversity.
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.
Review: Robert A. McCaughey’s A College of Her Own: The History of Barnard
Reviewed by Kelly Marino
In A College of Her Own, scholar Robert McCaughey examines the history of Barnard College and the changes in its leadership, programs, and demographics from its founding in 1889 to the present. He argues that the school's administrators, location in New York City, and relationship with Columbia University made Barnard distinct among the “Seven Sisters,'' the group of elite women’s liberal arts colleges in the Northeast.
Podcast Interview: Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York
Edgardo Meléndez Interviewed by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskoff
Edgardo Meléndez's book Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York (Centro Press, 2019) examines the activities and ideals of Puerto Rican revolutionary exiles in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century. The study is centered in the writings, news reports, and announcements by and about Puerto Ricans in Patria, the official newspaper of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Both were founded and led by the Cuban patriot José Martí.
Alice Neel believed that “art is a form of history.” Born in 1900, she claimed that “I represent the 20th century… I’ve tried to capture the zeitgeist.” Yet her painting bore no resemblance to the vast canvases of iconic scenes from the French revolution by Jacques-Louis David, Anne-Louis Girodot, or Theodore Gericault. Instead, she portrayed the history of the 20th century through individual people — neighbors, friends, artists, celebrities, and political activists — that she knew in New York City, a city which might be considered the capital of the 20th-century — the successor to Paris as “the capital of the 19th-century.”
