Review: Terry Williams, The Soft City: Sex for Business and Pleasure in New York City
Reviewed by Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Public sex in New York evolved amidst wide-ranging social and economic change in Gotham from 1979 to 2018. The “Disneyfication” of Times Square and the elimination of the most visible forms of public pornography attracted the most attention and commentary. But an evolving sexual revolution of sorts simultaneously occurred throughout the city. For four decades, the sociologist and ethnographer Terry Williams was watching closely, taking notes. Literally.
“Never No Wells of Lonelinesses in Harlem:” Black Lady Lovers in Prohibition Era New York
By Cookie Woolner
In 1928, the British novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall was published in the United States, which brought conversations on the topic of lesbianism into the mainstream like never before. The book was one of the first on the subject written by someone who openly identified as queer. Although the novel was deemed controversial and became the object of censorship trials in the United States and at home in Britain, this notoriety helped it become a best seller in bookstores nationwide, including in Harlem. In February 1929, African American journalist Geraldyn Dismond reviewed the annual masquerade ball at the Hamilton Lodge, which had become one of the preeminent institutionsof queer life uptown.
New York City “600” Schools and the Legacy of Segregation in Special Education
By Francine Almash
In 1947 the New York City Board of Education announced the first centralized program for delinquent and maladjusted youth, known as the “600” schools (for their number designation). The “600” schools were the result of coordinated efforts beginning in the 1920s that linked the NYC Board of Education, the Bureau of Educational Measurements, which promoted psychological testing to aid in the education of “emotionally handicapped” children, and the New York City Children’s Courts, which gave judges the authority to act as surrogate parents to a growing number of “at-risk” youth.
Late Colonial-Era New York City Lawyers and the Building of a Provincial Legal Community
By Sung Yup Kim
From the early 1760s to the eve of the Revolution, Albany lawyer Peter Silvester and Attorney General John Tabor Kempe collaborated on at least a dozen cases in the colony of New York. On many occasions, Silvester acted as a de facto agent for the New York City-based Kempe, sometimes assisting the latter in his public duties as attorney general of the colony. When Kempe needed information about an Albany resident charged with assaulting a neighbor, for example, Silvester examined the local court minutes to check if the person had any criminal record, or if there were outstanding charges against him in any of the local courts.
Tong Kee Hang: A Chinese American Civil War Veteran Who Was Stripped of His Citizenship
By Kristin Choo
May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage month, an appropriate time to recognize the Chinese Americans whose lives were disrupted, constricted or uprooted by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and other racist laws and policies. Tong Kee Hang did not suffer the most egregious mistreatment meted out to Chinese immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was not beaten, lynched, or driven from his home like many others. But the loss of his citizenship and right to vote was a cruel blow for a man who had served his country in wartime and who took deep pride in being American.
Being Black in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam vs. New Amsterdam
By Jeroen Dewulf
Due to a paucity of original sources, many questions regarding the social and religious behavior of New Amsterdam’s Black population have remained unanswered. One way of approaching the existing scholarship with new insights is by using a comparative methodology. Naturally, the observation that similarities in behavior existed in more than one place does not automatically imply that the origin and historical development of one corresponds to that of the other. However, since it is unlikely that many new sources about Manhattan’s earliest Black inhabitants will still be uncovered in the coming decades, a comparative perspective is probably the best strategy to shed new light on this historically marginalized community.
Book Review: Catherine Collomp’s Rescue, Relief, and Resistance
Reviewed by Natalia Dubno Shevin
Catherine Collomp’s Rescue, Relief, and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee’s Anti-Nazi Operations, 1934-1945 is the first monograph to uncover the rescues and aid that the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) provided to trade unionists, socialists, and Jews trapped in Europe after the rise of Nazism and fascism during the Second World War. The emergence of the JLC in 1934 and its successful rescue of 1,500 individuals from occupied France, via Spain and Portugal, and Polish Bundists from Lithuania, via the Soviet Union and Japan, reflected the strength of World War II-era Jewish labor in New York City.
Dutch-American Stories: The “Patron Saint of New York”
By Jaap Jacobs
The bonds that connect the American and Dutch peoples have been commemorated in various ways and at various levels. Dutch-American Friendship Day is a well-established annual event at the governmental level. In New York City, the historical memory of Petrus Stuyvesant has recently become controversial, but in the twentieth century his image was iconic.
In 2021, New York’s 421-a tax exemption for new residential construction turned fifty years old. That fiscal year, it cost the city $1.7 billion in uncollected tax revenue, a larger amount than any other single New York City housing budget item. Since 1990, as far back as public data is available, the tax exemption has cost the city over $22 billion (adjusted for inflation). In June of 2022, the program will expire unless it is renewed or replaced.
