“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.
Island Gospel: Pentecostal Music and Identity in Jamaica and the United States
Review by Ray Allen
Writing about musical performance during the time of COVID-19 gives me pause, as it does, no doubt, for all of us who revel in live music. Whether we choose to raise our voices in praise of the deities or to drum and dance to the most sensual rhythms, the act of communal music making is, at its core, a celebration of our deepest humanity. Michael Butler’s Island Gospel is a keen reminder of this reality, and leaves us longing for the day when we can again gather in places of worship, dance halls, clubs, concert venues, and street fetes for the simple joy of making music together.
“The Lungs of the City”: Frederick Law Olmsted, Public Health, and the Creation of Central Park
By Lucie Levine
As the nation’s first great urban park, Central Park was conceived as “The Lungs of the City,” and built in 1858 as an oasis for “the sanitary advantage of breathing.” A half-century later, a letter to the editor of the New York Times glowed that “thousands visit the park daily just to breathe.” But today, “I can’t breathe” is the defining cry of the moment, as the city and the nation confronts both a global respiratory pandemic and the ongoing scourge of police brutality against black people.
Refuge in the Heights: Migration, Memory and Authoritarianism in the Twentieth Century
By Robert W. Snyder
Immigrants travel with baggage, and some of the most important things they carry are their memories of life in their original homes. In Washington Heights and Inwood, where immigrants include German Jews, Dominicans, and Jews from the former Soviet Union, personal and collective memories embrace an unusual cast of characters: some of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century. Upper Manhattan is haunted, you might say, by memories of Hitler, Trujillo, and Stalin.
