At the end of the American Revolution, even as slavery was on the decline in places like Philadelphia, Boston, and neighboring Manhattan, slavery’s numbers strengthened in Brooklyn. And that traumatic history is intricately tied to the land. The economy in Kings County was still largely agricultural, and so it was the labor of enslaved people of African descent who made this land a capitalist possibility. Simply put, there would be no Brooklyn without the labor of unfree Brooklynites. That history deserves to be honored; we owe Black Brooklynites a debt today as New Yorkers. In addition, the idea of Brooklyn that we know today — a brand in its own right, with its own attitude and its own entrepreneurial spirit — all of that is deeply embedded in the history of its free Black communities.
By 1929, Black lady lovers were becoming so visible in Harlem that the powerful and popular pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, Adam Clayton Powell Sr., delivered one of the first known sermons that singled out the harm caused by queer women. The New York Age reported he declared, “homo-sexuality and sex perversion among women” has “grown into one of the most horrible debasing, alarming and damning vices of present day civilization.” Powell “asserted that it is not only prevalent to an unbelievable degree but that it is increasing day by day.” This shows the community pushback that accompanied the increasing awareness of Black women in Harlem who sought relationships with other women.
In the city of New York from the 1930s to the 1990s, Irish attorney Paul O’Dwyer was a fierce and enduring presence in courtrooms, on picket lines, and in contests for elected office. He was forever the advocate of the downtrodden and marginalized, fighting not only for Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland but for workers, radicals, Jews, and African Americans and against the Vietnam War.
The Battle For Gay Rights In New York City – a Conversation With Stephen Petrus
Stephen Petrus, interviewed by Adam Kocurek
Adam Kocurek interviews Dr. Stephen Petrus about his new project, a virtual exhibition titled The Battle for Intro. 2: The New York City Gay Rights Bill, 1971 – 1986. Petrus is the Curator, as well as the Director of Public History Programs, at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives. This exhibition dives into the story of New York City’s Gay Rights Bill, a local law known as Intro. 2 in the City Council. This was a collaborative project, with faculty and undergraduate students at LaGuardia Community College compiling sources, conducting and recording oral history interviews, and chronicling the many key individuals and moments leading up to the passage of the Gay Rights Bill.
Women Were a Force Behind New York Progressive Reform
By Bruce W. Dearstyne
Several of the women progressive leaders in New York City knew and collaborated with each other and worked on more than one reform. New York City had a community of women leaders and many of the ideas that came to fruition in New York in the Progressive Era, and at the national level, originated there. Some women honed their leadership skills in New York before later using them on a national level.
“The Same Slow Pace”: Nelson Rockefeller and Resistance to Open Housing in New York
By Marsha E. Barrett
Despite his continued interest in housing policy and urban renewal programs, integration proved to be a stumbling block that Rockefeller could not overcome. It was an especially difficult issue for Rockefeller because he relied heavily on suburban voters who, as the 1960s progressed, became more organized and vocal in their opposition to housing integration and state efforts to promote equality. Rather than bring diverse New Yorkers together, issues such as housing demonstrated the limitations of Rockefeller’s original approach to coalition building and a fundamental weakness to his brand of pro-government moderate Republicanism.
Civil War-Era Black New York and Historical Memory: Locating the Eighth Ward
By Marquis Taylor
Researching Manhattan’s Eighth Ward presented an exciting opportunity to learn about a neighborhood deeply tied to Civil War-era Black New York — yet it also posed challenges regarding archival constraints. Newspaper articles from the mainstream white press, records produced by the city’s burgeoning municipal government, and reports from reformers and their institutions comprise the dominant archive of Lower Manhattan’s Eighth Ward, which is fragmented and tainted with racist ideology. Also, with much of the 19th-century built environment of present-day SoHo gone, researchers and historians alike are forced to not only confront these limitations but construct a counter-archive. Only through engagement with the Black press, particularly The Weekly Anglo-African (later known as The Anglo-African), do critical aspects of the Black New York of Joseph and Rachel Moore’s era become more legible.
“Twenty-Two of the Healthiest Blacks”; The Ship Bruynvisch and the First Arrival of Enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam in 1627
By Jaap Jacobs
[…] establishing that the first enslaved Africans arrived on the Bruynvisch allows us to pinpoint exactly when the institution of slavery was introduced into New Amsterdam and New Netherland and thus into what later became New York City and State. It is New York’s 1619 moment. Whether and in what way 29 August 1627 should be commemorated in New York is not a scholarly matter, but those who value accuracy and reliability in history will no doubt find ways to do so. And we now have not just a correct year but even an exact day to replace the inaccurate dating of 1625/1626. The year 2027 provides the opportunity to commemorate both the abolition of slavery in New York State—1827—as well as its beginning in 1627.
How the Catholic Church Drove Suburban Expansion Within and Outside New York City
By Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C.
Often overlooked, therefore, is the role that Catholic leaders, associations, and media played in spurring suburbanization, shaping the pattern of suburban development, and establishing the necessary infrastructure to sustain suburban communities. The Catholic bishops of metropolitan New York cooperated with urban planners and developers in order to maximize the Church’s real estate holdings and to anticipate where the Church would need to expand in order to serve its suburbanizing flock. They also moved financial resources from well-established urban parishes to newly established suburban parishes and oversaw massive building campaigns in suburban areas.
The Case of Ernest Gallashaw: Achieving Justice in an Earlier Era of White-Backlash Politics
By Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy
The episode proved to be a revelatory moment in a city whose conceit of tolerance was belied by stark economic inequality as well as segregation in housing, employment and schools. Now virtually forgotten, the eruption on poor and working-class streets 15 miles from City Hall was—and still remains—historically significant for signaling New York City’s seething racial tensions and the potential for intense right-wing reaction.
