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.
“‘The World’s Most Arrested Lesbian:’ Corona Rivera and the New York Gay Activists Alliance, 1970-72.” An Interview with Marc Stein
Interviewed By Ben Serby
I think historians of LGBTQ+ activism should become more familiar with Corona’s story because it’s fascinating in and of itself, but also because it might change the way we think about the history of GAA-New York and the broader history of LGBTQ+ activism in the 1970s. More generally, I think GAA-New York was responsible for one of the most creative and powerful waves of direct action ever seen in the United States, with lessons for LGBTQ+ and other activists today. Corona was a leading GAA-New York activist for two years and we should know more about her.
Preserving a Lost Chapter of NYC Queer History Via Club Flyers: An Interview with David Kennerley
Interviewed By Ken Lustbader
What were meant to be disposable ads are now compelling pieces of ephemera that you can’t find in guidebooks or oral histories. In the book, we’ve mapped these locations, which create a cultural and geographic landscape of queer nightlife in the ‘90s. For me, personally and as a Manhattan resident, it’s been fascinating to revisit these spots to see their current incarnations. Some buildings survive, which has rekindled my emotional connection to those places. That speaks to the power of place and the value of LGBTQ history.
New York’s Forgotten Pioneers: The National Basketball Association’s first all-Black Team
By Adam Criblez
In 1979, the New York Knicks — a storied organization with roots dating to the creation of the National Basketball Association (NBA) decades earlier — became the first franchise to field an all-Black NBA team. And, at least at first, almost no one seemed to notice.
The World of Dubrow's Cafeteria: An Interview with Marcia Bricker Halperin
By Robert W. Snyder
In the middle decades of the twentieth century in New York City, Dubrow’s cafeterias in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the garment district of Manhattan were places to get out of your apartment, have coffee with friends, or enjoy a hearty but affordable meal. They were grounded in the world of Jewish immigrants and their children, and they thrived in years when Flatbush and the Garment District each had a distinctly Jewish character. […] before Dubrow’s cafeterias were shuttered, Marcia Bricker Halperin captured their mood and their patrons in black and white photographs. These pictures, along with essays by the playwright Donald Margulies and the historian Deborah Dash Moore, constitute Marcia’s book Kibitz and Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria, published by Cornell University Press and winner of a National Jewish Book Council prize for Food Writing and Cookbooks.
Frances Goldin and the Moses Threat to Cooper Square
By Katie Heiserman
Less remembered than her West Village counterpart Jane Jacobs, Frances Goldin deserves attention and further study as a model of both forceful and joyful neighborhood organizing. An activist with a distinctive style, she brought the community together and sustained engagement over many years. In her 2014 oral history interview with Village Preservation, Goldin highlighted the egalitarian, community-centered approach at the core of her work with CSC: “Fifty-nine years ago, dues were a dollar a year, and today, dues are a dollar a year.”
Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers in New York
Review By J.J. Butts
Jordana Cox’s excellent study Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers in New York explores the history of the New York Living Newspapers (NYLN) unit, revealing its complex engagement with news and performance. The focus on journalism within the FTP separates her book from many others on New Deal writing and performance arts. Scholars highlighting the value of the FTP and Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) have often made a case for them around the artistic innovations or careers they nourished. However, journalists constituted one of the major categories of writing professionals seeking work relief, and journalism prepared them for the kinds of fact-based work that typified many of the FTP and FWP productions. In consequence, Cox’s focus on the way the newsroom shaped and was reshaped by the Living Newspapers refreshingly spotlights a crucial element of the story of New Deal culture.
The “Puerto Rican Problem” in Postwar New York City
Review By Kenneth M. Donovan
Perhaps most significantly, the book sheds light on how ideas about Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rico itself were constructed and incorporated into public policy and popular culture. According to Meléndez, those ideas have had staying power. As the island of Puerto Rico faces ongoing challenges in the present, from crippling debt to the privatization of its electric power, it seems that, to quote Melendez, “the ‘Puerto Rican Problem’ has not disappeared. It has simply changed shape.”
A Pathfinder in the Village: Buffy Sainte-Marie on Building a Career in New York’s Folk Music Revival
By Christine Kelly
Even as the Village proved a less inclusive environment than its outward appearance suggested, Buffy Sainte-Marie effectively harnessed the resources available to her as an up-and-coming artist in the heart of the national folk scene in order to craft a stage persona that resisted gender and race-based stereotypes, garner and maintain creative and commercial success, and use her popularity to raise awareness of dire needs among Indigenous communities across North America in an era of racial reckoning and social change. By making the most of her time in New York – an experience marked by the artist’s fascination with the rock and rhythm and blues shows of 1950s Brooklyn as much as the Village performances of the 1960s folk era – cultivating allies among fellow artists, and supporting Indigenous causes, Buffy Sainte-Marie charted a rare path forward as an influential artist and activist whose story paints a complex portrait of New York’s folk revival and the creative influences, cultural locations, and power brokers that shaped it.
Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York
Review by Daniel Morris
In an homage to a space and time that have passed, but that remain as traces in the vivid depictions on display in this handsome and informative volume, Moore offers a love letter to photographers who looked past ideological doctrine (worker strikes and political protests are set aside) to teach viewers and to remind themselves how to regard their fellow New Yorkers with the dignity of concerned attentiveness.
