Before Central Park

Reviewed by Kara Murphy Schlichting

Before Central Park is Sara Cedar Miller’s fourth publication about New York City’s famous greensward. Miller is historian emerita and, since 1984, a photographer for the Central Park Conservancy. Before Central Park is distinctive in its combination of Miller’s photography, her expert understanding of the park’s geography and archeology, and her meticulous real estate history of parkland from the 17th through the 19th centuries.

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.

New Collections From the CUNY Digital History Archive

By Stephen Brier

The CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA), created in 2013 by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the CUNY Graduate Center, is committed to preserving and presenting on an open publicly accessible website the history of the City University of New York. Over the past eight years, a number of CUNY faculty, staff, graduate students, and alumni have created a series of curated collections of primary historical sources materials on key moments in CUNY’s rich history.

Brooklyn, Contemporary Era, Education, Postwar New York, Poverty & Inequality, Race & EthnicityGuest UserJanuary 6, 2022Comment

Review: Christopher Hayes’s The Harlem Uprising: Segregation and Inequality in Postwar New York City

Decline, Rebellion, and Police Politics: Rethinking the Dissolution of New York’s Civil Rights Coalition

Reviewed by Joseph Kaplan

In his final book before his life was taken by an assassin’s bullet, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the state of the Civil Rights Movement and the conditional allyship of whites. According to King, whites generally believed “that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony.” Emerging from a decade of unprecedented mobility in which a highly unionized white labor force entered the middle class en masse, many viewed the Civil Rights Movement as part of the unbroken march of progress.

Business & Labor, Crime & Policing, Manhattan, Postwar New York, Poverty & Inequality, Race & Ethnicity, ReviewsGuest UserDecember 14, 2021Comment

“Are these not my streets?”: May Swenson, New York City, and the Federal Writers Project

By Margaret A. Brucia

Drawn to New York by her exposure to Lost Generation authors and the work of Alfred Stieglitz and his circle of artists, May Swenson left the security of her loving Mormon family in Utah during the depths of the Great Depression. After struggling to hold a series of low-paying positions, withering prospects for employment threatened her continued existence in New York. By a devious route, May joined the ranks of the Federal Writers Project, plunged into New York’s cauldron of creativity and went on to become a leader in the field of modern poetry.

Sites and Sounds: Hart Island

Site and Sounds: Hart Island

By Melinda Hunt

On today’s episode of Sites and Sounds, Melinda Hunt talks about the public graveyard at Hart Island.

“Loose Hogs, Fancy Dogs, and Mounds of Manure in the Streets of Manhattan”: An Interview with Catherine McNeur

Interviewed by Amanda Martin-Hardin, Maddy Aubey, and Prem Thakker of the Everyday Environmentalism Podcast

Today on the blog, Catherine McNeur discusses how during the early 19th century, working class New Yorkers living in Manhattan raised livestock and even practiced a form of recycling by reusing urban waste. Battles over urbanizing and beautifying New York City ensued, involving fights over sanitation and animals in the streets; and how to manage recurring epidemics and diseases like cholera that ravaged the city. McNeur explains how these tensions exacerbated early forms of gentrification in the 19th century, and contemplates how we can learn from the past to create more equitable urban green spaces and shared environmental resources in the future.

The History of Mexican Food in New York

By Lori A. Flores

Though post-COVID statistics will reflect restaurant closures, downsizing, or “ghost kitchens,” as of the summer of 2020 there were 27,556 restaurants operating in New York City, 977 of which were Mexican. To some, this latter number might not be surprising (and even seem low given the popularity of Mexican cuisine). Yet just a few decades ago, New York was a place where Mexican food was hard to find. It lagged behind other cities like Chicago, San Antonio, or Los Angeles that claimed larger Mexican-origin populations and a longer history of Mexican restaurants.

Radical Imagination, Radical Humanity: Puerto Rican Political Activism in New York

Podcast Interview: Radical Imagination, Radical Humanity

Rose Muzio Interviewed by David Monda

In Radical Imagination, Radical Humanity: Puerto Rican Political Activism in New York, Rose Muzio analyzes how structural and historical factors — including colonialism, economic marginalization, racial discrimination, and the Black and Brown Power movements of the 1960s — influenced young Puerto Ricans to reject mainstream ideas about political incorporation and join others in struggles against perceived injustices. This analysis provides the first in-depth account of the origins, evolution, achievements, and failures of El Comité-Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueño, one of the main organizations of the Puerto Rican Left in the 1970s in New York City.

Contemporary Era, Immigration, Interviews, Podcasts, Politics, Poverty & Inequality, Race & EthnicityGuest UserJune 25, 2021Comment

“Young people are making their voices heard”: From Harlem’s Youth Movement in the 1930s and 1940s to DSA-NYC

By Mary Reynolds

The ongoing press scrum over New York’s 2021 mayoral election has obscured the down-ticket candidates in the June 22 primary races for the City’s fifty-one Council seats. These contests could be better bellwethers for the city’s future, and recall a little-known era of the city’s radical past.