New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Alan J. Singer

Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. He is the author of New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008) and New York's Grand Emancipation Jubilee: Essays on Slavery, Resistance, Abolition, Teaching, and Historical Memory (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2018).

How New York’s Suburbs Got So Segregated

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Levittown 1948 NYT Why is the population of Massapequa in New York’s Nassau County 98% percent white? Why do almost no Black families live in suburban Levittown, New York? Are we looking at free choices by families or underlying housing patterns that reflect the impact of past and current racist practices?

Newsday exposed racial channeling by Long Island realtors in an investigation that showed how they steered potential home buyers to particular towns based on their race and ethnicity. [Read more…] about How New York’s Suburbs Got So Segregated

New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York

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The Last Slave ShipsThe city of New York was at the center of the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade during the 1850s and early 1860 conveying kidnapped and enslaved Africans from the coast of West Africa primarily into Cuba where there was an expanding sugar industry.

In The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (Yale Univ. Press, 2020), John Harris, a professor of history at Erskine College in South Carolina, estimates that between 1853 and 1867, 474 shipments carrying almost 200,000 men women and children were brought to Cuba. Most of this was brokered by transplanted Brazilians and Portuguese known as the Portuguese Company, who shifted their operation to New York because of the decline of the Angola to Brazil slave trade in the 1850s. Harris argues they were supported by the pro-slavery faction of the city’s Democratic Party and its chief financial institutions. [Read more…] about New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York

NYC Park ‘Spaces’ Recognize African American Contributions, But

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Alexander Hamilton statueA press release from the New York City Parks Department announced “In honor of the 51st anniversary of Black Solidarity Day … 10 park spaces” would be named in “honor of the Black experience in New York City.” This was intended to fulfill a pledge made by the Parks Department “to demonstrate how it stands in solidarity with the Black Community in its fight to combat systemic racism.”

The newly named park spaces recognize national figures like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Elston Howard, and Ella Fitzgerald who all had New York ties and were local community leaders. Baldwin gets a lawn in Harlem. Langston Hughes gets a playground. Elston Howard, a baseball MVP for the Yankees, gets a baseball field near Yankee Stadium. Ella Fitzgerald gets a playground in Queens. [Read more…] about NYC Park ‘Spaces’ Recognize African American Contributions, But

Reconsidering the Legacy of Alexander Hamilton

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Watercolor drawing of the Schuyler Mansion made by Philip Hooker in 1818A new study by Jessie Serfilippi, a historical interpreter at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, New York, details Alexander Hamilton’s “Hidden History as an Enslaver.”

Philip Schuyler was the father of Eliza Hamilton, Hamilton’s wife, and one of the largest slaveholders in New York State when the new nation was founded. [Read more…] about Reconsidering the Legacy of Alexander Hamilton

Take A Lesson from History, Marshal Kids to Defeat COVID-19

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Chicago, IL National War MuseumAs neighborhoods in New York City and towns in New York State face a COVID-19 resurgence, it’s time to learn a lesson from New York’s past and marshal kids to combat the crisis.

Not only can school children play an important role in convincing adults to wear masks, wash hands, and maintain social distancing, activism will give young people a sense of efficacy during trying times where they feel isolated from friends, teachers, and extended family members. Enlisting our kids helped New York and the country address past crises and can again. [Read more…] about Take A Lesson from History, Marshal Kids to Defeat COVID-19

The 1900 New York City Anti-Black Police Riot

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1908 Officer The killing – some would say execution – of George Floyd by a senior Minneapolis police officer (and field trainer) and the militarized police response to Black Lives Matter protests have led to calls for a systematic reevaluation of policing in the United States.

The issues raised by protestors are definitely not new. In 1960, James Baldwin wrote in an Esquire magazine article that the police “represent the force of the white world, and that world’s real intentions are, simply, for that world’s criminal profit and ease, to keep the black man corralled up here, in his place.” [Read more…] about The 1900 New York City Anti-Black Police Riot

Harriet the Movie and the Harriet Tubman of History

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young Harriet Tubman, who served as a spy and scout during the Civil WarI like the movie Harriet, especially the singing, but again, I also liked Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Wolverine, and Dr. Strange (but not Thor, Aquaman, or the Avengers series). Harriet the movie is about a super-hero whose superpower is that God gives her specific directions about what to do (turn left at the river).

Harriet in the movie is based on an important historical figure, but in the end, she is a movie character, not the historic Harriet Tubman. As a movie, two-thumbs up; as history, too many rotten tomatoes. [Read more…] about Harriet the Movie and the Harriet Tubman of History

Reckoning with Our Legacy of Slavery

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Harpers Magazine illustration of the New York City slave market in 1643On Friday October 25, the New York City Commission on Human Rights will commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at the British Jamestown colony in 1619.

“Reckoning with Our Legacy of Slavery and Charting an Anti-Racist Future” will be at the New York County Surrogate’s Court (31 Chambers Street, New York). There is no charge to attend but you must make a reservation. Email Christelle Onwu at conwu@cchr.nyc.gov by October 22nd, 2019. [Read more…] about Reckoning with Our Legacy of Slavery

When Victoria Woodhull Brought Down Henry Ward Beecher

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Victoria WoodhullThere is a long history of political and religious leaders preaching one thing in public and practicing something else in private, usually something related to sex.

The list of political figures includes national founders Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr and more recently Strom Thurmond, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Anthony Weiner, Mark Sanford, Bret Kavanaugh, and Donald Trump.

Contemporary religious leaders “caught with their pants down” include Tony Almo, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, and Jimmy Swaggart. In the mid-19th century Henry Ward Beecher bridged both categories as a political and religious figure. [Read more…] about When Victoria Woodhull Brought Down Henry Ward Beecher

Racism’s War On Equality Has A Long History

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Samuel Sullivan Cox courtesy New York City Department of Parks & RecreationAs part of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, examining the history of race and racism since slavery was introduced into British North America four hundred years ago, D’Angelo Lovell Williams argues that race and racism have long torpedoed efforts to implement universal health care in the United States.

According to Williams, federal policy, starting with the end of the Civil War in 1865, was based on the belief that “free assistance of any kind” to newly freed Blacks would “breed dependence and that when it came to black infirmity, hard labor was a better salve than white medicine.”

Those are beliefs echoed in politics and rhetoric today, but one of the worst racists in the United States Congress at that time, whose views shaped post-Civil War policy, was Samuel Sullivan Cox. During the 38th session of Congress, Cox led opposition against the formation of a Freedmen’ Bureau to assist newly emancipated Africans based on his belief that that African race was doomed to extinction by its inherent inferiority and inability to survive outside of bondage. [Read more…] about Racism’s War On Equality Has A Long History