During a television interview broadcast in March 1964, Malcolm X famously said “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound. …They won’t even admit the knife is there.” [Read more…] about Civil Rights Leaders and RFK Meet in NYC, 1963
Slaveholders’ Mutiny: Frederick Douglass & The Southern Insurrection
In a July 4, 1862 speech to an audience of about 2,000 people in Himrod’s Corner, in Yates County, NY, Frederick Douglass described what we now remember as the American Civil War as a “slaveholders’ mutiny.”
As a recent New York Times op-ed pointed out, naming that war is very much a political decision that shapes and is shaped by our view of the past and American history. During the war it was usually referred to as an “insurrection” or a “rebellion.” Civil War is a more neutral term that avoids placing blame for ripping the country apart or branding the Southern actions as treasonous and ignores the future of slavery in the United States as the fundamental cause of the war. [Read more…] about Slaveholders’ Mutiny: Frederick Douglass & The Southern Insurrection
Charity Clarke Moore: American Revolutionary Writer
Charity Clarke was born in the colonial city of New York on June 28, 1747, and lived through the momentous times that gave birth to the United States. She grew up on her father’s “Chelsea” estate (now the Chelsea neighborhood) in Manhattan.
Clarke married the Rev. Benjamin Moore, the pastor of Trinity Church, in 1778. Their son, Clement Clarke Moore was author of the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas or The Night Before Christmas. [Read more…] about Charity Clarke Moore: American Revolutionary Writer
New York: Named For World’s Most Prolific Slave Trader
A new book, The Crown’s Silence, The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke Newman (Mariner Books, 2026), challenges the myth that Great Britain and its monarchs championed the abolition of slavery and details the royal family’s complicity with and profit from the slave trade and the sale of slave produced commodities.
It also reminds us that New York is named for the world’s most prolific slave trader. [Read more…] about New York: Named For World’s Most Prolific Slave Trader
Frederick Law Olmsted’s Reports on Slavery in the South
From December 1852 until August 1854, Frederick Law Olmsted, who later gained renown as a landscape architect for designing New York City’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, traveled through the American South as a special correspondent for the New-York Daily Times, the predecessor of The New York Times.
His reports published by the Times under the name Yeoman, were included in a 1856 book as A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks on Their Economy. [Read more…] about Frederick Law Olmsted’s Reports on Slavery in the South
Suffolk County Honors former Slaveholder William Floyd
Suffolk County, New York, declared December 17th William Floyd Day. According to Suffolk County Executive Edward Romaine, William Floyd was the only Long Islander to sign the Declaration of Independence and his birthday should be commemorated every year.
He was also the largest slaveholder in Brookhaven. Floyd’s estate was at Old Mystic near present day Mystic Beach is operated by the National Park Service. There is also a contested seven-foot-tall statue of William Floyd at the intersection of William Floyd Parkway and Montauk Highway in nearby Shirley, NY. [Read more…] about Suffolk County Honors former Slaveholder William Floyd
Remembering the 1964 Struggle to Integrate NYC Schools
On Monday, February 3, 1964, some 464,000 New York City school children, 45% of the city’s one million students, and over 3,000 teachers boycotted school in a protest against school segregation.
Four hundred “Freedom Schools” were held at churches and other community spaces where approximately 100,000 children learned about civil rights and sang songs like the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.” In 1964, over one-fourth of the city’s public school students were African American and 17 percent were Puerto Rican. [Read more…] about Remembering the 1964 Struggle to Integrate NYC Schools
Manhattan’s Statue to Unrepentant Racist Samuel Sullivan Cox
There is a statue of Samuel Sullivan Cox in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park. The statue originally was near Cox’s home on East 12th Street but in 1924 it was moved.
A plaque accompanying the statue reads “Samuel Sullivan Cox, the Letter Carrier’s Friend, Erected in Grateful and Loving Memory of his Services in Congress by the Letter Carriers of New York, his Home, and of the United States, his Country.” [Read more…] about Manhattan’s Statue to Unrepentant Racist Samuel Sullivan Cox
‘How We Poison Our Children’: The 1850s Swill Milk Scandal
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics all recommend drinking only pasteurized milk and eating dairy products made with pasteurized milk. Even organic milk is only safe to drink if it was pasteurized.
The safety of drinking unpasteurized milk and dairy products made from unpasteurized milk is in the news because Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. advocates drinking raw milk and is critical of federal regulations. [Read more…] about ‘How We Poison Our Children’: The 1850s Swill Milk Scandal
New York’s Kidnapping Club Redux
David Ruggles was a free Black man born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1810. He moved to the city of New York in 1826 where he worked as a mariner, eventually opened a grocery, and later ran book store. An active opponent of slavery, Ruggles was a sales agent for abolitionist newspapers, published his own anti-slavery journal, and was secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee aiding freedom seekers who escaped from slavery, helping them evade slavecatchers, and providing legal assistance if they were captured.
One of the people Ruggles helped to escape from slavery was Frederick Douglass. [Read more…] about New York’s Kidnapping Club Redux
The Dark History of Brown Brothers Harriman
Documents at the New-York Historical Society and corporate records show that the founders of Brown Brothers Harriman, based in New York City, built the bank by lending millions of dollars to Southern planters and arranging for the shipment and sale of slave-grown tobacco and cotton in New England and Great Britain. [Read more…] about The Dark History of Brown Brothers Harriman
The First State of the Union Address
According to Article II, Sec. 3, of the United States Constitution, “The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United Sta6es on April 30, 1789. He delivered the first State of the Union Address to Congress on January 8, 1790. At the time, the United States capital was in the city of New York. [Read more…] about The First State of the Union Address
The Legend of St. Nicholas (aka Santa Claus)
St. Nicholas of Myra, a Christian monk who is supposed to have lived in what is now modern-day Turkey sometime in the third century (270-343 AD) may have been the origin of Santa Claus. Although we know almost nothing about Nicholas of Myra, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox celebrate his Saints Day on December 6th, the date they believe that he died. [Read more…] about The Legend of St. Nicholas (aka Santa Claus)
Governed by Despots: John Swanson Jacobs Chronicles Enslavement and Resistance
The University of Chicago Press recently published a unique account of an escape from enslavement in North Carolina decades before the Civil War. The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots (2024) by John Swanson Jacobs tells of his escape from enslavement by North Carolina plantation owner and Congressional Representative Samuel Sawyer in 1838 while he and the slaveholder were in transit through the City of New York. [Read more…] about Governed by Despots: John Swanson Jacobs Chronicles Enslavement and Resistance
A Horrid History of Sugar
The New York Times recently published an investigation of the abusive conditions in the sugar cane industry in Maharashtra, India. India is the world’s second largest producer of sugar.
Workers are virtual slaves because they owe money to employers either because they were forced by poverty to borrow or inherited the debt from impoverished parents. [Read more…] about A Horrid History of Sugar
New York City Civil Rights History Resources
The New York Civil Rights History website has primary sources for teachers and students on histories of oppression, ableism, racism, and resistance, material that is often left out of the curriculum.
The project was inspired by New York City high school student activists who wanted to better understand the history of their city and their schools. [Read more…] about New York City Civil Rights History Resources
Abraham Lincoln’s First Thanksgivings
The fabled 1621 “First Thanksgiving” celebrated in elementary school plays across the country was reported on by Edward Winslow in Mourt’s Relation (A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England, 1622) and William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation. [Read more…] about Abraham Lincoln’s First Thanksgivings
Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West at the New York Historical Society
Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West is a new exhibit at the New York Historical Society that explores the interplay between religion and United States expansion in the 19th-century West. It opens September 22, 2023, and will be on display through February 25, 2024.
The exhibit illuminates the way religion became a vital and contested part of American life. Acts of Faith takes visitors beyond the mythologized “Wild West” of popular culture to present a fuller and surprising picture: a West populated by preachers, pilgrims, and visionaries and home to sacred grounds and cathedrals that kindled spiritual feeling from the woodlands of New York all the way to the valleys of California. [Read more…] about Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West at the New York Historical Society
Citigroup Acknowledges it ‘Indirectly’ Profited from Slavery – Maybe
Citigroup now acknowledges that its predecessor banks may have indirectly profited from slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Connections with slavery include a 19th century bank president who promoted the Cuban sugar trade, the relationship between the Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, one of Citigroup’s predecessor banks, and Alabama cotton planters, and Lehman Brothers, which merged with Citibank in 1998 and in the 1850s traded in cotton. [Read more…] about Citigroup Acknowledges it ‘Indirectly’ Profited from Slavery – Maybe
Did George Washington Burn New York City?
August 27, 1776, British troops under General William Howe attacked American forces commanded by George Washington in the Battle of Brooklyn. Assailed from three sides, Washington and the main body of the Americans escaped across the East River to Manhattan and then fled north, ultimately crossing the Hudson River, then known as the North River, to New Jersey.
If Washington and his troops had been captured either in Brooklyn or Manhattan, the American Revolution would likely have ended soon after it began. [Read more…] about Did George Washington Burn New York City?