Civil Rights

Kermit Roosevelt III: The Nation That Never Was

April 12, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

In his book The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Kermit Roosevelt III argues that a traditional American narrative – “that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution”– is neither useful nor true.

Instead, he writes, we should look to the 19th century, to the period following Abraham Lincoln‘s Gettysburg Address, “when it was possible to envision the emergence of the nation committed to liberty and equality.” [Read more…] about Kermit Roosevelt III: The Nation That Never Was

The Seligmans, Philip Payton & Harlem’s Black-Jewish Alliance

April 10, 2023 by James S. Kaplan 2 Comments

Around the time of the Civil War Joseph and Jesse Seligman were the most prominent Jewish businessmen on Wall Street – financiers of the Northern effort in the Civil War and close associates of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

Every summer in the 1870s they would bring their families with a retinue of servants to stay at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY among the most prominent resorts in the United States. In 1879 however, the new manager of the hotel, Judge Henry Hitlon, announced a new policy — henceforth no Jewish people would be allowed to stay there. [Read more…] about The Seligmans, Philip Payton & Harlem’s Black-Jewish Alliance

Project Seeks to Document Confederacy & Civil War Memorials on College Campuses

April 10, 2023 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The basic objective of the new Locating Slavery’s Legacies database (LSLdb) is to collect information about monuments and memorials identified with the Civil War and Confederacy on the campuses of American colleges. This information will in analysis and understanding of the impact of pseudohistorical Lost Cause movements on higher education in the United States in the 160 years since emancipation and the end of the war. [Read more…] about Project Seeks to Document Confederacy & Civil War Memorials on College Campuses

Sojourner Truth: How An Enslaved Dutch Speaker Became A Black Liberation Icon

March 20, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

On March 31st, 1817 the New York State Legislature decided that enslavement within its borders had to come to an end. Final emancipation would occur on July 4th, 1827. Coincidentally, the date of choice was almost exactly two centuries after the Dutch West India Company’s yacht Bruynvisch arrived at Manhattan on August 29th, 1627. [Read more…] about Sojourner Truth: How An Enslaved Dutch Speaker Became A Black Liberation Icon

The Struggle to Integrate Lockport’s Schools

March 2, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

On this episode of A New York Minute in History, Devin Lander and Lauren Roberts discuss the Mossell family in Western New York, and their efforts to successfully integrate the Niagara County city of Lockport’s public schools in the late 19th century — nearly 80 years before legal segregation ended nationwide. [Read more…] about The Struggle to Integrate Lockport’s Schools

Franklin Williams: An Unsung Civil Rights Hero

January 2, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Larger-than-life figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King and, going back further, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington, functioned as the “celebrities” of the equal rights movement, the public face of the crusade for racial justice.

But outside the spotlight, “bridge figures” such as New Yorker Franklin H. Williams — men and woman unencumbered by the sometimes blinding “star quality” of the Kings and Marshalls while also shunning the divisive tactics of militants such as Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and Malcolm X — made enormous but often underappreciated contributions. [Read more…] about Franklin Williams: An Unsung Civil Rights Hero

Sandra Adickes: New York City Teacher and Civil Rights Activist

December 19, 2022 by Alan J. Singer 2 Comments

On June 25, 1964, The New York Times reported that thirty New York City public school teachers, most of them women, young, and white, would travel to rural Mississippi to teach African American children in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades for six weeks. While in Mississippi the teachers would live in the homes of Black families and join the families on Sundays in “Negro churches.”

On June 30, 1964, at the end of the school year, eight New York City teachers boarded a bus bound for Memphis, Tennessee where they would receive training before continuing on to Mississippi. Another 23 New York City teachers were expected to join them. [Read more…] about Sandra Adickes: New York City Teacher and Civil Rights Activist

The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family

December 11, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Sarah and Angelina Grimke are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their privileged lives on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand activists in the North. Yet retellings of their epic story have long obscured their Black relatives. [Read more…] about The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family

Marsha P Johnson State Park Gateway Design Unveiled

December 9, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The preliminary design for a new gateway to Marsha P. Johnson State Park in Brooklyn was unveiled this summer. The park honors Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender woman of color who was a pioneer of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. [Read more…] about Marsha P Johnson State Park Gateway Design Unveiled

Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst

October 30, 2022 by Alan J. Singer 4 Comments

In a book dedicated to Wilfred Ferguson, the son of Charles Ferguson, teacher and historian Christopher Verga resurrects the story of two Roosevelt, New York brothers killed by a Freeport police officer in 1946.

Verga opens The Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst (History Press, 2022) with an account of the long history of racism on Long Island and in the Freeport area including Ku Klux Klan activity. The background to the 1946 killings takes up the first third of the book. The book is well researched and referenced with extended quotes from official court documents and newspaper accounts. [Read more…] about Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst