History, Natural History & the Arts
Buffalo‘s Puerto Rican Roberto Clemente League was founded in the 1970s to create a Hispanic baseball league and included the Leones (Lions), the Boricuas (Puerto Ricans), and the Caribes (Piranhas).
The league grew throughout the 1980s, eventually including many other teams and creating a women’s softball team. [Read more…] about Buffalo’s Hispanic Roberto Clemente League
Described in numerous news articles as the Spanish Alps, Las Villas, as they were collectively known, was a lively enclave of Spanish, Puerto Rican and other Hispanic summer resorts in Plattekill, NY, and the Catskill Mountains.
Las Villas of Plattekill and Ulster County (Arcadia Publishing, 2016) by Ishmael Martinez is the first comprehensive historical retrospective on Las Villas of Plattekill and Ulster County. [Read more…] about Las Villas of Plattekill and Ulster County
We brew it at home, we drink it at work, we socialize over a cup, or stop in at a café for its energy boost—never once reflecting on how the popularization of coffee literally changed the world.
It all began in Ethiopia, where coffee plants (Coffea) grew wild. It was discovered that the seeds of the coffee plant could be roasted and ground to yield a robust beverage with an unexpected effect. It seems to have become popular in the late-1400s and spread to Yemen quickly thereafter. [Read more…] about Coffee History: Enlightenment, Industry, Slavery & War
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history.
Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color. [Read more…] about Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and Remaking the Bronx
The Attica State Prison uprising in September, 1971 that resulted in 43 deaths had a profound effect on the Prisoner’s Rights movement. Some prisoner’s rights activists argue that Attica resulted from prison conditions and abuses routine in American prisons. On the other hand, administrators blamed the incident on a lack of oversight and security measures.
Another important factor was the rural location of a prison housing predominantly black and brown prisoners, guarded by white officers. Regardless of the contrary views, the loss of lives at Attica and destruction of property had a profound effect on the nation, and on New York City, the home of 20 deceased inmates. [Read more…] about The Attica Prison Uprising and New York City
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
In Printing Nueva York: Spanish-Language Print Culture, Media Change, and Democracy in the Late Nineteenth Century (NYU Press, 2026) by Kelley Kreitz, who leads the digital mapping project C19LatinoNYC.org, uncovers the network of Spanish-language writers and editors in 19th-century New York, whose media innovations fueled anti-colonial struggles and democratic ideals.
At the end of the nineteenth century, New York City was a vital hub for writers from Latin America, providing a haven of press freedom and the latest printing technology. [Read more…] about Printing Nueva York: Spanish-Language Media and Democracy
Looming on a corner along Prospect Avenue in the Bronx is a 1905 Neo-Renaissance style apartment building – home to a cornerstone of New York City’s Latin music history.
The triangular Manhanset Building was constructed during a building boom in the Bronx in the early 1900s, which happened after the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) subway was extended from Manhattan in 1904. [Read more…] about Casa Amadeo: A Bronx Latin Music Scene Landmark
Along with Jackie Robinson Day on April 15, Roberto Clemente Day on September 15 is a bookend to the Major League Baseball (MLB) season. When all teams take the field on September 15, there’s a crispness to the air, the geese honk overhead, and the post-season fates of many teams (for better or for worse) are already sealed.
Roberto Clemente Day honors the day the Pittsburgh Pirates star recorded his 3,000th Major League hit – and, as fate would have it, his final game. It was the end of the 1972 regular season, and the Pirates had not reached the playoffs. Clemente’s hit made the game matter anyway. The crowd cheered, and the beloved Clemente raised his cap in recognition. [Read more…] about A State Park That Remembers Roberto Clemente
“The National Park Service is the nation’s largest outdoor history classroom,” echoes a new effort by history advocates hoping to record educational signs being taken down by the Trump regime in the Nation’s national parks, historic sites and other public lands.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, whose first act was to instruct the Department to reduce regulations and expand natural resource extraction efforts, is now asking Americans to report signs in National Parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” [Read more…] about ‘Save Our Signs’ Effort Rushing to Save Banned National Park Service Signs
Sugarbaker is a relatively common name that began to appear in American censuses from the 1830s onward. As an occupational surname, it derives from the German Zuckerbäcker. Originally, this compound noun referred to the highly rated skill of a confectioner. By the mid-nineteenth century, the word pointed at all those who worked in the sugar refining industry.
Sugar was mega business. First produced in India, it spread to Europe by way of Persia. Venetians played a crucial role as intermediates. A hub of commerce between Europe and the East, its merchants dominated the trade until around 1500 when other regions became involved. The “mystery” skill of sugar refining was brought to America by various groups of European immigrants. [Read more…] about Sugar, Slave Labor & Art Galleries
It seems to have been forgotten, or ignored, but the vast majority of Americans have an immigrant family history story – often of struggle and sacrifice. New York Almanack wants to publish them.
In 300 words or less, tell us the story of your immigrant ancestor(s) and their earliest experiences in New York and we’ll share them with our readers.
Here’s how: [Read more…] about Send Us Your Immigrant Family History Story
At the start of the 1880s, Barcelona was an expanding city of about 350,000 people. Its medieval walls had been knocked down only twenty-five years earlier. Capital of the autonomous community of Catalonia, city and region developed into Spain’s economic dynamo. Prosperity mushroomed. A self-confident territory strove to re-establish its identity by invigorating local traditions, culture and language. Barcelona became an engine of change and modernity. [Read more…] about Catalonia in Manhattan: The Architectural Legacy of Rafael Guastavino
The first schools in New York City were established in 1805 as the Free School Society, run by Quakers, and later by Baptist groups who renamed the school system, The Public School Society.
The Catholic Church dissuaded participation in The Public School Society believing it to be anti-Catholic, and with Irish Catholic immigration on the rise in the 1830s, the pressure to include their involvement in schools led to the establishment of the NYC Board of Education (BOE) in 1842. [Read more…] about A History of Segregation in NYC Public Schools
Seventy years ago, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
With the support of white supremacists and run-of-the-mill racists, many school districts, especially in the South, but also in the North, continued to maintain segregated school systems for decades to come, and some still do. [Read more…] about Freedom Day: The 1964 New York City School Boycott
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, early North America was a diverse place. It was a place that contained hundreds of distinct Indigenous nations and peoples who spoke at least 2,000 distinct languages prior to European contact.
Then, in the early sixteenth century, Spain began to establish colonies on mainland North America, and they were followed by the French, Dutch, and English, and the forced migration of enslaved Africans who represented at least 45 different ethnic and cultural groups. With such diversity, early North America was a place full of cross-cultural encounters. [Read more…] about Indigenous Justice in Early America & The Albany Treaty of 1722
The New York State Office of Cultural Education has created a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Toolkit, a resource designed to support New York’s museums, libraries, archives, historical and genealogical societies, and cultural heritage sites. [Read more…] about NY State Office of Cultural Education Issues Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Toolkit
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Jean Pfaelzer, a Californian and a Professor Emerita of English, Asian Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware, joins us to lead us through some of California’s long 250-year history of slavery with details from her book, California: A Slave State (Yale University Press, 2023).
When we think of California, we might think about sunny weather, Hollywood, beaches, wine country, and perhaps the Gold Rush. What we don’t usually think about when we think about California is the state’s long history of slavery. [Read more…] about California’s Long History of Slavery
The latest episode of A New York Minute in History podcast tells the story of Ronek Park, a non-discriminatory housing development built in 1950 in the village of North Amityville in Suffolk County, on the South Shore of Long Island. [Read more…] about Ronek Park: Postwar Non-Discriminatory Housing on Long Island
It seems a simple enough question: when was New York founded? So when and how should we celebrate or commemorate it? As we come to the end of this essay series, Jaap Jacobs takes a look at previous commemorations of Dutch-American friendship. An exploration of the early history of New York that shaped these events leads to the question of how to commemorate New York’s Dutch history and Dutch-American friendship in 2024 and beyond.
On November 16, 1776, the brig Andrew Doria, flying an American flag, arrived at the roadsteads of the Dutch-held island St. Eustatius. The ship fired the customary gun salute and the guns of Fort Orange replied in like fashion. [Read more…] about When Was New York Founded? History, Commemorations & Moral Measures of the Past
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