History, Natural History & the Arts
“Men Working in Slate Quarry,” the 1939 Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded mural displayed at the Slate Valley Museum in Granville, Washington County, NY is as good an example as you will find of “Art for the People.”
The subject of the museum’s current exhibition “One Painting, Many Stories,” explores many of the artistic, cultural and political contexts within which the mural was created. [Read more…] about Granville’s WPA Mural of Working in a Slate Quarry
Stephen Myers was a Black activist in connection with the Underground Railroad and African American rights in general. He was born and enslaved in Hoosick, Rensselaer County, New York State and raised when it was a slave state working on progressive abolition. He was the principal agent and a key writer for the Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate, he was also the editor of The Elevator and The Telegraph and Temperance Journal.
As early as 1831 he was assisting fugitives from enslavement making their way to Canada. He was also active in 1827 with a group of little-known significance called the Clarkson Anti-slavery Society. As time went on he was involved in organizing and serving as a delegate to many of the Colored Men’s Conventions of the 1830s to the 1860s, to secure African American rights. He was involved in voting rights campaigns through the NYS Suffrage Association, was involved in organizing a school, and sued Albany Schools over segregation. [Read more…] about Stephen Myers of Albany: Abolitionist Writer, Advocate & Underground Railroad Activist
Around the turn of the twentieth century, many boys sold newspapers on city streets. In Schenectady, as in cities around the country, these boys and young men, known as “newsboys” or “newsies,” were among the main distributors of newspapers to the public.
Newsboys did not work for one particular newspaper; they were independent agents who purchased newspapers from the publishers and sold them around the city. Since they were not allowed to return unsold papers, newsboys worked hard to sell all of their newspapers in order to make a profit. In Schenectady newsies protected their territories and competed vigorously, especially for the potential customers who headed to work at General Electric and the American Locomotive Company each day. [Read more…] about The Schenectady Newsboys’ Association: Some History
In the spring of 1903, more than a thousand men were at work on the final stages of the Spier Falls hydroelectric project on the Hudson River near Glens Falls.
A large number of skilled Italian masons and stoneworkers were housed in a shantytown on the Warren County (north) side of the river.
Most of the remaining work was on the Saratoga County (south) side, which they accessed by a temporary bridge. But the company feared that the high waters of springtime had made the bridge unsafe. To avert a potential catastrophe, they destroyed it with dynamite. [Read more…] about The 1903 Hudson River Spier Falls Dam Disaster
Adirondack history is naturally rife with river-related stories — wildly successful fishing trips, damaging floods, wilderness exploration, and dam construction.
Rivers were the lifeblood of development: settlements sprang up along waterways, where partial diversion of streams provided the wheel-turning power necessary to many industries. But freshets were so common and destructive that dams were introduced as flood-control measures, and then for hydropower as the electrification of society unfolded. [Read more…] about At Spier Falls Immigrants Built America, Or Died Trying
There is no rawer human experience than sex, and in a city as diverse as New York, sexual experiences come in many forms. Before the mid-1990s temptation flooded Times Square on theater marquees and neon signs. Behind unmarked doors downtown, more adventurous experiences awaited for those in the know.
The Soft City: Sex for Business and Pleasure in New York City (Columbia University Press, 2022) by Terry Williams ventures deep into the underground world of sex in New York. [Read more…] about New Book Explores NYC Sex, Sex Workers and Sex Spaces
The socio-political and economic turmoil of the early twentieth century transformed American society. Between the conclusion of the Civil War and the end of the First World War, the country went from being a predominantly rural farming society to an urban industrial one. [Read more…] about Socialism, Greenwich Village & ‘The Masses’
On this episode of A New York Minute in History, Devin Lander and Lauren Roberts discuss how the poor conditions of female textile workers in Capital Region cities led to the creation of a retreat on Lake George where women could “escape” the cities. [Read more…] about Georgia O’Keefe At Wiawaka On Lake George
In the early 19th century, Schenectady played host to a distinctly American process through which hundreds of Black people gained their freedom. Although Schenectady County had a small enclave of free African Americans into the late colonial period, the overwhelming majority of Black Schenectadians were enslaved.
As New York State legislation gradually abolished the institution of slavery by 1827, many Black Schenectadians had to confront a new reality in which they were legally independent, but by no means legally equal.
One of these people was John Wendell [Jr.] whose birth remains shrouded in mystery. [Read more…] about Schenectady Black History & Barber John Wendell
Over the past two decades there has been an upsurge of interest in the life and work of Hubert H. Harrison. As a leading socialist and subsequent proponent of what he termed the mass-based “Race First” approach to organizing, Harrison exercised a direct, seminal influence on his contemporaries including A. Philip Randolph, W. A. Domingo, Marcus Garvey, Richard B Moore, Chandler Owen, Arturo Schomburg, Cyril Briggs, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Hodge Kirnon, J. A. Rogers and William Monroe Trotter.
As W. A. Domingo, childhood friend of Garvey and first editor of the Negro World would later explain, “Garvey like the rest of us followed Hubert Harrison.” [Read more…] about Hubert Harrison: Tribune of the People