Social History

Poor Richard’s Women: An Intimate Portrait of Benjamin Franklin

September 30, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin — the thrifty inventor-statesman of the Revolutionary era — but not about his love life. The most prominent among them was Deborah Read Franklin, his common-law wife and partner for 44 years.

Long dismissed by historians, she was an independent, politically savvy woman and devoted wife who raised their children, managed his finances, and fought off angry mobs at gunpoint while he traipsed about England. [Read more…] about Poor Richard’s Women: An Intimate Portrait of Benjamin Franklin

Rough And Tumble: A Short History of Eye Gouging

September 7, 2022 by John Warren 2 Comments

Last week Thomas Webster, a 20-year veteran of the NYPD, was sentenced to the stiffest sentence so far – 10 years – for his actions while attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6th in an effort to keep Donald Trump in power. In the effort to identify the insurrectionists, Webster was given the name “eye-gouger” for his attempt to gouge the eyes of a Washington D.C. police officer.

It’s a long American tradition. Eye gouging, not insurrection. [Read more…] about Rough And Tumble: A Short History of Eye Gouging

1860: A Southern Tourist Gives Saratoga, Lake George Mixed Reviews

July 13, 2022 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

George Mercer, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, took a summer trip to Saratoga Springs with a buddy after sightseeing at West Point. He had a pretty good time, but not a great time.

He enjoyed the nightlife, but wasn’t impressed with the ladies; he went boating on Lake George, but complained of the heat. Sounds like today, right? Try 1860. [Read more…] about 1860: A Southern Tourist Gives Saratoga, Lake George Mixed Reviews

New Book Explores NYC Sex, Sex Workers and Sex Spaces

July 12, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

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 Red Scare: A Personal History

June 29, 2022 by Anthony F. Hall 2 Comments

The Seagle Festival will present the contemporary opera “Fellow Travelers” in Schroon Lake, NY August 3rd through 6th.

“Fellow Travelers” is set in the Washington, DC of the 1950s, as the anti-communist crusades of Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy and their ilk infiltrate and all but overwhelm every department, agency and office in government.

I can not help but reminded of my own family’s experience with “the Red Scare” during the administration of President Harry Truman. [Read more…] about The Red Scare: A Personal History

Arrested Attention: The Women’s House of Detention

June 29, 2022 by Kathleen Hulser Leave a Comment

The quick-witted Hugh Ryan has a nose for history, as demonstrated in his book When Brooklyn Was Queer. His latest The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison mines little-known historical sources to point out how a large and vocal population of queer-identified and trans people passed through the old cement monstrosity that used to stand next to today’s Jefferson Market Library in Manhattan‘s Greenwich Village.

Now a community garden, the site is a shout away from the Stonewall Inn, and Ryan writes the story of some of those imprisoned voices left out of the customary tales of the riot. In fact, prisoners set fire to their bedclothes and tossed them from the barred windows overlooking 6th Ave chanting “gay rights, gay rights gay rights.” Even before Stonewall’s impassioned response to police exploitation of gay bars, House of D. queer women, transmasculine people and other women were rioting for their rights in the jail. [Read more…] about Arrested Attention: The Women’s House of Detention

Schenectady Black History & Barber John Wendell

June 14, 2022 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

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

Hubert Harrison: Tribune of the People

June 7, 2022 by Sean Ahern 1 Comment

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

The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

June 3, 2022 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells.

Some of these inmates — Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur — were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women’s prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher. [Read more…] about The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison