On a warm, clear afternoon in June 1926, 600 Westchester County Republican delegates gathered in the art deco casino at Playland Amusement Park on Long Island Sound to endorse their neighbor, state Supreme Court Justice William F. Bleakley (1883–1969), for New York Governor. [Read more…] about Reluctant Warriors of 1936: William Bleakley & Herbert Lehman
Supreme Court
After NY Wetlands Rules Struck Down, DEC Plans Webinar Tuesday
In April, Albany County Supreme Court issued a decision in Chautauqua Lake Prop. Owners Assn., Inc. v State of New York annulling the recently revised 6 NYCRR Part 664 freshwater wetlands regulations in their entirety.
The court said the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) failed to comply with the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) during the adoption process. [Read more…] about After NY Wetlands Rules Struck Down, DEC Plans Webinar Tuesday
Clint Wescott: ‘Bum with a Bank Account’
$20,000 in 1968 is estimated to be worth about $190,000 today. Would you pass that up if it were offered to you and it were legitimately yours? Clint Wescott would — and did.
Missing from his hometown of Burnt Hills, NY, for 15 years, when he was finally found and told of his windfall, he was dressed in rags and had 44 cents in his pocket. [Read more…] about Clint Wescott: ‘Bum with a Bank Account’
Appeal Filed After Court Dismisses Adirondack Carrying Capacity Case
Protect the Adirondacks (PROTECT) has been urging the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for years to conduct a carrying capacity study of the heavily used Saranac Lakes Complex.
After DEC failed to act in response to their formal demand letter, PROTECT filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to compel DEC to complete the required study. [Read more…] about Appeal Filed After Court Dismisses Adirondack Carrying Capacity Case
Rensselaer County’s John Woodworth: New York’s 7th Attorney General
New York State’s seventh Attorney General was John Anthony Woodworth, a native of Rensselaer County. Born November 12, 1768 in Schodack, he graduated from Yale in 1788, and studied law in the Albany office of John Lansing, Jr., who later became Chancellor of New York.
He was a member of the Woodworth political family and was married to Catharine Westerlo (1778–1846, sister of Rensselaer Westerlo, and half-sister of Stephen Van Rensselaer III). [Read more…] about Rensselaer County’s John Woodworth: New York’s 7th Attorney General
The Battle of Newburgh, White Citizens Councils & New York State
Despite theoretically desegregating schools in 1938, New York State effectively continued to operate on the basis of an 1899 state ruling that upheld its segregated schools.
Then, in May 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education which required an end to racial segregation in public schools.
The decision contributed to a reordering of living patterns and an eventual realignment of the political parties across the United States. [Read more…] about The Battle of Newburgh, White Citizens Councils & New York State
Albany’s Central Warehouse Demolition OK’d: Once A Modern Cold Storage Facility
A ruling by the New York State Supreme Court has cleared the way to demolish Albany‘s Central Warehouse, a historic refrigerated warehouse in the city’s North Albany railroad district, according to a report from WAMC.
The 11-story building was built in 1927 by the New York Central Railroad and includes a two track spur entering the second floor; the walls are three-foot-thick concrete. The refrigeration systems used potentially toxic ammonia. [Read more…] about Albany’s Central Warehouse Demolition OK’d: Once A Modern Cold Storage Facility
Sojourner Truth’s Groundbreaking 1828 Court Case
This episode of A New York Minute in History podcast commemorates Women’s History Month by uncovering the groundbreaking 1828 court case of Sojourner Truth, a self-emancipated Black woman who took on a white slave owner to free her young son from slavery in the South. [Read more…] about Sojourner Truth’s Groundbreaking 1828 Court Case
Ira Allen: A New Biography
Born on April 21, 1751 in present-day Litchfield County, Connecticut, Ira Allen was a land speculator, revolutionary, pamphleteer, politician, colonizer, and a key figure in the history of Northern New England. He was one of the founders of the state of Vermont and a leader of the Green Mountain Boys. He was the younger brother of Ethan Allen.
In 1771, Allen went to Vermont (then part of the British colonial Province of New York) with his brother Ethan as a surveyor for the Onion River Land Company, which the four Allen brothers established in 1772 (it was dissolved 1785). Their goal was to purchase lands under the New Hampshire Grants and they served a central role in the dispute with the New York over conflicting land claims in the region. [Read more…] about Ira Allen: A New Biography
Interracial Marriage: Some History of Anti-Miscegenation Laws
The interracial marriage prohibition is deeply rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition. Statutes prohibiting interracial marriage were enforced in American colonies and states for more than three centuries.
The first anti-miscegenation law was enacted in Maryland in 1661. Virginia followed suit soon after. [Only Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington, D.C. never enacted anti-miscegenation laws.] [Read more…] about Interracial Marriage: Some History of Anti-Miscegenation Laws
Supreme Court Decision Endangers Adirondack Progress on Acid Rain
Adirondack Park advocates and a member of Congress say the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to prevent enforcement of federal Good Neighbor Rule would endanger public health and the health of Adirondack forests and waters by exempting two coal states from new limits on interstate air pollution. [Read more…] about Supreme Court Decision Endangers Adirondack Progress on Acid Rain
New York’s Leadership in Progressive Reform
The progressive period, ca. 1900-1920, much like our own times, was an era of tension, change, and new policies replacing old ones. Most of historians’ attention has focused on progressivism at the national level.
But in researching for my most recent books — The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Progressive Era (2022) and Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920 – A Reader (2024) – I was struck by how important the states were in the movement and furthermore how important New York was. [Read more…] about New York’s Leadership in Progressive Reform
The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom
The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2023) tells the story of Lemmon v. New York — or, as it’s more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history. [Read more…] about The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for FreedomHudson River Steamboats & Gibbons v. Ogden: The Commerce Clause
One of the world’s first steamboats successfully completed a maiden voyage on the river Clyde in Scotland in 1798. That same year, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston proposed to the New York Legislature that he would develop a new form of public transportation, the steamboat ferry, in return for a monopoly on steam navigation in New York waters. Despite the Legislature’s skepticism that steamboat technology was viable, legislation granting Livingston the monopoly was enacted. [Read more…] about Hudson River Steamboats & Gibbons v. Ogden: The Commerce Clause
Hudson River Towing: Austin’s Albany & Canal Line
Jeremiah J. Austin, Jr. was born in 1819, just 12 years after the first commercial steamboat trip on the Hudson River and two years after construction of the Erie Canal began at Rome, New York. His father Jeremiah J. Austin Sr. was a prominent Albany businessman involved in Hudson River commerce.
After the Erie Canal opened, freight could be transported all the way across the Great Lakes to the entrance to the canal at Buffalo and then along the canal to Albany where it was shipped down the Hudson River to New York Harbor. From there freight could be fairly easily transported to any port on the East Coast, Europe or the Caribbean. [Read more…] about Hudson River Towing: Austin’s Albany & Canal Line
Franklin Williams: An Unsung Civil Rights Hero
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
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
Finding Missing Judge Joseph Crater (Historians Podcast)
This week on The Historians Podcast, Stephen Riegel discusses his book Finding Judge Crater: A Life and Phenomenal Disappearance in Jazz Age NY (USRYC, 2021).
Judge Joseph Crater was a New York State Supreme Court Justice who disappeared in New York City in 1930. [Read more…] about Finding Missing Judge Joseph Crater (Historians Podcast)
Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination
Ira Harris was born at Charleston, Montgomery County, NY on May 31st, 1802 to Fredrick Waterman Harris and Lucy Hamilton. When he was six years old, his family moved to Preble, NY where his father became one of the largest landowners in Cortland County.
Harris attended Homer Academy and graduated from Union College in 1824. He studied law for one year in Homer, New York and then moved to Albany where he assisted one of that city’s most highly regarded jurists, Ambrose Spencer. [Read more…] about Albany’s Ira Harris: From Rights Advocate to Lincoln’s Assassination
‘The Caddy Court’ Coming To The Armory Show
In the early 1970s, American artists Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz began work on The Caddy Court, a 1966 Dodge van between the front and back ends of a 1978 Cadillac, which reimagines the Supreme Court of the United States in one of its original functions as a “riding circuit” court. [Read more…] about ‘The Caddy Court’ Coming To The Armory Show