History, Natural History & the Arts
On a cold, snowy January evening in 1874, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson became one of the first women of national prominence to speak on women’s suffrage in Clinton County, NY. Those gathering to hear her at the Palmer Hall, located upstairs at 60 Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh, were described as the most intellectual and cultivated in the community.
The crowd that night would have known her reputation. [Read more…] about Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’
After the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies assaulted, and continue to assault, our democratic system. It remains vulnerable in 2024.
Some of the loopholes they exploited have been closed — for example, Congress updated the Electoral Count Act — but many remain. If any defeated candidate, were to deploy the same tactics in 2024, we would still be relying on the goodwill and law-abiding honesty of individual officials to ensure a smooth and lawful transition. [Read more…] about Avoiding A Repeat of 2020 Election Attacks
On this episode of the New York Minute in History podcast, Devin Lander and Lauren Roberts tell the story of the Florence Farming and Lumber Association, a settlement of free African Americans in Florence, Oneida County beginning in 1846. [Read more…] about The Florence Farming Association
On Sunday, August 6, a new historical marker will be unveiled at Loon Lake, Franklin County in the Adirondacks, to honor the settlement of Blacksville and its founder, Virginia-born Brooklyn newsman and Black rights activist, Willis Hodges. The public is invited to attend. [Read more…] about New Historical Marker For Willis Hodges & His Adirondack Black Farm Settlement
I don’t remember who was on the ballot the first time I voted, but I remember the challenge of finding my polling place – a community meeting room in the basement of an apartment building – on a rainy night in New York City.
The room was lit with flickering fluorescent bulbs and the floor was covered with gray linoleum tile. It took the poll volunteer who sat on a metal folding chair behind a metal folding table a long time to find me in a very large register. [Read more…] about First Vote: A Letter from MANY’s Erika Sanger
In her book No Right to an Honest Living (Basic Books, 2023), Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive.
Before, during, and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning many of them to poverty. [Read more…] about Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Mary Sarah Bilder, an award-winning historian and the Founders Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, joins Liz to investigate the context of the United States Constitution’s creation with details from her book, Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution (UVA Press, 2022).
[Read more…] about Women and the Constitutional Moment of 1787
This open letter to the museum community was written by New York State Assembly Member Danny O’Donnell, Chair of the NYS Assembly Committee on Tourism, Parks, Arts, and Sports Development and shared by the Museum Association of New York (MANY).
Across New York, museums serve as anchors as well as reflections of your communities. Your missions to connect individuals to culture, history, and information is deeply needed and commendable. [Read more…] about Dear Museums: Host A Polling Site
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
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