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This paper examines the history of New York City’s Greenmarket program, a municipal farmers market program designed to bring fresh local food to New Yorkers as well as to prevent the loss of regional farmland to increasing suburbanization. In the 38 years since it was established, Greenmarket has expanded from a single location with 7 vendors to 195 vendors selling at fifty-three markets across all five boroughs. This paper traces tensions created by the program’s growth, its shifting place in the city’s food retail environment, and its current renewed commitment to the original goals. Drawing on primary documents, New York Times articles, and other popular press, this paper presents a comprehensive history of NYC’s Greenmarket, describes its unique position in New York City, and ability to serve as a model for other cities’ food planning efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article illuminates what it was like for African Americans dining at majority-white restaurants in New York City before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Primary sources include: records of the Committee on Civil Rights in East Manhattan (the CCREM, an organization that investigated New York restaurant and housing sector discrimination in the 1950s), the personal papers of the CCREM’s secretary, contemporaneous newspaper accounts of restaurant discrimination, and 1950s travel guides for African Americans. This article argues that unlike southern cities, where Jim Crow laws clearly demarcated color lines in public accommodations, color lines in New York City restaurants were more ambiguous. Although African Americans were frequently discriminated against in New York restaurants, they were seldom refused service outright. Rather, the discrimination they experienced was more oblique—though no less benign—than in the South. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Julia de Burgos was a regular contributor to the Spanish-language weekly Pueblos Hispanos published in New York City during the 1940s. Early twentieth-century Hispanic newspapers played an important role in the development of the Puerto Rican community in New York. De Burgos' writing for the paper reveals that it helped to organize the community around political causes. It was created in defense of the community and facilitated the development of institutions serving Latinos. Her essays convey her interest and understanding of the development of transnational and fluid identities that were not bound to the geographical borders of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]