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This note is a follow-up to the article "Performing Communism in the American Dance: Culture, Politics, and the New Dance Group" which appeared in the 2008 Volume 7, #1 issue of American Communist History. It focuses particularly on the history of the New York City dance troupe New Dance Group (NDG) established by a group of six radical women in 1932 to promote dance which reflected revolutionary and working-class idealogies. The NDG ceased operations in 2009 and some of its choreographer/performers included Sophie Maslow, Jane Dudley, and Eve Gentry.

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]

Surprising as it might sound, considering the known political history of the US, socialism managed to find a place in this busy environment as well. Jews were among the main contributors to the emergence of American socialism. Two of them were Abraham Cahan and Morris Hillquit. They had both come from Russia in the 1880s. They were both proud - though critical - American citizens and New Yorkers. Both were active within the Socialist Party of America and among the Jewish masses of New York. Yet despite their apparent cooperation, they were actually working for opposing goals. Cahan was using socialism as a tool for recreating a sort of 'spiritual ghetto' in the minds of his followers, while Hillquit was trying to use Yiddish socialism as part of his quest for a stronger and greater American socialism. The 1917 mayoral campaign allows us to form a better understanding of an enduring historical question, reflected in this political cooperation of divergent currents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the East's premiere socialist daily newspaper in English, The New York Call represented an important if struggling slice of a rich print culture that spread the socialist creed and sustained the faithful. This article uses the prism of The Call to consider functions of social movement media that, in contrast to mainstream media, promote collective action instead of products. It raises the question of whether the notion of a successful social-movement journal in the mass media market is oxymoronic. Besides considering The Call's contributions to the socialist movement, it analyzes the challenges the socialist daily faced in the capitalist-driven mass media market; examines the relationship between he Call and the mainstream press; and probes its relationship to the socialist movement, which it not only reflected but also shaped. The article concludes he Call provided a robust challenge to hegemony and played an important role as a forum for socialist discourse and as a record of New York's labor and socialist movements. Its inability to thrive, however, reflects divisions among socialists and labor as well as financial problems and governmental repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This article explores how Dr Emil Altman and the New York City Board of Education manipulated prevailing narratives of disability in a crusade to rid their city school system of “unfit” teachers during the late 1920s through to the early 1940s. Capitalising on fears of disability related to ideas about efficiency and eugenics, Altman and board officials redefined the purpose of the New York City Board of Education’s Medical Examiner, pathologised unsatisfactory teaching as illness or disability, introduced new standards and tests required to gain a permanent teaching licence, and forced over 100 teachers out of the school system. An examination of theNew York Timescoverage of this struggle over teacher tenure, retirement policy, competence, and pensions shows how skilfully Altman crafted rhetoric based in current ideas of fitness in order to expand his control over teacher examining and retiring and to help the Board of Education address a major budget deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Anti-Semitic beliefs that associated Jews, especially New York Jews, with the news media helped create the idea of a "liberal news media." Anti-Semites around the world have linked Jews with "control" of the news media since the nineteenth century. In the postwar United States, anti-Semitic critiques of the news media were closely linked with Cold War-era anticommunism, Christian conservatism, and reaction to the civil rights movement by white conservatives. Anti-Semites of the postwar period were usually fervent Christian anticommunists who believed that Jews secretly manipulated and masterminded the news in order to promote the civil rights movement, destroy the Christian United States, and pave the way for communist world government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented on essays by the 20th century African American author Ralph Ellison, including "Harlem Is Nowhere," "An Extravagance of Laughter” and “New York, 1936.” Particular focus is given to the geography within Ellison's depiction of the 20th century African American migration known as the Great Migration from the Southern States to the Northern States, including to New York City, New York. Ellison's perspective on African American laughter is discussed.

Cities were fundamental to the rise of the black power movement in the late 1960s, but, as Brian D. Goldstein uncovers, the built environment also served as a crucial medium through which black power proponents imagined the future that would follow from racial self-determination. As the case of Harlem shows, activist architects and planners and their community partners crafted an urban vision that valued existing African American residents and preserved their vibrant neighborhoods. In doing so, they not only offered a rebuke to modernist city building, with its emphasis on clearance and redevelopment, but they also played a thus-far-overlooked role in crafting a new, postmodern urbanism in its place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the Latin American community in New York City during the early 20th century and argues that Spanish-speaking New Yorkers utilized representations of boxer Paulino Uzcudun in an effort to promote the unification of Spanish-speaking as a sort of colony within New York City without regard to national origin. It discusses the significant immigration of Spaniards to New York City, demographic change and cultural development in New York City during the early 20th century, and the popularity of Spanish culture in New York City.

In 1961 New York City (NYC) brokered more than ten "affiliation" agreements between private academic medical centers (AMCs) and 18 of the City's 21 public hospitals, to fix crises in both sectors. For nearly 50 years NYC poured millions of dollars into the AMCs to run the public hospitals, giving private institutions enormous power and advantage in deciding how to spend the money; thus placing the delivery of healthcare to the public primarily in the hands of the private sector. This article examines the Columbia University/Harlem Hospital affiliation in the 1960s. It brings the discussion to 2010 when the Health and Hospitals Corporation dissolved the relationship after years of mismanagement, carelessness and tragedy; and entered a corporate phase of privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a personal narrative of the experiences of a New York City actor working Off-Off-Broadway at the Theater Genesis in the East Village with playwright, director, and actor Sam Shepard. Topics include experimental theater in the 1960s, the 1964 plays "The Rock Garden" and "Cowboys," and director Ralph Cook.

This article explores the history of the Rialto Theater in Times Square from the onset of the Depression to the American entry into World War II. Drawing on recent discussions of the local turn in film history, it argues for a more sustained engagement with thesociocultural contexts specific to the history of metropolitan film exhibition and reception. By taking the Rialto of the 1930s as a case study, the essay demonstrates both the challenges and potential for the adaptation of the methods of local film history to the metropolitan scene. It situates the Rialto within the local economy of the Times Square entertainment district as well as within a number of the concerns central to the city's economic recovery, including the politics and negotiation of public space, the policing of amusement and pleasure, and the integration of commerce and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the intellectual history of New York City and solidarity between U.S. liberal anti-communist thinkers and activists with Eastern European intellectuals. The author reflects on the founding of the "New York Review of Books" magazine and the establishment of the Institute for the Humanities at New York University by scholar Richard Sennett. Emphasis is given to topics such as Eastern European dissidents and the globalization of human rights issues in communist countries, the financial support of hedge fund manager George Soros, and the presence of Hungarian intellectuals at the Institute such as András Kovács, Zsolt Csalog, György Konrád, and György Bence,

In the 1950s, the Committee on Slum Clearance of the City of New York, headed by Robert Moses, published twenty-six site-specific slum clearance brochures. A major portion of each one of these brochures attempted to demonstrate the blighted conditions that prevailed in the area to be redeveloped. These sections included maps, statistics, descriptions, and photographs. Moses wanted to keep the texts in the brochures short and allow the photographs and the illustrations to demonstrate the shortcomings of the areas designated as slums. This article analyzes the photographs that appeared in the “Demonstration of Slum Conditions” (later renamed to “Demonstration of Blight”) section of the brochures and raises a number of questions concerning the process and the paradigm under which Moses’s slum clearance organization was operating. Both the process and the paradigm of slum clearance in New York City involved elected officials, planning commissioners, and even the judiciary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the early twentieth century in New York City, the tongs of Chinatown established themselves as one of the most resilient, and clever, organized crime enterprises in Lower Manhattan. Through spectacular violence and shrewd political dealings, they survived by adapting to, and helping to shape, the evolution of Chinese America. Groups like the Hip Sings and On Leongs, inspiring awe and fear, spiced a chaotic urban stew in which race, class, and politics bubbled into a peculiarly American amalgam. But the tongs were never mere street criminals. These sophisticated organizations represented a formative period in New York’s Chinatown and the Chinese American community. Though rooted in Chinese culture, the tong was a uniquely American response to the racist oppression and political disenfranchisement of the Chinese, who were criminalized and legally excluded under immigration codes until the 1940s. The changes that the tongs underwent, in both their public image and their economic and political activities, reflected evolving, often contradictory, relationships with local law enforcement, civil society, and transnational political movements. Previous scholarship on the tongs is sparse, yet the tong wars appear in numerous literary, cultural, and analytical works on Chinese American history. The article examines the histories of two rival tongs with similar political underpinnings, the Hip Sings (協勝堂) and On Leongs (安良堂), who negotiated cultural and political boundaries to build power in the emerging Chinese American community. During the Exclusion Era, which lasted roughly from the late 1800s through 1943, the tongs consolidated their power by curating elements of tradition and Western urban society. In response to local, national, and global social change, the tongs continually honed and recast their public roles in Chinatown as the community came of age in modern America. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The creation of the South Street Seaport Museum in 1967 represents a dynamic synthesis of urban development, civic memory, and the use of heritage in urban revitalization. The dominant narrative of midcentury urban renewal debates, which pits growth-oriented modernism against a street corner preservationism antagonistic to change, offers an incomplete analysis of the founding of South Street as a historic museum district. The Seaport plan imagined historic preservation and the use of civic memory as integral factors in the process of urban modernity, not as a resistance to it. Rather than simply rejecting urban development and the modernist architectural landscape that had come to dominate the tip of lower Manhattan, boosters of South Street, like Progressive Era preservationists before them, envisioned historic preservation as an integral part of the future cityscape. This article argues that South Street boosters were far more concerned with sustainability and building a new urban future than preservationists of this era are often credited. The emergence of the South Street Seaport Museum symbolizes the maturation of historic preservation in the 1960s and uncovers an allegiance to early twentieth-century Progressive conceptions of a new urbanism. Finally, this narrative exposes the common ground that Seaport boosters and urban development supporters shared regarding the use of heritage and collective memory as necessary elements in the city’s development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses jazz band leader James Reese Europe's role in the development and popularization of black music in the United States between 1903 and 1915, focusing on the influence of his time spent in New York City and of his Clef Club entertainment venue and Clef Club Symphony Orchestra. Topics discussed include Europe's marketing of the Clef Club, His partnership with dancers Irene and Vernon Castle, and white peoples' expectations for black musicians in the early 20th century.

The article discusses the industrial organization and unionism of New York City laundry workers, focusing on the period 1930 to 1950. It explores issues of race and gender and notes that laundry workers were mainly women and people of color. The author considers tensions between trade union leaders and laundry workers. Unions examined include the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), the American Federation of Labor (AFL)-affiliated Laundry Workers International Union (LWIU), the Congress of Industrial Organizations (ClO)-affiliated Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), and the ACWA-affiliated Laundry Workers Joint Board of Greater New York (LWJB). The influence of communism is also discussed.

The article discusses public memorials to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City, which killed 146 young, mostly female, Jewish and Italian workers. The fire was believed to be the result of the company's undermining of garment union attempts to improve working conditions. The city refused to release the unidentified bodies for a public procession, fearing expressions of outrage, and instead buried the bodies quietly in Brooklyn. A large parade organized by the union took place on the same day with almost 400,000 people attending. A memorial statue appeared at the graves in December 1912. Possible sculptors, including Evelyn Beatrice Longman and Henry Bacon, are discussed. Class differences in the approach to memorials are discussed.

Focuses on the establishment of the Ninety-Second Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association (YMHA) Dance Center, in New York City in the 1930s. Details on some of the performances at the dance center; Discussion on the history of YMHA; Role of educational director William Kolodney at the dance center; Information on Kolodney.