New York City

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/25/2021
  

  A Monument Honoring Brooklyn Abolitionists Stalls Under Scrutiny

  “Whatever we build in Downtown Brooklyn should rival the Statue of Liberty,” said Raul Rothblatt, who has fought to preserve the area’s history for nearly 20 years. He added: “But instead, the city is planning to build a dog park above where tunnels once connected abolitionist homes.”

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• SOURCE: Places Journal
  11/15/2020
  

  Reservoir: Nature, Culture, Infrastructure

  by Luc Sante

  A four-part series of essays and photography examines the creation, maintenance and consequences of the reservoirs constructed to supply water to New York City, including the complex divisions and connections among urban and rural communities. 

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• 11/8/2020
  

  The New York Con

  by David Marks

  Supporters of the president will eventually realize that they trusted a man who despised them.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/27/2020
  

  When a Kidnapping Ring Targeted New York’s Black Children (Review)

  In “The Kidnapping Club,” the historian Jonathan Daniel Wells describes the circle of slave catchers and police officers who terrorized New York’s Black population in the three decades before the Civil War.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/nyregion/nyc-vo
  

  Inside Decades of Nepotism and Bungling at the N.Y.C. Elections Board

  “I expect the B.O.E. to pull this off — there’s no other option. It’s the most important election of our lifetime,” said Scott Stringer, the city comptroller. “But we shouldn’t have to hold our breath because of their gross incompetence.”

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  10/14/2020
  

  The So-Called ‘Kidnapping Club’ Featured Cops Selling Free Black New Yorkers Into Slavery

  by Jonathan Daniel Wells

  "It often mattered little whether a black person was born free in New York or had in fact escaped bondage; the police, reinforced by judges like the notorious city recorder Richard Riker, sent the accused to southern plantations with little concern and often even less evidence."

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• 7/12/2020
  

  Centuries of Protest at City Hall Park

  by Marika Plater

  Closed gates around City Hall Park in New York not only restrict access to the park as a site for protest, but ignore the site's history as a theater for political expression. 

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• SOURCE: LA Progressive
  6/9/2020
  

  Subverting New York’s Police Brutality Policy

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Longstanding opposition from the Patrolman's Benevolent Association, the union of New York City police officers, has made meaningful civilian oversight of the police impossible. 

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• 5/10/2020
  

  Spiritualism and Suspension Bridges: John Roebling and a Biographer's Sympathy for the Weird 19th Century

  by Richard Haw

  A biographer of Brooklyn Bridge designer John Roebling expected to write about a genius. He also ended up writing about a complete weirdo, and how one man could be both.

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• SOURCE: WBUR
  4/16/2020
  

  Documentary 'Other Music' Chronicles A Record Store Navigating A Shifting Industry

  A new documentary tells the story of Other Music, a now-closed record store in New York City.

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/5/2020
  

  Scapegoating New York Means Ignoring Its Desperate Need

  by Kim Phillips-Fein

  Blaming the city for coronavirus is a way of letting the federal government off the hook.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  1/13/20
  

  The 10 Most Checked-Out Books in N.Y. Public Library History

  Librarians and analysts spent over six months parsing through hundreds of titles to compile the list. They considered all book formats, including e-books and foreign-language editions.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  9/17/19
  

  Chronicling New York’s Muslim History

  Tours through Harlem and Wall Street, along with a new exhibition in Brooklyn, tell all-but-forgotten stories.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/12/19
  

  New York Needs Amazon

  by Kenneth T. Jackson

  History is clear: A city that rejects economic opportunity will lose its status as the center of the business world.

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• SOURCE: NYT
  2-5-17
  

  Subway Riders Scrub Anti-Semitic Graffiti, as ‘Decent Human Beings’

  The car’s windows and posters were covered in anti-Semitic graffiti. Messages like “Jews belong in the oven” and “destroy Israel, Heil Hitler,” had been written over subway maps, as shown by photographs taken on the train. Swastikas were drawn in black marker on the doors and windows.

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• SOURCE: Tech Insider
  7-11-16
  

  This guy used over 80,000 old photos to create a Google Street map of New York City in the 1800s

  The project, called OldNYC, lets you browse 19th-century New York as easily as you would click around on Google Maps.

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• SOURCE: You Tube
  12-2-14
  

  Oldest footage of New York City ever

  Incredible footage of New York City with maps showing where the camera was. 

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  6-17-14
  

  The Gory New York City Riot that Shaped American Medicine

  by Bess Lovejoy

  Back before medical school was a respected place to be, New Yorkers raised up in protest over the doctors’ preference for cadavers for study.

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• 3-31-14
  

  How a Woman Born into Slavery Helped Build New York City's First African American Research Library

  by Elizabeth Hohl

  At the tail end of Women's History Month, it's worth remembering Victoria Earle Matthews, who lived her life under one principle: history matters.

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• SOURCE: New York Daily News
  3-2-14
  

  The Untold History Beneath "12 Years"

  by Manisha Sinha

  NYC's sordid history of slavery.