Rossy Mendez
Remembering Jesse Jackson
Andy Lanset
Black History Highlights of Municipal ...
Andy Lanset
Black History Highlights of Municipal ...
Michael Lorenzini
The LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier and the 1940 ...
Arafua Reed & Neen Lamontagne
NYC Commission on Human Rights, project update

Remembering Jesse Jackson

Although Jesse Jackson is best known for his activism in the Jim Crow South and Chicago, he also left an indelible mark on New York City’s civil rights movement and political landscape. 

The records of Mayor David Dinkins’ Administration show Jackson’s notable influence on politics and his relationship with the mayor. Jackson was a close friend of Mayor Dinkins, and the two supported each other’s political campaigns. Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition organization mobilized thousands of voters, helping Dinkins become New York City’s first Black mayor in 1990. In turn, Dinkins served as a co-chair of New Yorkers for Jesse Jackson during Jackson’s 1988 presidential run.

Jesse Jackson and Mayor David Dinkins, 1990. Mayor David Dinkins Photograph Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Jesse Jackson appears alongside Mayor Dinkins in numerous photographs taken at mayoral events. These include Dinkins’ inauguration, the ceremony where the Mayor received the Brotherhood Award from One Hundred Black Men, and a reception held by the New York State Council of Black Elected Democrats. Mr. Jackson is referenced in conversations the Mayor had about issues affecting Black NYC residents, including housing initiatives, issues related to drug convictions and use, and the need for more economic relief in Black neighborhoods. 

Mayor David Dinkins, Charlie Rangel (center), Jesse Jackson, 1991. Mayor David Dinkins Photograph Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Jesse Jackson’s relationship with Dinkins stood in stark contrast to his interactions with Dinkins’ predecessor, Mayor Ed Koch. Documents in the mayoral series indicate that Koch did not consider Jackson a viable presidential candidate. Koch endorsed Democrat Michael Dukakis and viewed some of Jackson’s remarks about Jews as inappropriate and polarizing. He also disapproved of Jackson’s association with Louis Farrakhan. In a letter from June 11, 1984, Koch wrote to his speechwriter Clark Whelton, “This is not a Jewish matter or whites against blacks but rather what is acceptable for someone who runs at the highest levels.” Despite their differences, Koch and Jackson met to discuss voter registration and strategies to increase turnout. Koch acknowledged Jackson’s considerable influence among Black voters and respect from other city officials. In fact, Jackson did have significant support in his campaign from many important people. On June 24, 1988, for example, Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisholm hosted a reception attended by Bill Cosby and Helen Abbott.

Index, NYPD Intelligence Unit Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Records from the New York Police Department Intelligence Division also shed light on Jackson’s civil rights activism, including his work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Poor People’s Campaign and his leadership as Director of Operation Breadbasket, an initiative of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As head of Operation Breadbasket, Jackson successfully coordinated boycotts against companies like the A & P Supermarket chain and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. The goal was to address economic disparities in Black communities by leveraging boycotts to secure better representation, employment, and fair business practices. Other records document Jackson’s founding of People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) in 1971, following his suspension from Operation Breadbasket. PUSH broadened Jackson’s mission to improve economic conditions for Black Americans nationwide.

Memorandum, page 1, 1970. NYPD Intelligence Unit Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Memorandum, page 2, 1970. NYPD Intelligence Unit Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Correspondence, 1971. NYPD Intelligence Unit Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Clipping, 1971. NYPD Intelligence Unit Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Jackson’s leadership in the civil rights movement is most shockingly evident in a 1971 letter from the City of Chicago Police Department to Thomas Lyons, Director of the New York City Police Intelligence Division. The letter refers to an alleged plot to assassinate Jackson for potential economic advantages. Other correspondence also shows Jackson’s affiliation not only with political figures but also with other influential Black people. While opinions about Jackson vary, his activism, engagement with the New York City government, and presidential campaigns left a lasting impact on both the city and the nation.

Black History Highlights of Municipal Broadcasting’s First 25 Years - Part 2

The 1940s 

The wartime decade placed WNYC firmly in the vanguard of American broadcasting where Black producers and Black-centered programming were concerned. This leadership emerged early in the decade with calypso music on Henrietta Yurchenco’s Adventures in Music. A notable example is the July 28 broadcast featuring Cecil Anderson—better known as The Duke of Iron—who paid tribute to the municipal station in song with “The Ballad of WNYC.” 

Station WNYC. Yes, WNYC, it is owned by the people of N.Y.C. 
My friends, I’m known as the Duke of Iron, 
And I sing to people throughout the land. 
I came from Trinidad, maybe you have heard 
Of the glorious land of the humming bird. 
I highly appreciate your loyalty 
And the grand privilege that’s offered me 
By the nice people of New York City 
And the station WNYC… 

The Duke of Iron (Cecil Anderson) publicity photo, Wikimedia Commons.

In the song, Anderson also praised Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, crediting him as the station’s “godfather” and acknowledging his tireless efforts to ensure WNYC’s survival during its early years—although it’s worth noting that La Guardia originally ran for Mayor on a platform calling for the abolition of the station given its cost to the taxpayer.

Producer Yurchenco also brought Huddie Ledbetter—Lead Belly, the king of the twelve-string guitar—to WNYC’s air in 1940. This appearance marked the first of four regular series he would host during the decade, along with frequent guest spots on other programs, including the annual American Music Festival. In a 2001 interview with WNYC, Yurchenco recalled his professionalism, punctuality, and meticulous dress, as well as the collaborative way they shaped his broadcasts. She emphasized that Lead Belly’s commentary drew directly from his own life and described it as “colorful and magnificent,” noting that he remains one of the great blues singers of all time. Here is Lead Belly from his program, Folksongs of America, on February 27, 1941. 

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Among the other programs on which Lead Belly appeared was Ralph Berton’s Metropolitan Review, radio’s first serious jazz music program, and its companion series, Jazz Institute on the Air. Together, these broadcasts introduced New York audiences to a wide range of African-American jazz, blues, boogie-woogie and swing artists in the early 1940s. In November 1941, Berton devoted a full week of programming to Louis Armstrong—whom he dubbed “the Beethoven of hot jazz”—in celebration of Armstrong’s twenty-fifth year in show business. Berton also hosted a segment of WNYC’s American Music Festival in February 1941 featuring Lead Belly, Albert Ammons, Sam Price, Meade Lux Lewis, and the Golden Gate Singers. 

(Audio from the Municipal Archives WNYC Collection) 

Paul Robeson by Gordon Parks for the OWI, June 1942/Library of Congress.

Paul Robeson’s powerful baritone graced WNYC’s airwaves on at least two occasions during the 1940s. The first occurred on June 24, 1940, when he performed “Ballad for Americans” at Lewisohn Stadium with the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński. Written by Earl Robinson and John Latouche, the cantata was conducted by Mark Warnow and featured a chorus of fifty voices drawn from the Schola Cantorum and the Wen Talbert Negro Choir, with African-American contralto Louise Burge joining the ensemble. The concert also included the premiere of William Grant Still’s And They Lynched Him on a Tree, based on a poem by Katherine Garrison Chapin. Robeson’s second live WNYC broadcast was a Central Park bandshell concert of contemporary Russian music on September 1, 1942, conducted by noted African-American conductor Dean Dixon.

From May through July 1941, WNYC aired the pioneering thirteen-week dramatic series Native Sons, which portrayed the lives of significant historical Black figures. The biographical sketches were groundbreaking not only in content but in authorship: they were written by African Americans Kirk Lord and Frank D. Griffin at a time when few Black writers worked in radio beyond menial roles. Writing for the Baltimore Afro-American in August 1941, Griffin charged that commercial radio would not hire Black writers, arguing that as radio became a big business, Jim Crow practices had become entrenched in both studios and control rooms. Two years later, The New York Age noted Griffin’s hiring by the  Congress of Industrial Organizations to write NBC’s Labor for Victory series, observing that he was “the only Negro at present writing for a network program.”  

Headline from the August 1, 1941 radio listings in the Daily Worker.

Native Sons also broke new ground by presenting profiles of insurgent figures such as Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey—subjects rarely, if ever, discussed on the air. Alongside these were portraits of figures including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Crispus Attucks, George Washington Carver, Benjamin Banneker, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, Dorothy Maynor, Ira Aldridge, Robert Smalls, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and the Moroccan explorer Estevanico. The series featured an all-Black cast that included Canada Lee, Jessie Zackerey, P. J. Sidney, Jimmy Wright, Rose Poindexter, and Eric Boroughs, with musical segments provided by the Juanita Hall Choir. Author Richard Wright delivered commentary following the final broadcast.

Clifford Burdette/NAACP Collection – Library of Congress.

May 1941 also marked the debut of Those Who Have Made Good, an interview program sponsored by the NAACP and designed to spotlight “the most outstanding race figures in contemporary life, from all fields of endeavor.” Hosted and produced weekly by Clifford Burdette for more than a year, the program fulfilled that mission, beginning with actor Canada Lee and continuing with guests such as Paul Robeson, W.C. Handy, Josh White, Noble Sissle, Mercedes Gilbert, Dean Dixon, Count Basie, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Hazel Scott, Max Yergan, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and many others. The sole surviving recording of the series features Harlem poet Countee Cullen. 

(Audio courtesy of the Amistad Research Center, Tulane University) 

Duke Ellington’s first Carnegie Hall concert on January 23, 1943 featured his expansive jazz composition Black, Brown and Beige, a work he described as “a parallel to the history of the Negro in America.” Recorded on location, the performance was broadcast over WNYC nine days later. Unfortunately, critics initially received the work poorly, and Ellington never revisited it in full. Half a century later, however, Scott DeVeaux of the University of Virginia described it as “an intriguing piece of music, well worth reexamining” and “a celebration of Black artistic achievement” that “confronted both the cultural snobbery that excluded jazz musicians from the musical establishment and the pervasive racism that excluded African Americans from their share of citizenship.” 

Judge Jane Bolin, first Black female to occupy a court bench/U.S. Office of War Information Photo/Wikimedia Commons.

On March 18, 1943, Justice Jane M. Bolin—the first African-American judge in New York and the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School—came to the municipal radio studio to deliver the address Womenpower is Vital to Victory. Bolin was speaking as part of the Eleventh Vocational Opportunity Campaign of the National Urban League. She called for employment of African-American women and condemned discrimination as antithetical to the nation’s democratic war aims.

WNYC revisited the African-American docudrama with the Great Americans series May 19 through June 23, 1943. Sponsored by the City’s Juvenile Welfare Council, the program included profiles of inventor George Washington Carver, champion fighter Joe Louis, contralto Marian Anderson, sculptor Richmond Barthe, police officer Samuel Battle, activist James Weldon Johnson, and heard here, ship captain Hugh Mulzac.  

(Audio from the Municipal Archives WNYC Collection) 

Compared to Native Sons, the series was more conventional and corny in tone. Variety commented that it “ducked the fundamental racial issues” and was “slanted for juves and strictly inspirational,” with episodes often concluding with exhortations about self-improvement. 

The year 1943 was marked by unrest tied to racial and ethnic tensions across the United States. Violent clashes erupted in Mobile, Alabama, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Beaumont, Texas, undermining morale on the home front as the nation fought a global war. Mayor La Guardia—also the national head of the Office of Civilian Defense—was deeply concerned that similar disturbances might erupt in New York, particularly given the reliance on minority soldiers in a segregated military. 

Seeking to defuse rising tensions, La Guardia pressed for a radio series titled Unity at Home – Victory Abroad and wrote poet, activist, and playwright Langston Hughes for assistance. Slated to air on WNYC and seven other New York stations in August and September, the series featured figures such as contralto Marian Anderson, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and former governor Al Smith. Tragically, the effort came too late to prevent the Harlem riot of August 1, although WNYC played a critical role in calming the situation through its broadcasts and sound trucks. 

(Audio from the Municipal Archives WNYC Collection)

Page one of a four-page WNYC press release on the 1943 disturbances in Harlem. NYC Municipal Library vertical files.

Excerpt from Behind the Mike, September/October 1943 Masterwork Bulletin/WNYC Archive Collections.

According to Hughes biographer Arnold Rampersad, Hughes was also contacted by the Writers’ War Board, which sought radio programming to promote unity and prevent further racial violence. Hughes responded with some songs and two short plays, In the Service of My Country and Private Jim Crow. While the former was broadcast on WNYC and praised, the latter—more critical in its depiction of discrimination faced by Black soldiers—was never aired anywhere. Hughes himself acknowledged the difficulty of such material, noting radio’s persistent censorship of dramatic treatments of Black life. 

Hughes returned to WNYC in 1944 as a guest on mezzo-soprano Lola Hayes’s weekly program Tone Pictures of the Negro in Music, which highlighted African-American composers and their work. The November 29 broadcast focused on musical settings of Hughes’s poetry, and he read from his opera Troubled Island. Other guests during the program’s run included Abbie Mitchell, Will Marion Cook, Hall Johnson, and Clarence Cameron White. 

Portrait of Lola Hayes in 1941 by James L. Allen/Courtesy of The New York Times.

NAEB Newsletter April 1, 1944. Excerpt courtesy of Unlocking the Airwaves/University of Maryland. 

In February 1944, Billie Holiday made a late addition to WNYC’s annual American Music Festival, appearing in a swing session alongside Hot Lips Page and Coleman Hawkins. The following month, WNYC also began airing spots against bigotry as part of director Morris Novik’s vision of public radio to educate for democracy. 

NAEB Newsletter April 1, 1944. Excerpt courtesy of Unlocking the Airwaves/University of Maryland. 

Script for a spot on tolerance from 1944. WNYC Archive Collections. 

On April 2, 1944, Mayor La Guardia welcomed composer and baritone Harry T. Burleigh to City Hall for a broadcast of Talk to the People, continuing the station’s engagement with African-American cultural leadership during the war years. 

(Audio from the Municipal Archives WNYC Collection) 

1936 portrait of Harry T. Burleigh by Maud Cuney-Hare, 1874-1936/Wikimedia Commons. 

The year 1944 saw the municipal station move away from biodramas toward short-lived serial dramas that aimed to portray African Americans as everyday Americans who happened to be Black. On Saturday evenings in June, an all-Black cast appeared in I’m Your Next Door Neighbor, which followed the business and home life of a “typical” New York family living in Harlem. Station director Morris Novik explained that “tolerance and prejudice were not the theme of the series, but during the course of normal events it brought home to the listener that there were certain evils that perhaps he was not aware of previously.” 

In an article about the “falling color bar” in radio, The Chicago Defender called the program “the most advanced program artistically.” The paper also quoted producer Barbara M. Watson, who said, “It is most important that young Negroes look to radio as the future. There are inroads to be made now. It will be tougher later.” Watson went on to have a distinguished career, becoming the first African American and the first woman appointed Assistant Secretary of State. 

Josh White at Café Society circa 1946 by William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress. 

The second serial drama was Henry Allen—American. Airing on Sundays from October into November 1944, the program was a takeoff on Henry Aldrich, the popular white protagonist of NBC’s The Aldrich Family. Like I’m Your Next Door Neighbor, the series sought to normalize Black domestic life. An announcement in The Brooklyn Eagle said the program would “try to give us an understanding glimpse into the homes and hearts of 14,000,000 fellow citizens.” 

Folksinger Josh White performed at the February 1945 American Music Festival. The announcer described his repertoire as “music that is rooted in the soil and the heart of the American people,” and quoted Langston Hughes, who called White “a fine singer of anybody’s songs—Southern Negro, Southern white, plantation work songs, modern union songs, English or Irish ballads—any songs that come from the heart of a people.” 

(Audio courtesy of Smithsonian Moe Asch Collection.)

The following month, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and the NAACP mounted an extensive tribute over the municipal station. On April 15, listeners heard from attorney Herman Taylor, Roy Wilkins, NAACP president Arthur B. Spingarn, and Maude Turner of the New York City NAACP branch. Spingarn said, “The death of President Roosevelt is a tragic loss to mankind. But to minority peoples of the world—particularly the minority groups in this country—it is an irreparable calamity.” 

Returning from Army service, producer and host Clifford Burdette launched Freedom’s Ladder in July 1946. The weekly program blended music and civil rights advocacy and was described as “the only weekly program battling discrimination and prejudice.” Echoing the mission of his earlier WNYC series Those Who Have Made Good, Burdette told the Baltimore Afro-American, “Our show aims to entertain and to promote the idea that everyone has a chance to climb freedom’s ladder. You’ve got to be good, and you’ve got to work at it.” 

The program ran for a year and featured some nationally known performers, including Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan, but largely relied on entertainers from Harlem nightclubs and other local venues, along with frequent appearances by members of the New York State Commission Against Discrimination. Unlike Burdette’s earlier program, the high-powered roster of Harlem Renaissance celebrities was largely absent. New York Amsterdam News columnist and radio host Bill Chase was a regular presence and shared hosting duties.   

(Audio from the Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.)

On April 16, 1946, municipal radio listeners heard NYU sociologist Dr. Dan Dodson moderate a panel discussion titled “How Can We Work for Interracial Understanding?” Panelists included pioneering African-American psychologist Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, Judge and civil-rights attorney Hubert Delany, and journalist and social historian Dr. Albert Deutsch. Later that spring, on June 3, listeners may also have caught a live broadcast of Billie Holiday performing at Jazz at the Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. 

Kenneth B. Clark, Judge Hubert T. Delaney, Dr. Dan Dodson, and Mr. Albert Deutsch during broadcast of WNYC radio show, “How can we work for interracial understanding?” Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. 

One More River producers Bill Chase and Ken Joseph in front of the microphone circa 1947.  WNYC Archive Collections. 

From January 10 to April 6, 1947, One More River was billed as “the only radio show in the country produced by a Negro–White team” dedicated to improving race relations. The Sunday broadcast was produced by New York Amsterdam News columnist Bill Chase and WNYC staff announcer Ken Joseph, who said the program was “dedicated to the equality and dignity of all men” and sought to expose prejudice in both the North and the South. The series combined dramatizations and music, with guests including Teddy Wilson, Kenneth Spencer, Jenny Powell, Mildred Bailey, Lillette Thomas, Melba Allen, the Ellis Larkins Trio, and the Al Casey Trio. The Nameless Choir appeared regularly under the direction of Charles King. This is the April 6, 1947 program from the Municipal Archives WNYC collection. 

African-American conductor Dean Dixon led the American Youth Symphony in February 1947 for the eleventh WNYC American Music Festival concert. The program featured contralto Carol Brice, with pianist Vivian Rivkin, and included works by William Schuman, Johan Franco, Norman Dello Joio, and Richard J. Newman. The concert concluded with Newman’s United Nations Cantata for Chorus and Orchestra, performed by the David Randolph Chamber Chorus. 

On June 29, 1947, WNYC carried President Harry S. Truman’s address to the NAACP at its thirty-eighth annual conference. The Lincoln Memorial speech was the first time a sitting U.S. president spoke to the organization’s annual meeting.

(Audio from the Municipal Archive WNYC Collection.)

President Truman delivering remarks to the NAACP at the Lincoln Memorial, June 29, 1947. Photo courtesy of the Truman Library. 

The Thelonius Monk Quartet performed at the ninth American Music Festival on February 16, 1948. Monk was joined on piano by trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, bassist Curly Russell, and drummer Art Blakey. Their set included the standard All the Things You Are. 

(Audio from the WNYC Archive Collections.)

Jazz Classroom of the Air premiered on October 9, 1948. The thirty-minute broadcast accompanied an NYU jazz course taught by John Hammond of Mercury Records and George Avakian of Columbia Records. Designed as both public educational entertainment and a supplement to the university course, the program paired Saturday evening broadcasts with Monday classroom lectures. The inaugural episode traced the origins of jazz and featured several early recordings, including one by a young Louis Armstrong.

(Audio from the WNYC Archive Collections.)

Civil rights leader Walter White spoke at the Cooper Union Forum on December 18, 1949. His address, “The Race Problem in the United States,” examined the relationship between race and foreign policy and was carried live from the Great Hall over WNYC. 

(Audio from the Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.)

Conclusion 

Taken together, these early decades of New York’s municipal broadcasting reveal WNYC as an imperfect but often pioneering civic platform for Black cultural expression, political debate, and historical self-representation. At a time when commercial radio routinely excluded African-American voices—or confined them to caricatures—the city-owned station repeatedly created space for Black artists, intellectuals, activists, and institutions to speak in their own voices and on their own terms. These efforts unfolded unevenly, shaped by the limits of the era, wartime pressures, censorship, and persistent racial inequities. Yet they also reflected a sustained belief that public broadcasting could serve democratic ends by broadening who was heard and what was heard. 

From early policy decisions banning racial epithets, to landmark series such as Native Sons and Those Who Have Made Good, to wartime appeals for unity and postwar explorations of everyday Black life, WNYC’s programming documented—and at times anticipated—larger national conversations about race, citizenship, and cultural authority. The station’s airwaves carried music, drama, and debate that challenged prevailing stereotypes and introduced audiences to a fuller, more complex vision of African-American life in the United States. 

As WNYC moved beyond its first quarter-century, these broadcasts formed a foundation on which later generations would build. The preserved recordings remain vital historical evidence of how New York City’s municipal radio, at its best, functioned as a forum for inclusion, education, and civic responsibility—an aspiration that continues to resonate during Black History Month and beyond. 

Anti-bigotry spot from 1946. WNYC Archive Collections. 

Black History Highlights of Municipal Broadcasting’s First 25 Years - Part 1

For 73 years, WNYC was owned and operated by the City of New York. Detailing its African-American-focused programing over this period is no small task—indeed, it could easily serve as a master’s thesis in broadcast history. Within the limits of this essay, however, I have highlighted some of the most significant early moments and broadcasts that merit reflection during Black History Month. 

Reverend Dr. Henry Hugh Proctor. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons. 

Among the earliest African American speakers on WNYC—if not the first—was the Reverend Dr. Henry Hugh Proctor, an early civil-rights leader who addressed listeners on the evening of October 11, 1924. He opened the broadcast with a prayer, followed by the Nazarene Chorus, based at his Brooklyn church, the Nazarene Congregational Church. Proctor is recognized as a key figure in the Social-Gospel movement, a significant precursor to the modern civil-rights movement. 

The municipal station was only eight months old in March 1925—and radio itself was still very much a toddler—when WNYC banned the use of racial epithets on the air. The action came at a moment of peak Ku Klux Klan membership nationwide and three years before NBC would launch the enormously popular, and racially charged, Amos ’n’ Andy. The ban followed a broadcast in which a city official told “a harmless watermelon story,” unaware that he had caused offense by using  a slur related to skin color.” Department of Plant and Structures Commissioner William Wirt Mills, whose agency oversaw the station, issued an apology and ordered corrective action in response to a complaint from The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper.

Excerpt from WNYC Engineering Log for October 11, 1924. WNYC Archive Collections.

The Baltimore Afro-American, March 7, 1925, pg.6. 

Seen in this light, it is notable that by 1946—likely earlier—the station’s operations manual extended its prohibition on racial and ethnic epithets to Jews, Irish Americans, and other maligned groups. The guide also instructed staff that “there is no need, for example, in crime news to refer repeatedly to a man's color unless there is a specific news reason, such as a police description of a missing person.” It further cautioned against repeating derogatory remarks about any individual, even when accurately attributed, unless the quotation itself had specific news value, such as forming the basis of a lawsuit. 

Black participation on WNYC and other broadcast outlets during the 1920s remained limited, largely confined to occasional gospel performances and dance band appearances. That changed in 1929, when both the New York Urban League and the NAACP secured regular weekly time slots—among the earliest sustained programming by and for African Americans in the nation. These broadcasts featured prominent voices including scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, labor leader A. Philip Randolph, writer and civil rights advocate James Weldon Johnson, and actress Rose McClendon. 

Between 1930 and 1933, the U.S. government sponsored trips to Europe for surviving mothers of deceased World War I soldiers and for widows who had not remarried, allowing them to visit the American cemeteries where their loved ones were buried. The program was initially praised in Black newspapers, which encouraged all eligible women to participate. That support shifted, however, when the War Department announced that the pilgrimages would be segregated. 

Mrs. Willie Rush, whose son died in France, spoke over WNYC on behalf of Gold Star mothers during a City Hall protest broadcast on July 11, 1930. An Atlanta native, she condemned the segregation of the Black and white delegations. She and other protesters were joined in the Aldermanic Chamber by Acting Mayor Joseph V. McKee and city officials. 

The NAACP attempted to persuade the federal government to integrate the excursions but was unsuccessful. The organization subsequently called for a boycott, prompting roughly two dozen mothers and widows to cancel their trips. Ultimately, however, 279 African-American women chose to make the journey. 

Planting ceremony of the Tree of Hope, Seventh Avenue and 131 Street, where out-of-work black entertainers traded gossip and tips on jobs, November 1934. Mayor LaGuardia collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

November 17, 1934 edition of Literary Digest courtesy of the Internet Archive.

An unusual event celebrating legend, myth, and collective hope brought WNYC microphones to Harlem on November 4, 1934. The occasion was the replanting and dedication of the community’s “Wishing Tree” at 131st Street and Seventh Avenue, with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson presiding before public officials and a crowd of thousands. Also known as the “Tree of Hope,” the elm was believed to possess magical powers, according to reports in The Literary Digest.

Shortly thereafter, newly hired assistant program director Seymour Siegel moved quickly to bring government-subsidized musicians into the municipal studios through the Federal Music Project. Although the program remained segregated and Black musicians were paid less than their white counterparts, African-American performers were nonetheless employed under the WPA. The ensembles were broadcast nationally via 16-inch transcription discs mailed from Washington, D.C.—a pre-satellite distribution system. These groups included the Juanita Hall Choir, the Negro Melody Singers, the Negro Art Singers, the Los Angeles Colored Chorus, and the Los Angeles Negro Choir. 

The WNYC Archives compiled this mixtape of 26 performances selected from the Municipal Archives WNYC Collection of WPA music transcriptions. 

Singer and actress Juanita Hall, with back turned, conducting the Negro Melody Singers, circa late 1930s. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations / New York Public Library.

Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia’s second term in 1938 marked another turning point with the appointment of Morris Novik as station director and head of the Municipal Broadcasting System, a communications agency reporting directly to the Mayor rather than the Department of Plant and Structures. This reorganization ushered in a new era of inclusiveness at WNYC, beginning with an on-air discussion and debate over the federal Anti-Lynching Bill featuring NAACP executive secretary Walter White. The period also included a notable studio performance by actor Alvin Childress, who portrayed an enslaved person in a dramatic sketch titled Two Faces. 

Portrait of author Richard Wright (PM Photo/A. Lanset Collection).

In April of that year, author Richard Wright appeared on a Federal Writers’ Project roundtable broadcast and addressed the persistence of racial stereotyping and reflected on his work for The WPA Guide to New York City. “The most amazing thing about these stories, to my way of thinking, is that they were never done before… the average American's conception of Negro culture and life as it exists in New York is probably derived from not very accurate novels, or Hollywood representations of the urban Negro as either shabby and comical or exceedingly prosperous as the conductor of a popular swing orchestra.”

The following month, the National Urban League launched Negro News & Views, a new weekly program intended, in its words, “to awaken the general public to the realization of the importance of the Negro’s cultural contribution to American life.” Two weeks after the funeral of James Weldon Johnson in June, WNYC broadcast an on-air remembrance of the author of Lift Every Voice and Sing, often referred to as the Black national anthem. Listeners heard tributes from Mayor La Guardia and leaders of the NAACP, underscoring the station’s growing role as a civic platform for Black cultural and political life. 

In 1939, African-American actor Gordon Heath came to WNYC through the WPA’s National Youth Administration via its NYA Varieties radio program. He produced a biographical series titled Music and Youth, which he later recalled in his memoirs as a stream of “15-minute potted sketches from the lives of great musicians of the past.” One such vignette featured Beethoven in conversation with his landlord, declaring, “Ah, Herr Sturch—the wages of sin, they have not been paid.” 

 

Part Two of the blog will continue documenting WNYC’s role as a leading producer of programs focusing on Black civic and cultural leadership in the 1940s.

The LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier and the 1940 World’s Fair Bombing That Inspired It

DPW 5666: LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Conveyor, built by the Dept of Public Works for the Police Department Bomb Squad, September 1, 1942. Department of Public Works collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

July 4th, 1940 - Detective Joseph J. Lynch of the NYPD Bomb & Forgery Squad was at his Bronx home with his family, but on call, when the phone rang. A suspicious bag had been found at the World’s Fair. An electrician noticed it the previous day in a ventilation room of the British Pavilion and assumed it belonged to another worker. When he saw it again on the 4th he picked it up and brought it to his supervisor’s office. Hearing a ticking noise coming from it they alerted police officers assigned to the Fair. The officers picked up the bag and brought it to an empty area behind the Polish Pavillion.

NYPD_d_0807-01: Two views of bomb case similar to the one that exploded at the World’s Fair in 1940. Inside of bomb case showing clock. NYPD Photo Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. This is not the actual bomb that exploded at the World’s Fair, it is a replica constructed in 1941 by Lt. James A. Pyke.

The lack of urgency is surprising, as an operator at the Pavilion had received a bomb threat earlier that week, but most bomb calls were hoaxes. Extra officers assigned to the Pavillion had done security sweeps but found nothing. Det. Lynch told his wife he would be back for dinner, borrowed his sister’s car and picked up his partner Det. Ferdinand A. Socha in Greenpoint on the way to Queens. The Bomb Squad attracted intelligent men, Lynch had graduated from Fordham University and had worked as a pharmacist but joined the NYPD for the job security. Freddie Socha had studied medicine before joining.

NYPD Emergency Service Unit 21 was first on the scene, and they had secured the area, a ring of officers standing at what they thought was a safe distance. Detectives Lynch and Socha approached the bag wearing nothing but their business suits, as protective clothing had not yet been invented. Kneeling on the ground Det. Socha cut a small opening into the case with a pen knife so Lynch could peer inside. What he saw would have been several sticks of dynamite attached to a clock. Lynch was heard to say, “It’s the business” and then the bomb detonated.

NYPD_es_1919b: Bomb explosion, Polish building at World’s Fair, July 4, 1940. Emergency Squad #21. NYPD Photo Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. 

NYPD_23139a: Bomb found in British Pavilion exploded at World’s Fair building killing Det. Lynch and Det. Socha of the Bomb Sqd., 110th Sqd., case #84 and Det. Wrage, Hom. Sqd. Photograph by Ahlstrom #1398, 5:40 p.m., July 4, 1940. NYPD Photo Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. 

The blast carved a huge hole in the ground and blew Lynch and Socha several yards backward. They must have died instantly, the medical examiner’s report describes gruesome injuries, their bodies torn apart by the blast. Detectives William Federer and Joseph Gallagher, who had approached closer to relay information, were severely injured in the blast along with Detective Martin Schuchman. Patrolman Emil Vyskocil had turned to tell bystanders to keep back and suffered serious injuries to his back and legs. The investigation concluded that there were no projectiles in the device, but that dirt and rocks, along with metal from the clock, acted as shrapnel. Another eight officers were injured in the explosion.

NYPD_d_496b: Detective Joseph Lynch, killed in World’s Fair bombing, July 4, 1940. Photos for 18th division. NYPD Photo Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. 

NYPD_d_496a: Detective Ferdinand Socha, killed in World’s Fair bombing, July 4, 1940. Photos for 18th division. NYPD Photo Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. 

Reward offered for information leading to the capture of the World’s Fair bomber, printed in the NYPD magazine Spring 3100, August 1940. NYC Municipal Library. 

The clouds of war were already hanging over the Fair. America had not yet entered World War II, as Pearl Harbor was still eighteen months away, but the US was sending Britain weapons for its fight against the Nazis. Timing the explosion for the 4th of July, in the British Pavillion, led investigators to immediately suspect a German sympathizer, possibly a member of the German-American Bund. The Bund had held a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden a few months earlier. Communists, the Irish Republican Army and the extremist Christian Front were also possible suspects. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia rushed back from a holiday to visit the scene and reassure New Yorkers. He put 1,500 officers on the case, and the next day police raided the Bund’s offices and arrested former member Caesar Kroger. Despite some evidence that he was plotting attacks, police could not tie him to the case. Without solid leads, the City offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect, a tremendous amount of money in 1940, and the Detectives’ Endowment Association added another $1,000.

Mayor LaGuardia was deeply disturbed by the incident. He was already worried about the war reaching New York, and death and injury of so many officers was unprecedented. He summoned Lt. James A. Pyke, Commanding Officer of the Bomb Squad, to City Hall and said that such a thing could never happen again. They discussed ways to safely transport bombs away from civilian areas to where they could be detonated in controlled explosions. Pyke set to work designing a bomb transporter.

DPW_2584: Department of Public Works workers weaving the basket for holding “infernal machines,” December 10, 1940. Department of Public Works collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

DPW_2612: Interior of Explosion Chamber of the LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier, Brooklyn Bridge Mechanical Shop, December 19, 1940. Department of Public Works collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The first LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier (during testing the trucks were referred to as “Bomb Carriers” although later “Bomb Conveyors” was also used) was built by the Engineering Bureau of the Police Department from an old truck bed covered with a hut of blasting mats. Blasting mats had been in use in the mining industry and during the construction of the IRT subway—the NYPD wove theirs from steel elevator cable. It was like a wicker basket made of steel and an inner envelope of steel mats held the bombs. It was tested on September 30, 1940, in an ash dump near Avenue U and East 76th Street in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn. Three explosions of increasing size stress-tested it: 1) two half-pound sticks of dynamite, 2) ten half-pound sticks, and 3) twenty-five half-pound sticks. The blasts were contained to the NYPD’s satisfaction. Blast gases would dissipate out of gaps between the cables, but the full force of the blast and any shrapnel would be contained.

FHL_2017: The second test model of the LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier, during field tests, 1941. Photograph by Det. Joseph Prefer, NYPD. Mayor LaGuardia collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

FHL_2011: The second LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier, nicknamed “Big Bertha,” during field tests, April 1941. Photograph by Det. Joseph Prefer, NYPD. Mayor LaGuardia collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Proof of concept in hand, Pyke and the NYPD engineers with the Department of Public Works built the 2nd LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier. It used a steel framework and sat on a separate trailer. Pyke said it resembled “a ‘49 Pioneer covered wagon.” This model had a door in the rear and officers would place the bomb inside a smaller basket and suspend it inside the carrier. They dubbed this creation “Big Bertha” and on April 12, 1941, they tested it. Attending these tests were Mayor LaGuardia, and Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine, along with other NYPD and FDNY officials, representatives from the US Secret Service, the DOJ, US Naval and US Army Intelligence, Army Ordnance, US Coast Guard and a whole host of police departments. The tests: three sticks of dynamite, 6 sticks of dynamite, 12 sticks of dynamite in a case similar to the World’s Fair bomb, and finally a pipe bomb of 14 sticks of dynamite. The initial tests damaged the inner container, but the outer container held. However, shrapnel from the pipe bomb significantly damaged the outer shell. A final test of 24 sticks of dynamite split one of the welds on the frame but was deemed a success.

FHL_2025: Test explosion inside the Second LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier, April 12, 1941. This photo was taken during the test of a replica of the World’s Fair bomb. Photograph by Det. Joseph Prefer, NYPD. Mayor LaGuardia collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

FHL_2022: The LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier, showing damage after field tests, April 12, 1941. Mayor LaGuardia collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

A conference was held at City Hall on May 13th to review the results of the tests and suggest improvements. The committee decided on the following changes:

  • To eliminate the bomb cradle inside the carrier as its steel could act as shrapnel in a blast;

  • To add another layer of cable mats as an “air cushion”;

  • To add a winch system to carry the bomb so that detectives would not need to enter the blast chamber, (in the final design this was constructed of wooden gears to reduce steel shrapnel that might penetrate the shell);

  • And to make a self-closing and locking outer door.

Blueprint for New “La Guardia-Pyke” Bomb Carriers for the Police Department, 1941. Mayor LaGuardia collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

DPW_4425: Welding a new steel frame for the LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier, September 8, 1941. Department of Public Works collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

A LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Conveyor, still in use in the early 1970s. Spring 3100, Jan/Feb 1973. NYC Municipal Library.

The final design plan for the third LaGuardia-Pyke Bomb Carrier was approved June 6, 1941, and three were ordered built. By 1942 they were in use, with “Big Bertha” held in reserve. Pyke submitted two reports to Mayor LaGuardia and in 1943 Pyke published the full results of the tests and the final design in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The design was so successful that other municipalities around the world copied it. Big Bertha’s sister carriers were used by the NYPD until the 1990s (in NYPD parlance they were all called “Big Bertha”) when new technologies replaced them. One of them was preserved at the Central Motor Depot and in 2022 it was restored by DSNY and the FDNY and returned to the Emergency Service Unit as a museum piece. It is the oldest active-duty vehicle in the NYPD fleet. The 1940 bombing that inspired its creation was never solved and the NYPD still considers it an open case.

In 1943, Lt. Pyke took a leave of absence to report for duty in the Navy as a munitions expert. He formally retired from the NYPD in 1944 but rejoined after the war as a Captain. In April 1941, Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador, presented silver plates to the widows of Det. Lynch and Socha “in recognition of the gallantry” of their husbands. Easter Lynch, widowed with five young children, sent a dismissive telegram to the King and Queen of England. Reports of its content vary, but a family friend recalled it saying:

“Thank you for your dish. If I had a house where I could use this for calling cards, it would be greatly appreciated. A basket of fruit to feed my children would be much better.”

NYC Commission on Human Rights, project update

In March, 2025, For the Record introduced a new project “Processing and Digitizing Records of the New York City Commission on Human Rights (CCHR).” Supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) of the National Archives as part of their Documenting Democracy initiative, the project will enhance public access to records from the CCHR that have been transferred to the Municipal Archives. Key project activities include rehousing and processing 268 cubic feet of records and digitizing the earliest 53 cubic feet. Project archivists will publish an online finding aid, social media content and blog posts. They will also curate a digital exhibit that showcases both the collection and the project’s progress.

Pamphlet from conference on racial bigotry and the Press, 1953. REC0103, Box 27, Folder 6] CCHR Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

This post discusses how the Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) developed a reparative description guide and how it was applied to the CCHR project. The post also describes an interesting parallel within the CCHR records. 

Making of the DORIS Reparative and Inclusive Description Guide 

In 2023, DORIS began developing the Guidelines for Reparative and Inclusive Description, a reference manual to assist Municipal Archives and Library staff in their reparative description practices. City Service staff Israt Abedin and Arafua Reed, City Service Fellows, coordinated the project. Other components included the publication of the agency's Harmful Content statement, several community engagement campaigns including the In Her Own Name research-a-thon and the Records of Slavery transcription project. All fit within the agency's diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiative. The manual uses a question/answer format to address questions that may emerge in day-to-day work, such as how to acknowledge uncomfortable or brutal imagery and language that is outdated. Creation of the guide drew from the researcher input, guides developed by various other repositories, and a theoretical understanding of the archivist’s role. For the Record published an update on the project in June 2024. The document was completed in the spring of 2025 and first utilized by archivists processing the City Commission on Human Rights collection.

What is Reparative Description? 

Reparative description has existed within the library and archival fields for some time. Many cite Howard Zinn’s essay “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest” as a starting point to understanding those efforts. Throughout, Zinn argues that the idea of a “neutral” archive is impossible, because the people creating and preserving the record carry their own biases. Archival integrity is maintained by acknowledging biases may exist and adjust practices accordingly. The core of this work lies in power: the power of the record in establishing what is a “historical truth” and the power of the archivist in deciding how that “truth” is told. It also hinges on access; by expanding the language for an archive, the documents within become easier for diverse populations to find and to use.

This often means acknowledging that the people who created the records simply did not see humanity in the subjects of certain records, or the creation of those records sought to erase the humanity of others. It also means recognizing the silence or absences that a lack of documentation causes. It’s important that the records archivists maintain are not altered, but rather supplemented with additional information that acknowledges the harmful language and/or bias within the initial statement. How does one implement that without causing more harm? This is an ongoing question that responsible archivists ask, as the answer is not fixed, but rather evolves with time.

Reparative Description in the City Commission on Human Rights Collection The City Commission on Human Rights collection proved to be a good selection for implementation of the reparative description guide due to the nature of the agency’s work and relationship to the communities they serve. An example of how archivists used the guide involved addressing pre-existing folder titles created by the Commission. During the processing phase, archivists determined that preservinge the original naming conventions provided historical context. As can be expected, language describing minority groups from the 1940’s-1970’s is outdated, making this older terminology a candidate for redescription. To balance historical accountability with contemporary access, original language was retained, and reparative description was added in brackets. Simply replacing outdated or harmful language entirely would erase evidence of past harm and introduce inconsistencies that ultimately hinder research and accountability.

Here are some real examples from the collection that used reparative description in the folder titles: 

  • Meeting September 14, 1949: Department of Welfare Request Regarding Alleged Discrimination in Lodging Houses Against Negro [Black] Homeless [Unhoused] Men 

  • 5452-J-PH Employment-Physical Handicap [Physical Disability]

The first example comes from records in the collection created by a predecessor to the CCHR, the Mayor’s Committee on Unity (1943-1955). The second folder title comes from case files created by the CCHR between 1969 and 1976. This series captures complaints of discrimination that individuals had raised against employers, landlords, schools, and places of public accommodation (bars, restaurants, stores, etc.). Each file includes descriptions of incidents, notes from investigations, correspondence, evidence, and records of resolutions along with the reasoning behind them. Each case file has a code with a purely numeric order number and an alphabetic code which indicates what type of situation brought about the discrimination being reported (Employment, Housing, Public Accommodation, Education) and, in some cases, the type of discrimination, as in the case above which indicates that the complainant was filing for physical disability discrimination in employment.

Reparative Description and the Subcommittee on Press Treatment of Minority Groups 

A particularly revealing parallel within the CCHR collection appears in the Commission’s earliest records. The Mayor’s Committee on Unity established a Subcommittee on Press Treatment of Minority Groups to engage directly with local newspapers to promote fair and non-discriminatory standards for news coverage.

The Mayor’s Committee on Unity recognized the powerful role local newspapers played in shaping public perception of minority communities and potentially fueling social tension. In response, the Subcommittee spent years systematically reviewing reporting patterns and inflammatory language in the city’s major newspapers. Members compiled data to identify coverage that contributed, often unconsciously, to the escalation of racial and ethnic tensions within the city’s communities.

Data List, Box 27 Folder 6, CCHR Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Their reports detailed the language used and reporting patterns of local newspapers.

They engaged directly with editors of local newspapers whose reporting practices raised concerns, sharing findings and assisting in the development of protocols designed to address racial and religious bias in coverage. 

New York Times protocol. REC0103, Box 27, Folder 6. CCHR Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

They also took part in conferences aimed at journalists, where they examined the broader implications of inflammatory language in news reports and its power to shape public perceptions of minority groups.

Pamphlet from conference on racial bigotry and the Press, 1953. REC0103, Box 27, Folder 6] CCHR Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Pamphlet from conference on racial bigotry and the Press, 1953. REC0103, Box 27, Folder 6] CCHR Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

There is a clear parallel between the work of the Subcommittee on Press Treatment of Minority Groups and the contemporary archival work taking place in the CCHR project through reparative description. Both efforts engage institutions that are often treated as neutral or authoritative sources of truth: the news media and the archive. In each case, information is not passively recorded but actively shaped through processes of selection, description, and framing by individuals working within institutional systems. The language used to describe events, people, and histories, whether in newspaper headlines or archival folder titles, plays a significant role in how those subjects are located, understood and remembered. When prior descriptive practices go unquestioned, institutional authority can mask the biases embedded within, allowing harmful narratives to persist as accepted truth. By examining and intervening in these frameworks, both the Subcommittee and contemporary archivists challenge assumptions of neutrality and make visible how descriptions can either reproduce harm or allow accountability and repair.

Conclusion 

The City Commission on Human Rights collection offers a strong example of how institutional language shapes public understanding. The Subcommittee on Press Treatment of Minority Groups shows an awareness of the power of description and a willingness to intervene when those descriptions caused harm. When applying contemporary archival practices such as reparative description, the collection shows how questions of representation, accountability, and institutional responsibility have been negotiated over time.

Today’s post was written in collaborative effort between Arafua Reed, who contributed to the writing of the Reparative Description Guide and Neen Lamontagne, the project archivist managing the City Commission on Human Rights grant project.

Alice Austen House, Staten Island Landmark

Alice Austen House, Staten Island Landmark

This week, For the Record takes a journey through records in the Municipal Library and Archives that document Alice Austen (1866-1952), and her homestead in Staten Island. Located on bluffs overlooking New York Bay, the Gothic Revival cottage known as Clear Comfort is now in the portfolio of the New York City Historic House Trust. It has been fully restored and includes a museum dedicated to Austen’s work.