Rose Yndigoyen
Managing the Records of New York City
Nicole Rivas
The “49 Little Ladies” of the French Gratitude ...
Andy Lanset
Poetry On the Air: WNYC and the Sound of Verse ...
Andy Lanset
Poetry On the Air: WNYC and the Sound of Verse ...

During the seven decades of municipal ownership, both celebrated and obscure poets found their way to WNYC’s microphone. Some programs introduced listeners to canonical voices such as Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, and W.H. Auden. Others opened the airwaves to aspiring writers who might otherwise never have been heard beyond their own neighborhoods. Still others explored the relationship between poetry and radio itself, asking whether the medium might reshape how verse was written, performed, and experienced.

The result was an extraordinary range of programming: educational broadcasts from the station’s early Air College lectures; dedicated poetry series and readings; experimental verse drama; tributes to major poets; and discussions linking poetry to theater, politics, therapy, and everyday life. Together these broadcasts reveal how a municipal station—often overlooked in the larger history of American radio—played a meaningful role in sustaining the oral tradition of poetry.

Katie Ehrlich
Dr. Leona Baumgartner’s Health Commissioner ...

Dr. Leona Baumgartner was the first woman to serve as Commissioner of the Department of Health for New York City. She held that office from 1954 to 1962 under Mayor Robert F. Wagner, who was the first mayor to appoint women agency heads in nearly 40 years. Baumgartner worked her way up at the Department of Health, starting as a child hygiene instructor in 1937. By 1949 she was assistant commissioner, the position she served in, until being elevated to commissioner.

Civil Rights

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.

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. 

Rochdale Village Protests

In October, 2019, the New York City Municipal Archives finished digitizing a collection of over 1,400 surveillance films created by the NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services and Investigations.  Many featured political protests and demonstrations from 1960 to 1980. Prior to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, this surveillance program focused intensely on actions carried out by members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) as they protested racial injustice and unequal treatment. One of the longest of these actions was the protest against the construction of the Rochdale Village housing cooperative.

At the time of its opening in late 1963, Rochdale Village in South Jamaica, Queens was the largest integrated housing cooperative in the country.  Located within a community that was almost entirely African American, it was part of a City-wide effort to racially integrate New York’s communities. And yet, during that summer, a nearly three-month long protest against Rochdale Village was conducted by NAACP, CORE and inter-faith groups. Although the building was promised to have both black and white tenants, an all-white construction union was hired to build it. During the summer of 1963, dozens of protesters interrupted the construction using a wide array of civil disobedience techniques.

Rochdale Village, 133rd Avenue East and New York Boulevard [Demonstration against racial discrimination in hiring practices], August 9, 1963

These techniques were sometimes as simple as sitting in the street to block traffic to the construction site. Others were more clever and subtle, with protesters walking so slowly while they picketed the entrance to the site that trucks could not leave or enter. Other times, seemingly unrelated people would fall from their bicycles while riding right in front of construction trucks. Protesters would then rush to the fallen person’s side to provide help, blocking traffic at the same time. While police officers would quickly arrest those who sat in the street or chained themselves to construction equipment, the more subtle techniques seemed to genuinely complicate or challenge the ability to arrest protesters.

Rochdale Village, 133rd Avenue East and New York Boulevard [Demonstration against racial discrimination in hiring practices], August 9, 1963

William H. Booth was one leader of the protests. The president of the New York State chapter of the NAACP at the time, Booth can be seen in several films going back and forth between fellow protesters and the police, sometimes frustrated, sometimes laughing, often coaching those who were being arrested. Eventually, Booth himself was arrested along with 23 others, the most arrests in a single day during the months-long demonstration. Although they were charged with disorderly conduct for trying to block construction trucks, the charges were later dropped. Booth would be appointed to Mayor John Lindsay’s Commission on Human Rights from 1966 to 1969, only three years after the Rochdale Village protest. After that, he served as a New York judge for 13 years on the Criminal and State Supreme Courts. Booth passed away in 2006 at the age of 84.

Rochdale Village, 133rd Avenue East and New York Boulevard [Demonstration against racial discrimination in hiring practices], August 8, 1963

Rochdale Village was completed in the fall of 1963, with 10% of its low and middle income housing units going to families of color. Over the next two decades, the share of apartments occupied by families of color would increase as white families left Rochdale Village and urban centers more generally for the suburbs. Rising crime, increased carrying charges (equivalent to rent) and troubled schools helped fuel the exodus. The housing cooperative fell into disrepair during the 80s and most of the 90s, but as the City revitalized by the end of the 20th century, so too did Rochdale Village. Today, it is fully-occupied and boasts of being one of the most affordable housing cooperatives in the City.

During the early 1960s, the NYPD filmed several other NAACP and CORE protests against the use of segregated construction labor for more housing cooperatives, hospitals and other buildings. In addition to protesting segregated labor, the NYPD also recorded NAACP and CORE rallies against segregated schooling, the prevalence of police brutality against communities of color, and the Vietnam War. Over the course of the 1960s, the NYPD documentation of NAACP and CORE actions slowly diminished to be replaced by film of other organizations fighting for racial justice like the Black Panther Party. Films featuring demonstrations by the NAACP, CORE, the Black Panther Party and many others are now available  to browse on the New York City Municipal Archives online gallery: gallery

 

Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited

The Municipal Archives’ collection of New York Police Department Intelligence Division records contains more than 2,500 files on groups and organizations that operated between the 1940s-1970s. The files were created by the Bureau of Special Services, a unit within the NYPD Intelligence Division that conducted investigations on groups both on the right and left of the political spectrum.

Women in Civil Society

The debate over women’s equal rights and full access to all areas of society is persistent, and the archival records at the MA repeat a single story of limited access for over three centuries. What is inspiring is the unrelenting struggle for education, property, labor rights, suffrage, and quality of life. And most unnerving is the history on repeat.

We’ve recently begun documenting and highlighting within our collection guides the unique instances in which women spoke and government responded.