In honor of Martin Luther King Day, the Tenement Museum would like to recognize a few of the museums and institutions that carry on Dr. King’s legacy. The issues we tackle here at the Tenement Museum -- immigration and immigrant rights -- are a core component of the contemporary civil rights movement. Immigrant reformers are looking to Dr. King for inspiration as immigration reform and legislation are debated. I highly recommend a visit to any of the following institutions to think about civil rights in America.
The National Civil Rights Museum
Memphis, Tennessee
Chronicles the struggle for civil rights from 1619 through the present. The Museum is housed in the former Lorraine Motel, the site of Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968. Dr. King’s hotel room is on display and visitors stand just feet from the balcony where he was shot.
Civil Rights Memorial Center
Montgomery, Alabama
The Memorial Center, located at the Southern Poverty Law Center, honors those who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement. It includes a section on contemporary civil rights issues as well as a “Wall of Tolerance.” Visitors who add their names to the wall are promising to take a stand against injustice.
The National Voting Rights Museum and Institute
Selma, Alabama
This community museum is steps from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The Museum features the powerful “I Was There” wall that invites Selma-to-Montgomery marchers and witnesses to share their stories. Many of the staff were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and offer their powerful first-hand accounts.
If you’re in the NYC area, plan to visit the Bronx Museum of the Arts between March 28 – July 11, 2010 to view “Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956 – 1968.” This striking photography exhibit contains 150 vintage photographs and documents the key figures and events of the Movement. I was lucky enough to see it at the High Museum of Art when it opened in 2008, and it’s not to be missed.
- posted by Pamela Mattera
Monday, January 18, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Friday Immigration News
Loew's Canal Street Theater May Become Chinatown Cultural Center
(DNAinfo.com, 1/15/10)
On summer weekends, Rebecca Lepkoff remembers holding 15 cents in her hand and lining up to get into the Loew's Canal Street Theater to escape the heat of her Hester Street tenement. It was 1928, and she was just 12 years old. The enormous movie theater on Canal Street near Ludlow was the center of the neighborhood.
"It was a lovely theater. It was a beautiful theater," Lepkoff, now 93, told DNAinfo. "It was very roomy." Today, the decrepit theater, which closed down nearly four decades ago, is a warehouse. But it may get a new life — as a Chinese performing arts center — and once again become the center of an old neighborhood, now largely dominated by Chinese immigrants.
Special status will halt deportations from U.S.
(USA Today, 1/14/10)
Lawmakers and immigration groups are calling on the Obama administration to grant Haitians in the USA, including those here illegally, a special temporary legal status that would protect them from deportation and allow them to take jobs. That would be a step beyond what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced: a halt in deportations "for the time being." About 30,000 Haitians now in the USA had been ordered deported.
Immigration reform advocates see inspiration in work of MLK, honored at naturalization events
(Los Angeles Times, 1/14/10)
After almost nine years, Nigerian immigrant Emakoji Ayikoye is now an American. The final step came at a naturalization ceremony, where he and about 100 others recited the citizenship oath. But Thursday's ceremony was weighted with more symbolism than usual for the 32-year-old college math teacher. It was one of several being held nationwide in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Another, on Friday in Atlanta, will feature a speech from his daughter Bernice King.
Honoring the slain civil rights leader via a naturalization ceremony makes perfect sense to Ayikoye. And around the country, immigration reform advocates also are connecting their efforts to the work of King and the civil rights movement, looking for inspiration and a way to gain support in hopes of passing legislation in 2010.
Makeshift Homes Are Leveled in Suffolk County
(1/13/10, New York Times)
Up to 30 men had called these woods home until Monday morning, when the owners of the 26.6-acre property had the men’s tents torn apart. Skinny tree branches, which the men had used as posts for their plastic tarps, were now strewn about. Some of the men, most of them illegal immigrants, had lived in the clearing for years. Its location, even in winter, was a natural: a quick-enough walk from a trailer that serves as a hiring center for day laborers, supported by the town of Huntington, in Suffolk County. But as of late, it had been a futile trip.
(DNAinfo.com, 1/15/10)
On summer weekends, Rebecca Lepkoff remembers holding 15 cents in her hand and lining up to get into the Loew's Canal Street Theater to escape the heat of her Hester Street tenement. It was 1928, and she was just 12 years old. The enormous movie theater on Canal Street near Ludlow was the center of the neighborhood.
"It was a lovely theater. It was a beautiful theater," Lepkoff, now 93, told DNAinfo. "It was very roomy." Today, the decrepit theater, which closed down nearly four decades ago, is a warehouse. But it may get a new life — as a Chinese performing arts center — and once again become the center of an old neighborhood, now largely dominated by Chinese immigrants.
Special status will halt deportations from U.S.
(USA Today, 1/14/10)
Lawmakers and immigration groups are calling on the Obama administration to grant Haitians in the USA, including those here illegally, a special temporary legal status that would protect them from deportation and allow them to take jobs. That would be a step beyond what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced: a halt in deportations "for the time being." About 30,000 Haitians now in the USA had been ordered deported.
Immigration reform advocates see inspiration in work of MLK, honored at naturalization events
(Los Angeles Times, 1/14/10)
After almost nine years, Nigerian immigrant Emakoji Ayikoye is now an American. The final step came at a naturalization ceremony, where he and about 100 others recited the citizenship oath. But Thursday's ceremony was weighted with more symbolism than usual for the 32-year-old college math teacher. It was one of several being held nationwide in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Another, on Friday in Atlanta, will feature a speech from his daughter Bernice King.
Honoring the slain civil rights leader via a naturalization ceremony makes perfect sense to Ayikoye. And around the country, immigration reform advocates also are connecting their efforts to the work of King and the civil rights movement, looking for inspiration and a way to gain support in hopes of passing legislation in 2010.
Makeshift Homes Are Leveled in Suffolk County
(1/13/10, New York Times)
Up to 30 men had called these woods home until Monday morning, when the owners of the 26.6-acre property had the men’s tents torn apart. Skinny tree branches, which the men had used as posts for their plastic tarps, were now strewn about. Some of the men, most of them illegal immigrants, had lived in the clearing for years. Its location, even in winter, was a natural: a quick-enough walk from a trailer that serves as a hiring center for day laborers, supported by the town of Huntington, in Suffolk County. But as of late, it had been a futile trip.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
History Resources at the Library
Around here, we love the New York Public Library for many reasons - free books, cool digital archive, ferocious mascot. But mostly the Library is a tremendous resource for anyone doing research about the city. Recently I found a great list of sites relating to "Manhattan history on the web" on their own new-and-improved website. Check it out here.
Naturally, we make the cut, but there are lots of other great links about 19th century history, housing, and life. Check out an excerpt from William Dean Howells' "An East Side Ramble," 1896:
Naturally, we make the cut, but there are lots of other great links about 19th century history, housing, and life. Check out an excerpt from William Dean Howells' "An East Side Ramble," 1896:
[The East Side] is said to be more densely populated than any other area in the world, or at least in Christendom, for within a square mile there are more than three hundred and fifty thousand men, women and children. One can imagine from this fact alone how they are housed and what their chances of the comforts and decencies of life may be...
What the place must be in summer I had not the heart to think, and on the wintry day of my visit I could not feel the fury of the skies which my guide said would have been evident to me if I had seen it in August. I could better fancy this when I climbed the rickety stairs within one of the houses and found myself in a typical New York tenement. Then I almost choked at the thought of what a hot day, what a hot night, must be in such a place, with the two small windows inhaling the putrid breath of the court and transmitting it, twice fouled by the passage through the living-room, to the black hole in the rear, where the whole family lay on the heap of rags that passed for a bed...- posted by Kate
My friend asked me if I would like to go into any other tenements, but I thought that if what I had seen was typical, I had seen enough in that quarter. The truth is, I had not yet accustomed myself to going in upon people in that way, though they seemed accustomed to being gone in upon without any ceremony but the robust "Good-morning!" my companion gave them by way of accounting for our presence, and I wanted a little interval to prepare myself for further forays. The people seemed quite ready to be questioned, and answered us as persons in authority. They may have taken us for detectives, or agents of benevolent societies, or journalists in search of copy. In any case, they had nothing to lose and they might have something to gain; so they received us kindly and made us much at home among them as they knew how. It may have been that in some instances they supposed that we were members of the Board of Health and were their natural allies against their landlords.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Photos from the finished Rear Yard exhibit
We're so happy to announce that "Rear Yard at 97 Orchard Street" is open to the public.
The recreated yard depicts early tenement life in New York. You can see it from Allen Street or learn more about the importance of the space in the lives of working-class New Yorkers by taking The Moores: An Irish Family in America tour, which is offered daily.
On a funny note, most of this laundry was blown off the line a few weeks ago when the weather was bad. Some long-john style underpants were blown over the fence and subsequently disappeared - hope someone found them who needs them in this cold weather. While we figure out how to better secure the clothing, it's been temporarily removed from the lines. All this serves as a reminder that 19th and early 20th century homemakers had to wash and dry laundry no matter what the weater - in the rain, snow, and wind.
More photos are on our Flickr page.
The recreated yard depicts early tenement life in New York. You can see it from Allen Street or learn more about the importance of the space in the lives of working-class New Yorkers by taking The Moores: An Irish Family in America tour, which is offered daily.
On a funny note, most of this laundry was blown off the line a few weeks ago when the weather was bad. Some long-john style underpants were blown over the fence and subsequently disappeared - hope someone found them who needs them in this cold weather. While we figure out how to better secure the clothing, it's been temporarily removed from the lines. All this serves as a reminder that 19th and early 20th century homemakers had to wash and dry laundry no matter what the weater - in the rain, snow, and wind.
More photos are on our Flickr page.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Last week to see Tea Cart Stories!
Tea Cart Stories, Michelle Brody's installation project in the windows of 97 Orchard Street, will be closing this Thursday, January 14th.
With this interactive and ever-changing exhibit, the artist has explored the worldwide tradition of sharing tea.
In early 2009, Michelle held tea parties with students from the Museum's ESOL program, "Shared Journeys." Students from Argentina, Yemen and China shared stories about their home countries, which they wrote down on their used tea bags. Michelle also collected stories from passerby on Orchard Street, who stepped into her tea cart over the summer to share a cuppa and talk about tea. The cart was crafted out of an old pushcart in the Museum’s collection.
These stories, along with photographs of the participants, were strung along a copper support structure inside the front windows of the tenement. Each tea bag holds a unique story about the most widely drunk beverage in the world next to water. Together they form a quilt-like narrative. The viewer is invited to contemplate how tea might connect lives across cultures.
As the artist notes: "In Great Britain they drink tea as a break from the work day. In the Middle East tea is served as a welcoming gesture to guests. In Japan the Tea Ceremony is highly ritualized cultural production. One drink has an enormous place in the lives of millions of people. To look at our world through tea is to see our differences as well as the similarities that bind us."
- posted by Kate
With this interactive and ever-changing exhibit, the artist has explored the worldwide tradition of sharing tea.
In early 2009, Michelle held tea parties with students from the Museum's ESOL program, "Shared Journeys." Students from Argentina, Yemen and China shared stories about their home countries, which they wrote down on their used tea bags. Michelle also collected stories from passerby on Orchard Street, who stepped into her tea cart over the summer to share a cuppa and talk about tea. The cart was crafted out of an old pushcart in the Museum’s collection.
These stories, along with photographs of the participants, were strung along a copper support structure inside the front windows of the tenement. Each tea bag holds a unique story about the most widely drunk beverage in the world next to water. Together they form a quilt-like narrative. The viewer is invited to contemplate how tea might connect lives across cultures.
As the artist notes: "In Great Britain they drink tea as a break from the work day. In the Middle East tea is served as a welcoming gesture to guests. In Japan the Tea Ceremony is highly ritualized cultural production. One drink has an enormous place in the lives of millions of people. To look at our world through tea is to see our differences as well as the similarities that bind us."
- posted by Kate
Monday, January 11, 2010
Behind the Scenes at the Tenement Museum
Behind the scenes at the Tenement Museum, staffer Melissa gives our hallway "medallion" oil paintings some TLC by removing surface dust with a hake brush and HEPA vacuum. The medallions were added to the hallway c. 1900. The "pastry icing" decoration she is brushing is made of plaster. The scene inside the medallion is an oil painting that was directly applied to the burlap wall covering. You can also see the decorative pressed metal that was applied to the ceiling of the hallway (also c. 1900.)
Monday, January 4, 2010
An Auspicious Beginning For 2010
I was privileged on New Year’s Day to hear Mayor Bloomberg deliver his inaugural address, advocating comprehensive immigration reform as a hall mark of his next administration.
Making the event terrific was the fact that students from Newcomers High School, most of them no more than two or three years in the United States, introduced every speaker; each student proudly represented New York and spoke to what the City meant to them. Bloomberg himself call ed for a bipartisan coalition to take on the chall enging issue of immigration in a way that supports President Obama’s call for “reform that honors our history, upholds our values, and promotes our economy.”
The Mayor reminded New Yorkers of what all supporters of the Tenement Museum know: “No city on Earth—no city—should hold these principles higher aloft than this city of immigrants, because no city on earth has been more rewarded by immigrant labor, more renewed by immigrant ideas, more revitalized by immigrant culture, than the City of New York.”
For sure, this was a political speech. But I must confess that I continue to be moved by rhetoric that addresses “the ideals that have lit the lamp of liberty in our harbor for more than a century, and that continue to inspire the world!” That kind of rhetoric is what political leaders do when they are at their best. They help us imagine a world in which we can recommit ourselves to the best of our ideals.
Morris J. Vogel
President
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)