The Covid pandemic is exacting a horrible toll, yet history shows us perseverance and purpose. The pandemic has been a brutally difficult time, provoking much suffering and death, and it continues to do so. We each know of precious ones lost; a doctor, nurse, or other health care worker enduring deaths and illnesses among their […]
Entries Tagged as 'women'
Slavery in Ulster County: A Fuller Story
February 21st, 2022 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham
Tags: Hudson Valley·landmarks·new york·women
Suffrage at 100: The Battle Keeps On
August 24th, 2020 · No Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
At the 11th annual Women’s Rights Convention in 1866, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper exhorted the white suffragists gathered to welcome women of color. The poet, abolitionist, and suffragist declared: “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity….Society cannot afford to neglect the enlightenment of any class of its members.” In 1893, […]
Tags: Washington·women
Victory in Saving an Underground RR Site
June 3rd, 2017 · No Comments · Be a Mindful Activist
In a win for those seeking to preserve the history of an abolitionist’s house where escaped slaves found safe passage, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) decided early last week that the owner must abandon plans for a fifth-floor addition and restore the building to its original height. In a city of 8 […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·new york·women
Trump’s Danger, Hillary’s Challenge
October 21st, 2016 · 6 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Each day, we hear support and rationalizations from Donald Trump’s surrogates and various fellow Republicans concerning his extreme, impulsive, and threatening conduct and speech. What does it say, however, when Trump repeatedly claims that the election is rigged due to “widespread” voter fraud and then refuses to say if he will accept the results if […]
Tags: Presidents·women
Women Who Made the Way Before Hillary
July 29th, 2016 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
“We the people” finally became much more of a reality for women when Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States yesterday. She is the first woman to secure a major party nomination in the Presidential election. To say that this moment has been a long time coming is understatement. […]
Tags: Presidents·Washington·women
The Child Who Became Sojourner Truth
October 14th, 2013 · 2 Comments · Beyond Gotham
In her strong legs and the bare, vulnerable feet; in a long, deep gash on her back; in the upright posture and gaze; and in the sight of the two large jugs she is carrying are the visual reality that children lived as slaves in the United States. This statue is sure to inspire many […]
Town to Unveil Sojourner Truth Statue
September 16th, 2013 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham
History will never be able to restore Sojourner Truth’s childhood to her. When she was a young girl known as Isabella, growing up as a slave in the Hudson Valley, she worked day in and day out for several owners, sustained terrible beatings, and lost almost all her brothers and sisters because slave owners sold […]
Roped In at Madison Square Park
August 12th, 2013 · 5 Comments · Explore New York
You cannot miss Orly Genger’s Red, Yellow and Blue art installation this summer in Manhattan. If people say this statement, they may mean, “You have got to see this!” Or, they may mean, “You cannot escape seeing this!” when walking through Madison Square Park. During the late spring and summer, this 166-year-old gracious park has […]
New York’s Dark Days: The Draft Riots
July 18th, 2013 · No Comments · Explore New York
On July 13, 1863, Chief Engineer John Decker of the New York City Volunteer Fire Department stood before a mob that had ransacked a building and were now intent on setting it afire. It was known as the Colored Orphan Asylum, a refuge for hundreds of black children located on Fifth Avenue between 42nd and […]
Tags: civil war·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·new york·women
In Honor of My Mother
May 13th, 2013 · 12 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Like so many, I woke up on Mother’s Day thinking about my mom. Maybe it’s because of various changes in my life this past year and because of reading so many poignant posts from a Motherless Daughters Facebook group this week, I felt Mother’s Day even more than usual. Our mom, Susie DeMark, was a […]
Tags: meditations·women
Statue to Show Sojourner Truth as a Child
October 24th, 2012 · No Comments · Beyond Gotham
Sojourner Truth knew the importance and the power of the visual. One day, as an orator and crusader against slavery, she faced a hostile group of northern students who jeered her. Truth chose a very powerful visual proof of slavery’s horror to confront them. She opened her dress collar and bared her skin to show […]
Tracing Sojourner Truth’s Escape Route
July 31st, 2012 · 10 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Like the guiding light of daybreak that accompanied Sojourner Truth as she walked from her slave owner’s home to escape to freedom, much more illumination now reveals the early days of her life. Named Isabella when she was born into slavery, the abolitionist and champion of human rights spent the first 32 years of her […]
In Sojourner Truth’s Footsteps
May 31st, 2012 · 7 Comments · Beyond Gotham
She never knew most of her 11 brothers and sisters. She hoed corn and lugged bottles of molasses or liquor for one slave owner when she was barely a teen. She endured merciless and unrelenting beatings at the hands of another slaveholder. Long before she changed her name, Sojourner Truth was Isabella, a slave in […]
Honoring Triangle’s Victims in the Streets
March 24th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
A year after the tragic Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in 1911, sculptor Evelyn Beatrice Longman created a memorial, commissioned by the City of New York, to the seven female victims whose remains could not be identified. The city installed the sculpture with little public attention in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. This memorial […]
New York Recalls the Triangle Factory Fire
March 10th, 2011 · 8 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
“Rose Mehl – 15 years old.” The words jump out from the flip side of a business card on which they are imprinted. Rose was a Jewish girl who lived on East 7th Street in New York, and she had a job as a factory worker. Her name and age are printed on the back […]
Order Unheeded at Underground RR Home
December 13th, 2010 · 6 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
One hundred and fifty years ago, escaping slaves found a safe shelter at the home of Quaker abolitionists who lived at 339 West 29th St. in New York City. The family risked their lives in harboring the slaves. During the Draft Riots that erupted in the city in 1863, the family came under attack for […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·manhattan·new york·women
Going Dutch at Kingston’s Wiltwyck Inn
October 22nd, 2010 · 6 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Call it Old Europe and the Dutch colonies meet the early 20th century. The Wiltwyck Inn is a petite building, by no means grand. This two-and-a-half story structure, tucked among plenty of historic buildings in the Uptown Stockade neighborhood of Kingston, conjures up faraway places and times long ago, thanks to its personality and out-of-the-ordinary, […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·Hudson Valley·landmarks·women
The Trotters at Goshen’s Post Office
September 10th, 2010 · 10 Comments · Beyond Gotham
In today’s world, Georgina Klitgaard’s painting might have sparked carping and a slew of talk-radio rant that it was wasteful government spending. In the late 1930s in the town of Goshen, N.Y., however, it absolutely delighted many of the town’s citizens. All over the United States we have public art remaining today that is courtesy […]
Tags: art·Hudson Valley·women
New York Places of Women Trailblazers
March 22nd, 2010 · 1 Comment · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York
Traveling in a horse-drawn buggy in the 1880s, Alice Austen carried cameras, a tripod, huge glass plates to record images, and other camera equipment with her so that she could photograph scenes on Staten Island. Sometimes the equipment weighed as much as 50 pounds. During the following decade, Austen ventured farther into New York City […]
Tags: architecture·Brooklyn·manhattan·new york·staten island·women
Lamartine Place: Saved for Posterity
October 16th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
One hundred years from now, most of those who walk on West 29th Street in Manhattan may not know what Fern Luskin, Julie Finch, and a small group of local citizens did to preserve the block between Eighth and Ninth avenues. But in all likelihood they will see, largely intact, the mid-19th century row houses […]
Tags: architecture·historic preservation·landmarks·new york·women
