Established in 1982 at LaGuardia Community College/ CUNY with a mission to collect, preserve, and make available primary materials documenting the social and political history of New York City. We hold nearly 5,000 cubic feet of archival records and 3,200 reels of microfilm with almost 100,000 photographs and 2,000,000 documents available on our website.
The exclusion of African-Americans from Stuyvesant Town is a
“form of fascism,” insisted Bebe Hyslop in her letter to Mayor La Guardia in
1943. La Guardia supported the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company that year in
its plan to prohibit African-Americans from living in Stuyvesant Town, then
being planned in lower Manhattan. The letters presented here, including Ms. Hyslop’s, are a sampling of some 1000+ letters written, expressing
the outrage felt by New Yorkers of all backgrounds to the mayor’s decision. Anger against the mayor in the city’s African-American
community especially was fueled by a sense of betrayal as many had considered La
Guardia an ally in addressing racial injustices. La Guardia’s choice to support exclusion of
African-Americans from Stuyvesant Town was a contributing factor precipitating
the Harlem Riots a few weeks later.
Together these letters from our collection reveal how large
historical events of the 1940s helped forge a foundation for the battle over housing
segregation and progress of the civil rights movement that followed. They also invite us to think about the
components of our own housing crisis of affordability amidst the greater subtleties
of inclusion and exclusion in today’s housing market.
On April 4, 1968, a nation wounded both by the Vietnam
War and the divisions it had created, and by outbreaks of civil unrest in its
cities, faced the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King,
Jr.Pent-up anger and frustration in the African-American community led to
rioting, looting and arson that destroyed vast swaths of neighborhoods in
Washington, DC, Chicago, Kansas City, Newark and Baltimore.In New York
City, it was a different story.Because Mayor John Lindsay and his staff had
built relationships with the African-American community, Lindsay was able to
travel to Harlem after the assassination and help calm an angry crowd, greatly
limiting the damage done.To learn more about the night of April 4 in Harlem,
see the video interview
with Lindsay aide, Sid Davidoff.
Unfortunately, little has been learned from 1968 as can be seen from the
horrifying events surrounding the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed, young
black man in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. This and the events
that followed have brought systemic American racism to the
forefront.While there are many causes for the racism that led
up to Michael Brown’s death, one of them was a lack of communication between the
predominantly white local government police force and the African-American
community.Lindsay intuitively understood the importance of
building these relationships, something that has been forgotten as American
police departments have become increasingly militarized.
