Category Archives: History

In 1951, mobster Frank Costello (seated, center) testified in front of the Kefauver Committee during a televised congressional hearing on organized crime that captivated the country. Bettmann / Getty Images

A year and a half after some 2,000 supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a series of televised congressional hearings are revealing new details of the unprecedented attack.

Broadcast on most of the major networks and cable news channels (Fox News opted out), the two-hour opening hearing featured live testimony from a Capitol Police officer who described the January 6, 2021, riot as a war scene; pre-recorded interviews with Trump aides and advisers; and visceral, never-before-seen footage from the day of the insurrection.

I saw officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up, said officer Caroline Edwards, who sustained a traumatic brain injury during the riot. I was slipping on peoples blood. It was carnage. It was chaos.

Perhaps the most expertly produced prime-time hearings broadcast to date, the January 6 proceedings are part of a lengthy American political tradition. From the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings to the 1973 Watergate hearings, televised hearings have transfixed the nation for decades, offering the public a rare glimpse behind the congressional curtain.

Television didnt invent the congressional hearing or [become] the first to take advantage of its essential theatricality, wrote broadcaster Reuven Frank in the 1997 book Covering Congress. But the medium opened up a new world where the theater was always open, the audience always receptive, the press always in attendance.

According to an online House of Representatives exhibition, the first live television broadcast of a congressional proceeding took place on January 3, 1947, during the opening of the 80th Congress. Due to costliness and an unwillingness by members of Congress to have their [discussions] recorded, wrote Jackie Mansky for Smithsonian magazine in 2017, the 1947 broadcast proved to be an anomaly, with regularly televised proceedings only becoming the norm in 1977.

Despite the legislative bodys overall resistance to television, individual congressional committees couldand didbroadcast their own hearings. The first to capture a broad swath of Americans attention took place in 1951, when the Kefauver Committee investigated organized crime. Embarking on a national tour of local courtrooms, Senator Estes T. Kefauver subpoenaed mobsters, corrupt law enforcement officers, gamblers and other witnesses. An estimated 30 million people watched the live proceedings, eagerly following the cinematic black-and-white footage of criminals under duress, per the Senate Historical Office.

Frank Costello, an Italian crime boss based in New York, initially refused to testify but agreed to speak if the camera focused on his hands rather than his face. Actually, reported the Newsday newspaper on March 14, 1951, they were more character-revealing than his expressionless face, twitching nervously as the mobster reached for a glass of water or mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Another star of the Kefauver hearings was Virginia Hill, the former girlfriend of gangster Bugsy Siegel. According to the Mob Museum, she showed up at the courthouse in a $5,000 mink cape and silk gloves, denied all knowledge of criminal activity, and slapped a woman reporter in the face on her way out of the proceedings.

A similarly captivating set of hearings aired in the spring of 1954. Known as the Army-McCarthy hearings, the proceedings pitted Joseph R. McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator known for his zealous hunt for communists, against the U.S. Army, which had accused the controversial politician of seeking preferential treatment for an aide. McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy M. Cohn, in turn charged the Army with harboring communists within its ranks.

Across 36 days of hearings, 188 hours of which were broadcast live, a boorish McCarthy and a bleary-eyed Cohn [faced off] against a coolly avuncular Joseph N. Welch, the Armys special counsel, notes Thomas Doherty for the Television Academy Foundation. In a June 9, 1954, exchange with McCarthy, Welch famously declared, Until this moment, senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Seen by some 27 million Americans, the hearings marked the beginning of McCarthys fall from grace. What happened was that television, whose coverage of McCarthys news conferences and addresses to the nation had earlier lent him legitimacy and power, had now precipitated his downfall, writes Doherty. Censured by the Senate and ostracized by his peers, McCarthy died of unknown causeslikely linked to alcoholismin 1957. (Cohn, meanwhile, would later mentor a young Donald Trump in the 1970s and 80s.)

Perhaps the most readily apparent counterpart to the January 6 investigation is the Watergate hearings of 1973, which unraveled the scandal surrounding a June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Though the proceedings got off to a slow start, the drama picked up as witnesses revealed the extent of President Richard M. Nixons involvement in the cover-up.

The Senate Watergate investigation is proving a television-viewing phenomenon, wrote columnist Jack Anderson in July 1973, following a former White House aides disclosure that Nixon had recorded secret tapes of his conversations with staff, government officials and family members. According to A.C. Nielsen, the company behind Nielsen TV ratings, an estimated three out of four American households tuned in to the hearings at one point or another.

The drama-filled inquiry outdrew popular daytime soap operas, writes Ronald G. Shafer for the Washington Post. One Chicago woman reportedly told a friend, Ive gotta hurry home and watch the Senate investigation on TV. Its more fun than an X-rated movie.

In 1974, the Houseanticipating an impeachment trial for Nixonauthorized broadcast coverage of floor debate for the first time. (Previously, live broadcasts had been limited to individual committee hearings.) Though Nixon resigned before an impeachment trial could take place, his actions inadvertently cemented televisions ascension as the go-to medium for political intrigue.

House Speaker Thomas Tip ONeill authorized a three-month testing period for closed-circuit television coverage in March 1977; C-SPAN, the nonprofit network that broadcasts live footage of many congressional proceedings, debuted soon thereafter, in March 1979, paving the way for such headline-making events as the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings and the January 6 ones taking place today.

What America and the world saw in 1974 was the most powerful man in the world lose his job, says historian Timothy Naftali, the former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, in the CNN documentary series Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal. And for anyone who doubted the strength of the U.S. Constitution, what they witnessed [during the Watergate hearings] removed those doubts.

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A Brief History of Televised Congressional Hearings | Smart News - Smithsonian Magazine

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. With a $25,000 personal commitment, Penn State history alumna Liz Covart and her husband, Tim Wilde, have created the Liz Covart and Tim Wilde Humanities Institute Undergraduate Research Fund in the College of the Liberal Arts. The gift has secured matching support from Wildes employer, Google.

Formed in 2017, the Humanities Institute at Penn State is dedicated to promoting the social value of the humanities through scholarship, research, lectures, conferences and public events. Covart and Wilde were particularly interested in the institutes newest student research initiative, Re-envisioning Undergraduate Research in the Humanities,which focuses on increasing humanities research engagement among undergraduate students. The Covart/Wilde research fund will make it easier for students to participate in humanities-based research projects by supplying research materials and supplies, underwriting travel expenses, and providing other forms of support.

It is inspiring to know that Liz and Tim understand the innumerable ways that humanities education and research contributes to the personal and professional development of our students, said John Christman, director of the Penn State Humanities Institute. By supporting students research projects in the humanities, their gift will substantially contribute to our efforts to bring work in humanities disciplines out into the world, so to speak. We know that students engagement with their own research projects multiplies their interest and enthusiasm in these disciplines, which are so important to confronting the challenging issues of our time.

Covart was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but spent most of her childhood in New Hampshire. Her parents instilled in her a love of history early on by taking her and her brother on weekend trips to historic sites and national parks. When it came to choosing a college, however, Covart said her parents wanted her to get a degree in something other than history something that would immediately lead to a job. Though Covart believed, and still believes, that a degree in history can lead to any number of professions, she honored her parents wishes by selecting labor and industrial relations as her college major. Penn State was one of only three schools in the country to offer the degree at the time.

Preferring to focus on her passion for history rather than labor and industrial relations, however, Covart did some research at Penn States career services office. I found out that I could get an internship with the National Park Service, which I knew my parents would love.

She landed a history department-sponsored summer internship with Boston National Historical Park, which led to a change in major with her parents blessing and five summers as an interpreter for the National Park Service.

In addition to enjoying her internships, Covart made the most of her Penn State experience. She played the trumpet for four years in the Penn State Blue Band and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society as well as Phi Alpha Theta, the honors society for history majors. She also led the history roundtable, a group of students who would invite visiting professors to speak with student groups.

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History alumna creates fund to support undergraduate research in the humanities - Pennsylvania State University

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Chattel slavery in all states wasnt abolished until the end of 1865. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed into law by President Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, called for an end to legal slavery in secessionist Confederate states only, impacting about 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country at that time. As the war drew to a close and Union soldiers retook territory, enslaved people living in those areas were liberated.

Lincolns decision to free only those enslaved individuals in bondage in Confederate states was a strategic, militaristic method, as he notably did not free those enslaved in Union states. Further, the proclamation was unenforceable. Still, Union troops fighting in the war brought news of emancipation along with the military might to enforce it. Many enslaved people were motivated enough by the news to risk fleeing and seek safety in Union states or by joining the U.S. Army and Navy to help fight.

Following the Emancipation Proclamation, any enslaved person who escaped over Union lines or to oncoming federal troops during the war was free in perpetuity.

Maj. Gen. Grangers orders on June 19, 1865, released enslaved people in Texas from bondage. But it was another six months before the last two statesDelaware and Kentuckyfreed enslaved people, and only then when the 13th Amendment was ratified on Dec. 18, 1865.

The 13th Amendment officially ended slavery and involuntary servitude at the federal level, except as a punishment for a crime. That loophole has been capitalized upon since the amendment passed. Kentucky officiallyadopted the 13th Amendmentin 1976.

This story was written by Stacker and has been re-published pursuant to aCC BY-NC 4.0 License.

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The History And Significance Of Juneteenth - CT News Junkie

The history of Atlantas LGBTQ community can be hard to uncover, in large part due to the homophobia and transphobia of the time that caused people to keep a low profile for fear of losing their jobs, their families or their lives. That fear stubbornly persists to this day for far too many.

But that didnt stop LGBTQ people in Atlanta from finding any way and any place they could to go out, to dance, to march, to worship, to learn, and to find love together.

Youll find just some of those people and places documented here in our interactive LGBTQ Atlanta History Tour. Explore sites around the city that have been pivotal to LGBTQ life and history from the gay and lesbian bars of yesteryear to the theater where a police raid sparked Atlantas modern LGBTQ rights movement.

And head over to WABEs Pride Month hub to read or revisit stories about LGBTQ politics and activism, community life, arts and culture in Atlanta, plus get the details on Pride Month events happening near you!

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Take an interactive tour of Atlanta's LGBTQ history WABE - WABE 90.1 FM

The 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion in the U.S. painted an inaccurate picture of abortion at the time the 14th Amendment was adopted, according to Justice Samuel Alitos draft opinion overturning Roe.

More than half of Alitos 98-page draft opinion, in the pending Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization case, explores the history of U.S. abortion law in order to establish that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in this nations history and tradition as it would have to be in order to be protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. He wrote that until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law.

In his discussion of the history of abortion law, Alito cited Joseph Dellapenna, Villanova Law professor emeritus and author of Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History who filed an amicus brief in the case.

Dellapenna told the Register that Roe gave an argument about the history of abortion in order to come up with a conclusion that there is an unenumerated right to choose abortion that is protected by the Constitution. Justice Harry Blackmun devoted between a third and a half of his Roe opinion rooting the idea that there is a constitutional right to choose to abort in his version of the history.

In the Roe decision, Blackmun wrote, it is undisputed that, at common law, abortion performed before quickening the first recognizable movement of the fetusin utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy was not an indictable offense. He also concluded that at common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect.

In contrast, Alito wrote that under common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages, and that American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy, and the remaining States would soon follow.

Dellapenna said there are many examples of the common law restricting abortion throughout pregnancy. He noted that Blackmuns source for his claims was Cyril Means, a professor at New York Law School who was also the general counsel for the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL). As is apparent from his connection to NARAL, Means was hardly an unbiased historian. During the court proceeding for Roe, the legal team for the anonymous Jane Roe plaintiff circulated an internal memo admitting that Means conclusions sometimes strain credulity and fudge the history, but are useful because they preserve the guise of impartial scholarship while advancing the proper ideological goals.

Dellapenna said when Roe was handed down in January 1973, he was curious about this history that Justice Blackmun so heavily relied on, but it became apparent to him that whatever the historical truth was he wasn't interested in telling it. He said that after questions arose about Means historical account in Roe, he set out to recover the history of abortion in the common law world and found abortion cases in the colonies going back to the 1640s in Maryland and later dates in other colonies.

Alito cited some of the cases listed in Dellapennas book in his opinion and also quoted famed 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone who explained that abortion of a quick child was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter and at least a very heinous misdemeanor. Alito wrote that English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century corroborate the treatises statements that abortion was a crime and noted that manuals for justices of the peace printed in colonies in the 18th century typically restated the common law rule on abortion.

Alito concluded that although common law authorities differed on the severity of punishment for abortions committed at different points in pregnancy, none endorsed the practice. Moreover, we are aware of no common law case or authority, and the parties have not pointed to any, that remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

Dellapenna also said the claim that abortion was only criminal in the common law after quickening was a false narrative, as statutes from the early 1800s call abortion a crime of a woman quick with child a term that was not the same as quickening. It's a late confusion or worse to equatequick with child with quickening, he said. Quick simply means alive. Dellapenna cited Henry de Bracton, an English jurist writing in the 13th century who was the first legal text writer on abortion and used formed and animated, noting that we get the word quick from animated...It means alive.

Dellapenna said the early abortion statutes do not say quickening, they say quick with child, meaning a live child. She could have a live child before quickening.

He referenced a common law case from the 1200s where the mother was attacked by two men who beat her with sticks until she aborted and nearly died and the baby was delivered. The baby was, according to the report of the case, of one month gestation. That couldn't possibly have quickened. ...The men involved were convicted of homicide and the homicide was the homicide of the child, so there's pretty clear, unambiguous evidence that quick child does not mean quickening, or movement by the child.

Justin Dyer, professor of political science and director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri and author of Slavery, Abortion and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning, told the Register that his understanding of quickening was that to the extent that that it actually did mean something like felt fetal movement and mattered for abortion prosecutions, it was based on evidence for the presence of life and then that some act was the cause of death, it was not as the way that it's been commonly framed some kind of marker in pregnancy, at which point anything before that made abortion licit or actually protected as a liberty or a common law right of some sort.

Justice Alito wrote in a footnote in his opinion that the exact meaning of quickening is subject to some debate but that it suffices for present purposes to show that abortion was criminal by at least the 16th or 18th week of pregnancy and that during the relevant period i.e. the period surrounding the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment the quickening distinction was abandoned as States criminalized abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

Dellapenna also contended that contrary to any notion that women were widely successful in quietly obtaining abortions pre-quickening, until sometime in the late 1700s, there was no safe way to do an abortion. Abortion was tantamount to suicide if it were voluntary. There was evidence through history in Europe and elsewhere around the world of infanticide and relatively little evidence of abortion until the late 1700s, he said.

He said that while pro-abortion rights historians will point to records of herbal methods to back claims about abortion being common, that didnt mean these methods were effective or safe. What he found was that these methods were either utterly ineffective like parsley or garlic or all too effective, working not by attacking the fetus or the embryo, but by debilitating the mother. In other words, killing her or nearly killing her so she loses the baby.

A recent Washington Post article looking at Alitos historical account noted that of the plant extracts believed to induce abortion savin, which comes from juniper bushes, was particularly effective and also plentiful in the United States. But it came with high risk; too much could be lethal to the woman. The article also noted the prevalence of infanticide, quoting British historian Kate Lister who found numerous British trial records for women accused of killing their newborns; between 1700 and 1800, there were 134 of these cases in a single London court.

Distorting History

Another element at play in the Supreme Courts examination of abortion history since Roe was the willingness on the part of some historians to back Roes historical narrative.

Dellapenna pointed out that in the 1989 Supreme Court case Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, there was an amicus brief signed by 281 historians attesting that as the Court demonstrated inRoe v. Wade,abortion was not illegal at common law and, Through the nineteenth century, American common law decisions uniformly reaffirmed that women committed no offense in seeking abortions. They also contended that concern over unborn life became a central issue in American culture only in the late twentieth century.

The briefs lead author, Sylvia Law, a law professor at New York University, wrote in an article afterwards that one of the briefs objectives was to support a political mobilization of pro-choice voices. She acknowledged a tension between truth-telling and advocacy, admitting to most serious deficiencies as truth-tellers on the part of the historians involved in the brief. An example of this that she gave was the failure of the briefs authors to grapple with the fact that most 19th-century feminists supported laws restricting access to abortion. She said the silence is distorting and added that there are also other distortions of the truth which are not simply a function of page limits or inability to agree, but rather flow from the advocacy form.

James Mohr, now a professor of history at the University of Oregon, who signed on to that brief, acknowledged afterwards that the brief was a political document. The brief seemed to contradict his own past work.

While he acknowledged in his book Abortion in America that abortions were illegal after fetal movement, the brief stated that the Court demonstrated inRoe v. Wade,abortion was not illegal at common law. And while the brief asserted that 19th-century laws restricting access to abortion were not based on a belief that the fetus is a human being, Mohr wrote that in the 19th century, physicians felt very strongly indeed on the issue of protecting human life. And once they had decided that the human life was present to some extent in a newly fertilized ovum, however limited that extent might be, they became fierce opponents of any attack upon it.

In 1990, Mohr told Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley that where inconsistencies exist he stood by the book rather than the brief, and he confessed that he was uncomfortable with the way his work was cited for some of the briefs claims.

In his draft Dobbs opinion, Alito pointed out issues he took with the amicus brief filed by the American Historical Association and their weak response to the fact by 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, three-quarters of the States, 28 out of 37, had enacted statutes making abortion a crime even if it was performed before quickening. The historians argued that Horatio Storer, a physician and proponent of strengthening anti-abortion laws, was motivated with his allies at the American Medical Association by the belief that abortions were endangering what he saw as the ideal America: a society of white Protestants in which women adhered strictly to their proper duties marriage and childbearing.

In response, Alito wrote, recall that at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, over three quarters of the States had adopted statutes criminalizing abortion (usually at all stages of pregnancy), and that from the early 20th century until the day Roe was handed down, every single State had such a law on its books. Are we to believe that the hundreds of lawmakers whose votes were needed to enact these laws were motivated by hostility to Catholics and women? There is ample evidence that the passage of these laws was instead spurred by a sincere belief that abortion kills a human being. Many judicial decisions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries made that point.

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Correcting Roes Flawed Revision of Abortion History - National Catholic Register

Ritch K. Eich, Thousand Oaks, California| Kitsap Sun

Regarding Josh Farley's superb article on Puget Sound Naval Shipyard's iconic hammerhead crane, "Navy to pursue demolition of iconic crane":

In the late 17th century Erik Menved was the first Danish king to establish a naval port, base and shipyard (and drydock) in Copenhagen. Unlike the U.S., the Danes often preserve their history and its important landmarks. Today, when you visit Copenhagen, you see the drydock at Christianshavn built in 1734 and, most important, you see the famous crane ("Mastekranen") sitting prominently on the former Holmen Naval Base and the former Royal Danish Naval Academy.

Please find a way to reduce the weight, then move to another location and re-assemble the unique crane at Naval Shipyard Puget Sound.

I love the Navy but it is hardly known for its wisdom or flexibility when it comes to preserving historical artifacts.

Ritch K. Eich, Captain, USN (Ret.), Thousand Oaks, California

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We forget queer history, and that needs to change (FlipSide) - Charleston Gazette-Mail

BUFFALO, N.Y. While Cari Casteel was watching Super Bowl ads about a decade ago, she didnt expect to find the inspiration for her PhD thesis.

An Old Spice commercial played and the man your man could smell like catchphrase caught Casteels attention. Her mind wandered, and she started to think about what men usually smell like compared to what women usually smell like, and how personal care products help to construct those scents and connect with ideas about gender.

Naturally, as someone who majored in history, she wanted to investigate deeper.

And thats exactly what Casteel, PhD, a clinical assistant professor who joined the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2018, has been doing.

Deodorant is, for many of us, an oft overlooked part of the way we present ourselves to the world, says Casteel, who chose to stick pun intended with the topic of deodorant because of its ubiquity and untold history.

Commercial deodorant was developed in the United States in the late 18oos, she says. Antiperspirants, which reduce sweat, followed in the early 1900s, Casteel says, noting that early versions were so strong and acidic that they would burn through clothing and cause dermatitis, which is irritation of the skin.

Despite this, many women still preferred having destroyed clothes over body odor, Casteel says. To them, she says, the acidic burn signified that the product was working. Manufacturers solved the problem by buffering the active ingredient, which is acidic, in order to make it safer.

The advancement helped pave the way for widespread use. Recent studies suggest up to 90% of Americans use deodorant or antiperspirant every day, a number that is only second in personal hygiene habits to teeth brushing.

Purchasing and consuming deodorant became more about projecting an image and a lifestyle than simply quelling body odor, Casteel wrote in an explanation of her dissertation research on the topic.

She is also interested in the association between gender and how deodorants smell, and notes that personal care products help to both construct and reinforce existing ideas about gender.

We see womens fragrances are flowers and baby powder and mens spice and musk. Even the names are hyper-gendered: powder fresh, relaxing lavender for women. And the mens are more gendered in name: swagger, mountain peak, wilderness, night panther, Casteel says.

Mostly, I am interested in this because I am interested in the ways that we, as a society, categorize and sort each other and also how we sort ourselves, she adds. We do not need different deodorants for men and women, but we have them because deodorant is, to many, more than a commodity we consume, but part of the way we identify. Wearing a deodorant fragrance is part of an olfactory identity. Like the way that we use clothing to tell the world who we are, deodorant does that too just not visually.

Finding information about deodorant history isnt easy, Casteel says.

Oftentimes, she has to be creative, scouring old advertisements, marketing publications, trade journals and business ledgers, which are records that keep track of transactions.

Reading through these sources is a slow process because of the amount of content they contain, she says. It is also important to sift through what is and isnt relevant, as well as rereading to make sure everything was read carefully, she adds.

Casteel revisits certain sources to reanalyze and cross-reference the facts she has.

One of her favorite topics is the changes in the application of deodorant. With some of the earliest versions, deodorant was applied with cotton swabs or a persons fingers.

To eliminate having to touch the deodorant directly, roll-ons, sticks and sprays were produced. But around the 1970s, the use of aerosol deodorants decreased because of the increasing consciousness about protecting the Earth.

While building this body of research, Casteel decided to write a book that highlights the story of deodorant. The book, which is in its early stages, will detail the history as well as how applications have changed throughout time.

Coincidentally, when Casteel was working on her dissertation, she lived two blocks away from the building where commercial deodorant was invented in Philadelphia. And now she loves doing research involving this same hygiene item.

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An 'olfactory identity': UB researcher studies the history of deodorant - University at Buffalo

The Chamber of Commerce published a booklet of essays submitted by local people for a city improvement contest in 1946 called What I Dont Like About Amsterdam.

Few of us today actually remember 1946, but many who grew up in Amsterdam after World War II would probably regard that postwar year of 1946 as part of the good old days.

The carpet mills, other Amsterdam factories and businesses were still thriving.Downtown was busy.People enjoyed bowling, softball and other amateur sports.The war had ended.

Nonetheless Charles H. Schenck, Chamber Executive Secretary, said the essays submitted in the contest cited multiple complaints.

A lack of recreational facilities was mentioned in 230 essays.The poor condition of streets was cited in 177 entries.There were 139 ash and garbage collection complaints.Seventy nine people wrote Amsterdam had too many bars and deplored the sale of alcohol to minors.Some essays called for more hotel accommodations, transportation and theatrical facilities.

A numbering system enabled the Chamber judges to anonymously award cash prizes to individuals whose essays were deemed the best among the 850 entries.The judges were also anonymous.

We are quick to criticize those who make an honest effort to do something, wrote the first prize winner, who was awarded $40.

Forty dollars in 1946 would translate into over $500 today because of inflation, making it a rather substantial prize.

The winning writer continued, Misguided leadership has done a lot to put nationalism above civic responsibility and has tended to build up group interest with selfish motives.We are all Americans and we should work together.

The second place essay was awarded $20 and called for Sunday evening services in the churches and an end to competition among local veterans groups. The writer suggested city employees only get 10 days in sick leave each year, that the city buy sidewalk snow plows and that the proposed athletic field near the Lynch School be designated a World War II memorial.

The Recorder announced the conclusion of the contest on March 26, The project to secure a self-portrait of Amsterdam by her own residents was started about one month ago when blanks were distributed through the public schools and mercantile establishments of the city.

In expression of approximately 100 words, men, women and children were invited to say what they think about the city and its weak points.

The third place finisher, who was awarded $10, suggested a waste disposal system so that sewage would no longer be dumped into the Mohawk River.The writer also called for beautification of the riverfront.

Here are more critiques from 1946:

I dont like the taste of city water. It has too much chlorine in it.They admit the water looks bad and tastes bad but say its harmless.It should bethe way its been drugged.

Amsterdam should have a curfew law for children up to 16 years, and it should be enforced, even if it means bringing parents into court.

The streets are a hodge-podge of houses, dinky little stores (often empty), gas stations, vacant lots (used as dumping grounds) and unoccupied buildings with broken windows.

The characters that clutter up the streets in front of some of the downtown cigar stores are no ad for the police department.

Amsterdam needs a sort of night club just for us kids, with special attractions by kids who can sing, dance, play an instrument or perform.

And a final complaint from over 75 years ago, Have another contest entitled What I do like about Amsterdam and limit the answers to one word. Mine would be Nothing!

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FOCUS ON HISTORY: The good old days? The Daily Gazette - The Daily Gazette

Tension choked the air when a ten-foot-tall cross, wrapped in gasoline-soaked rags, burned wildly, as if to set the night on fire. The cross burned in the fall of 1980, on Jefferson Avenue, which runs through several Black neighborhoods that constitute the East Side of Buffalo, New York, and it punctuated a wave of terror in and around the city. A month earlier, on September 22nd, a Black fourteen-year-old boy had been shot in the head three times. Over the next two days, three other Black men were shot and killed. After ballistics testing, the police concluded that all four had been killed by the same weapon. Then, in early October, the bodies of two more Black men were found, beaten and stabbed to death. Both men had had their hearts cut out of their chests.

Several days after that, the cross was lit ablaze. The following day, on October 10th, a nurse walked in on a white man trying to strangle a Black man who was lying prone in a hospital bed. He survived, but the attack left him incapacitated and in need of surgery. In the course of those weeks, six African American males had been viciously murdered. The streak of deaths overlapped with a series of bewildering disappearances of Black children in Atlanta, which came to be known as the Atlanta child murders, heightening the terror.

In Black neighborhoods across Buffalo, rumors swirled that the killings were the work of the Ku Klux Klan. During one of the funerals, the Associated Press reported, two carloads of whites drove by with a mannequin with grotesque, red painted head wounds, and threw red paint on the hearse. City officials scoffed at the idea that organized racists were involved in the killings, and a state N.A.A.C.P. official allowed that the attacks may have been committed by a single killer. However, it is the climate of racism and conservatism in this country that is responsible, she said. A Black resident named Lattice Alexander told the Times, Some white people think blacks are getting ahead of them, even though thats not totally true. With the legal rulings over the last few years and all this unemployment they think they may be losing something because of us.

After the killings, city officials dealt with rising fear and anger on the East Side of Buffalo. Three years earlier, Arthur O. Eve, a state representative in the New York legislature, had stood on the cusp of being the first Black mayor of Buffalo, after he shockingly beat James Griffin, a former state senator, in the mayoral primary. But Griffin, a high-school dropout based in South Buffalo, a mostly white area, resurfaced in the general election on the Conservative Party line, running on white-grievance politics: he opposed welfare, championed law and order, and supported the death penalty. Eve had made a name for himself by heading a solidarity committee that negotiated on behalf of prisoners in Attica state prison in the aftermath of the Attica rebellion. Griffin painted Eve as soft on crime. But, in the wake of the killings, Griffin lowered city flags and called for calm. Black youth had been pelting cars driven by whites with rocks. Jesse Jackson came to the city to plead for peace. Griffin, in a public plea, said, We cant let mean and vicious crimes like these separate us. . . . Buffalo is the City of Good Neighbors.

Local leaders have often invoked the citys invented good neighbors moniker to promote an ethos of gritty unity in Buffalo. In the aftermath of a racially motivated mass shooting at a Tops grocery store, which left ten African Americans dead, the current mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, made the familiar plea, saying, Were standing strong as a community and working to not let this horrible act of hate detract from us being a loving, warm, welcoming community. Buffalo is known as the City of Good Neighbors, nationally and internationally. When New Yorks governor, Kathy Hochul, joined President Joe Biden to speak in the city to express condolences and present her plan to prevent these kinds of attacks in the future, she made similar gestures. She compared Buffalo to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Biden hails from. Hochul said, Buffalos a little bit like Scranton, little bigger version of Scranton. You know, Scranton. You live a long time and you love your community, but you get knocked down a little bit and dont quite get the respect sometimes as other parts of your state do. She went on to say that, as a result, theres something called Buffalove. Its a combination of the words Buffalo and love. We call it Buffalove.

The effort to console and empathize can just as easily distort and conceal. Buffalo is not like Scranton, which has never had a population that was more than eight per cent African American. It is more akin to Philadelphia or Newark, with a large Black population constituting more than a third of the city. As in those cities, there is severe residential segregation, which keeps Black and white residents living in different social, economic, and political realities. In 1993, a writer in the local daily, the Buffalo News, compared Main Street, the central dividing line of the city, to the Berlin Wall, dividing rich from poor, the haves from the have-nots. Buffalo is one of the poorest cities in the country, and nearly half of children living in the city are poor. But the hardship that defines the city is not evenly shared. A disproportionate number of the have-nots live on the East Side of Buffalo, where more than three-quarters of the citys African American residents live.

Last fall, the University at Buffalos Center for Urban Studies released a report titled The Harder We Run: The State of Black Buffalo in 1990 and the Present. The report was a follow-up to a similar one that my father, Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., had produced nearly thirty-one years earlier. The key findings were stunning in their similarity. In 1990, Black unemployment stood at eighteen per cent and the average household income was thirty-nine thousand dollars a year. Thirty-eight per cent of Blacks lived under the poverty line; there were more African Americans who had dropped out of high school than who held a college degree; and less than thirty-five per cent of African Americans owned their own homes. By last year, Black unemployment was eleven per cent; the average income was forty-two thousand dollars a year; some thirty-five per cent of African Americans lived under the poverty line; and only thirty-two per cent owned their homes. There continue to be more Black dropouts than Black college graduates. For most ordinary Black people, time has stood still. As the report concluded, Everything has changed, but everything has remained the same.

When these conditions exist for decades, they come to be seen as the natural order of things. In the largely white West Side of the city, there are brick homes, grocery stores, shops, and gorgeous parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. On the East Side sit ninety-four per cent of the citys vacant lots. In 2014, Evans Bank in Buffalo was sued by the state attorney general for engaging in modern-day redlining, excluding the entire East Side of Buffalo from its mortgage lending. (Bank officials denied that racism was a factor.) Money is being poured into a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills, and the restoration of the citys Art Deco-style Central Terminal. Meanwhile, on the East Side, residents struggle with busted sidewalks, most of which, according to the Center for Urban Studies, do not even have curb ramps and pedestrian crossings.

When Joe Biden travelled to Buffalo to console the city, he spoke passionately about white supremacy, saying, Its been allowed to grow and fester right before our eyes. . . . No more, no more. We need to say as clearly and as forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. But racial segregation and poverty were among the conditions that left Black Buffalonians vulnerable to a white-supremacist attack. (The shooter searched the Internet by Zip Code, looking for a location with a high density of Black residents.) Calls for reforms on these issues have largely been ignored.

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Hiding Buffalos History of Racism Behind a Cloak of Unity - The New Yorker