Fordham Impressions » History

JBC Features The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side

FUPress — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:17:40 +0000

The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, Second Edition
Gerard R. Wolfe; Joseph Berger, fwd.

REVIEW by Carol Poll

The eminent architectural historian Gerald R. Wolfe captures early synagogue and community life on the Lower East Side and recent synagogue restoration efforts in his fascinating book The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View (Fordham University Press 2012, 232 Pages $29.95, ISBN: 978-0-8232-5000-4). The history of American Jews is very much entwined with the history of New York City’s Lower East Side. Four out of five Eastern European Jews can “trace their ‘roots’” to the Lower East Side. Close to 500,000 Jews came to the United States in the 1880s to be followed by another 1.5 million in the period between 1990 and 1924 and the majority settled on the Lower East Side. The passage of the National Origins Act in 1924, with its tiny quotas for Southern and Eastern Europe immigrants, put an end to large scale Jewish immigration. READ MORE

International Women’s Day

FUPress — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:34:49 +0000

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Senate Honors Tuskegee Airman, Alexander Jefferson

FUPress — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:52:06 +0000

3 Tuskegee Airmen lauded on Senate floor

Two Hawaii residents are among those recognized for their service in World War II

By Associated Press

March 2, 2013

The state Senate honored Friday three members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the celebrated group of African-American combat pilots who fought in World War II.

Romaine Goldsborough, Philip Baham and Alexander Jefferson (author of Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW, Fordham University Press), each received a Certificate of Recognition during the Senate’s floor session.

Goldsborough and Baham are both Hawaii residents, while Jefferson is from Michigan.

Sen. Will Espero said the certificates are intended to show appreciation for the veterans’ service.

“It was such an honor to meet these veterans who faced so much adversity yet still had the strength to fight in the war. It was important to acknowledge and share their story and the contributions they made to our American history,” Espero (D, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point), chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs, said in a news release.

The Tuskegee Airmen are members of the 332nd Fighter Group and 477th Bombardment Group who helped pave the way for desegregation in the U.S. military. The group has received eight Purple Hearts, three Distinguished Unit Citations and 14 Bronze Stars.

To read full article. . .

The Politics of Promotion

FUPress — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:11:10 +0000

By Timothy J. Orr

*Photo 1

In the summer of 2006, as a member of the PHMC’s scholars-in-residence program, I spent a month in Harrisburg researching at the Pennsylvania State Archives. I spent time sifting through Record Group 19, the records of Pennsylvania’s adjutant general, examining Civil War commissions’ files.

*Photo 2

Early on, a particular set of correspondence captured my attention. I encountered a stack of letters related to the promotion of Lieutenant Colonel Gustavus Town. In 1862, Pennsylvania’s adjutant general had to answer a hefty stack of letters about Town’s promotion to colonel. As I read the ill-toned epistles, the reason for the controversy became obvious. A cluster of Union generals, all of them well-known Democrats, wanted to deny Town—a Republican—his promotion to colonel. Meanwhile, state politicians—all Republicans—insisted upon Town’s elevation. I expressed shock to learn that the promotion of a single junior officer could paralyze the functioning of Pennsylvania’s executive office for months, and I wondered what made Lieutenant Colonel Town’s case so special. But then, as I examined the commissions’ files for other Pennsylvania regiments, I noticed similar stacks of papers, all of them filled with vicious, petty squabbles over promotions. I must have examined over 100 Pennsylvania regiments that summer, and I had yet to find a single regiment that did not bicker like petty school children.

When I left Harrisburg, I wondered why Pennsylvanians were so quick to argue about promotions. Did something make them particularly factious? I kept this question in my pocket until the next summer, when I visited the state archives in Albany, New York. When examining the records of these adjutants-general, I noticed the same trend. Indeed, for four years, New York’s three adjutants-general answered volumes of letters from irate Union officers demanding promotion, usually on account of their partisan loyalty. After Albany, I visited more state archives and at each one I found the same kinds of letters. “Goodness,” I wondered, “what was wrong with the Union army?” No group of people in nineteenth-century America appeared more vindictive, more ruthless, more back-stabbing, and more ambitious than the junior officer corps of the Union army. Clearly, I had discovered a dysfunction of the Union army that had never appeared in the literature. What, though, should I make of this?

*Photo 3

My eyes opened when I presented my initial findings at the Society for Military History’s annual conference. Mark Neely, for whom This Distracted and Anarchical People honors, served as commentator. In his remarks, he announced, “Timothy Orr shows us that the typical Union regiment was as corrupt as the New York Customs House.” I let this sink in. Is that what I proved? The Union army was a crooked system founded on political spoils? As a military historian, such an idea seemed alarmingly contrarian. I understood that all modern officers derive their promotions through the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act of 1980, which set into place specific parameters that determined a person’s promotion eligibility and fitness. I always knew that in regards to command-fitness, Civil War officers lived in a pre-modern world, but until then—until Neely pointed it out to me—I never comprehended how different that world really was.

Later on, after the conference had ended, Neely offered me more advice, saying, “I see politics in everything. In fact, I borrow an idea from the historian Roy Franklin Nichols: the nineteenth-century suffered from ‘too much politics.’ Introduce a little Roy Franklin Nichols into your problem, and I think you’ll come up with an answer.”

Following Neely’s direction, I used political history to make sense of a military history problem. The result is my contribution to This Distracted and Anarchical People. I hope that readers might stand in awe of the subject as I do. Nowadays, we live in a world where the U.S. government takes strenuous precaution to elevate the most qualified officers to positions so they can lead our servicemen and servicewomen into battle competently. During the Civil War, no such system of meritocracy existed. From 1861-1865, state governments directed the course of promotions, using partisan loyalty unashamedly as the barometer for leadership in the U.S. Army.

Leadership is a fascinating thing, and I think it is an enlightening exercise to contrast the way Americans have defined the meaning of military leadership over the course of 150 years.
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Dr. Timothy J. Orr is Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University. He specializes in American Military History and History of the Civil War Era. In particular, he has written on Union mobilization and the lives of Union soldiers. His latest research focuses on partisan conflict within the officer corps of the Army of the Potomac and also upon U.S. Naval dive bombing during the Battle of Midway. Dr. Orr teaches courses on American Military History, American Naval History, Virginia History, and the History of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Captions for the photos:
———————————————————————————————————-
*Photo 1: The first image depicts King’s accuser, Arthur Harper Grimshaw (seated, center). In 1862, Grimshaw became colonel of the 4th Delaware Infantry. (In this photograph, Grimshaw is surrounded by his fellow officers.) The commissions’ files kept in the Delaware Public Archives reveal that Grimshaw never stopped intervening in matters of promotion. During the war, he deluged the office of Delaware’s Secretary of State (who assumed the duties of an adjutant general during a time of war) with opinionated letters, most of them aimed at elevating his Republican officers or denying promotions to the 4th Delaware’s Democrats. (Image courtesy of the Delaware Historical Society.)

*Photo 2: The second image depicts a segment of “Traitor in the Camp,” a broadside published by Arthur H. Grimshaw of Wilmington, Delaware. Grimshaw, a Republican, sent this broadside to New York’s Adjutant General, Thomas Hillhouse, with an aim to rescind the lieutenancy offered to Adam E. King, a Delaware Democrat who served in the 31st New York Infantry. Although Grimshaw’s effort to remove King represented an unusual amount of hateful obsession, by no means did it embody a rarity among the files of the adjutants-general in the Northern states. In every regiment, in every state, Republicans accused Democrats of promoting unworthy officers, and the Democrats accused the Republicans of playing political favoritism. (Image courtesy of the New York State Archives, Albany, New York.)

*Photo 3: The third image depicts Adam E. King, the subject of “Traitor in the Camp.” Although Arthur Grimshaw painted King as an inveterate secessionist, King’s fellow officers—the Democratic ones, only—vouched for his sterling character. Swayed by their plea, New York’s governor, Edwin Morgan, elected to keep King at his post. Eventually, King rose to the rank of brevet brigadier general, as seen here. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress).

Jewish Book Council Recommended Reading

FUPress — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:30:14 +0000

The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, 2nd Edition by Gerard R. Wolfe was included on the most recent JBC recommended reading list. Here is what they had to say:

It has often been said that nowhere in the United States can one find a greater collection of magnificent and historic synagogues than on New York’s Lower East Side. As the ultimate destination for millions of immigrant eastern European Jews during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became the new homeland and hoped-for goldene medinah (promised land) for immigrants fleeing persecution, poverty, and oppression, while struggling to live a new and productive life. Yet to many visitors and students today these synagogues are shrouded in mystery, as documentary information on them tends to be dispersed and difficult to find.

With The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side, Gerard R. Wolfe fills that void, giving readers unparalleled access to the story of how the Jewish community took root on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Originally published in 1978, The Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side became the authoritative study of the subject. Now completely revised and updated with new text, photographs, and maps, along with a glossary, Wolfe’s book is an accessible source for those who want to understand the varied and rich history of New York’s Lower East Side and its Jewish population.

Fordham University Press, 2012. 232 pp. $29.95

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Veteran’s Day Public Program

FUPress — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:45:17 +0000

VETERAN’S DAY PUBLIC PROGRAM

Five Historians Reflect on World War II
“What We Know, What We Still Need to Learn and What We May Never Know”

Monday, November 12, 2012
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th Street
Lowenstein 12th Floor Lounge
New York, NY 10023

Participants:

Dr. Scott H. Bennett is an authority on the American peace movement and the Second World War and, among other works, is editor of Army GI, Pacifist CO: The World War II Letters of Frank and Albert Dietrich (Fordham University Press, 2005).

Dr. J. Garry Clifford is one of the country’s leading diplomatic historians and has written on how America raised an Army in World War II.

Dr. Sidney Pash is author of Defending the Open Door: American-Japanese Relations, 1899-1941 (forthcoming University Press of Kentucky) which offers a re-examination of the coming of war in the Pacific.

Dr. Ann Pfau is author of Miss Your lovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II (Columbia University Press), which examines how GIs thought about war and dreamed about the homefront.

Dr. G. Kurt Piehler is author of Remembering War the American Way (Smithsonian) and over the course of his career has interviewed over 300 World War II veterans. He is book series editor of FUP’s World War II: The Global, Human and Ethical Dimension.

Books in World War II: The Global, Human and Ethical Dimension series:

The United States and the Second World War: New Perspectives on Diplomacy, War, and the Home Front
edited by G. KURT PIEHLER and SIDNEY PASH
356 pages, 978-0-8232-5203-9, paper, $26.00

Army GI, Pacifist CO: The World War II Letters of Frank Dietrich and Albert Dietrich
by FRANK DIETRICH and ALBERT DIETRICH,
edited by SCOTT H. BENNETT
408 pages, 978-0-8232-2378-7, cloth, $38.00

Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron
by DEBORAH S. CORNELIUS
400 pages, 16 b/w illustrations, 978-0-8232-3344-1, paper, $28.00

Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW
by ALEXANDER JEFFERSON,
with LEWIS H. CARLSON
160 pages, 71 b/w illustrations, 978-0-8232-2366-4, cloth, $29.95

For more books in the World War II series, CLICK HERE.

How to Lose a Close Election

FUPress — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:13:13 +0000

A version of this first appeared on the blog With A Brooklyn Accent on October 22, 2012.

By Mark Naison, co-author of The Rat That Got Away (Fordham University Press).

Virtually every poll now has President Obama and Mitt Romney embroiled in an extremely close race. The president could very well win this election; but he could also lose. And if he does lose, I will have to go back to something I first started saying nearly three years — namely that turning off the nation’s teachers with educational policies which silence their voice and put them under extreme stress is not only bad for the nation’s schools, it could cripple the president’s re-election efforts.I have worked to get the president to incorporate the nation’s teachers into education policy discussions, and stop requiring schools to ratchet up the number of standardized tests to receive federal funding. I have privately engaged people close to the president in conversation about teachers’ disillusionment, efforts which were totally unsuccessful.The president’s inner circle, from what I could gather, refused to bend on support for Race to the Top and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. They were not only convinced that these policies would end up improving the nation’s schools; they felt that the political gains to be made in terms of support from wealthy donors and influential journalists was far greater than any losses that would occur in terms of teacher enthusiasm. They knew the largest teachers unions would support the president no matter what policies he chose to implement.

Now, at crunch time, when it’s too late to change course, I can tell you that this judgment was a severe miscalculation. Not only have the president’s policies failed to narrow testing gaps by race and class, they have contributed to teacher morale in the nation to be the lowest it has been since pollsters began measuring this trait.

But the political consequences may have been even more serious than the educational ones. Most teachers will probably end up voting for the president, but from what I have seen, in both New York and around the nation, they will not be manning phone banks, canvassing in their neighborhoods, traveling to swing states on the weekends and generally giving time, money and energy to assure the president’s election the way they did in 2008.

Many pundits attribute the Obama victory in 2008 to an incredibly strong “ground game” composed of huge numbers of volunteers, as well as paid staff, working to get out the vote in battleground states. Many of those individuals, including me, my wife, and many of my friends, were teachers, professors and school administrators. During this election, I know of few, if any educators putting in that kind of heroic effort, almost entirely because they are feeling betrayed by the president, indeed, by the entire Democratic Party, on educational issues, even though they support the president’s positions on reproductive freedom, gay rights, taxation and medical care.

There is no way of knowing whether the phenomenon I am describing is will be a “game changer” in this election. But based on what I have seen in 2008 and in this campaign, there is a chance it could be. And if it is, the Obama brain trust has no one to blame but themselves.

Mark Naison is co-author of The Rat That Got Away (Fordham University Press). He is professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University in New York and chairman of the department of African and African-American Studies. He is also co-director of the Urban Studies Program, African-American History 20th Century. A version of this first appeared on the blog With A Brooklyn Accent.

Transit Museum Opens New Exhibit of Antonio Masi Watercolors

FUPress — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:35:48 +0000

MTA President, Bridges & Tunnels, James Ferrara

Earlier this week, the NY Transit Museum, celebrated the opening of their latest exhibition, titled “New York’s Golden Age of Bridges: Paintings by Antonio Masi.” The exhibit officially opened on May 12th and will run through September 30th. The exhibit features 18 massive paintings of nine city bridges.

Masi’s paintings are often distinguished by his anomalous use of watercolor, generally considered a light and airy medium. “I discovered that watercolor can also be used in a thick manner,” he explains, “and it can express the heaviest subjects imaginable. With watercolor, I contrast the mass, power and delicacy of my subjects.”

In 2011, the critically acclaimed book New York’s Golden Age of Bridges was published by Fordham University Press, combining Masi’s paintings with insightful essays by author and New York City historian Joan Marans Dim. The book describes an age that was a testament to human ingenuity, where architectural innovation, consummate determination and daring vision came together in uniting the five boroughs.

The exhibition at the New York Transit Museum features eighteen of Masi’s paintings – two of each of his subjects: the Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Queensboro, Manhattan, George Washington, Triborough, Bronx-Whitestone, Throgs-Neck and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges. The accompanying exhibition text, written by Joan Dim, provides a concise history of these masterpieces of engineering.

Masi’s works serve to celebrate an era of achievement – from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 to the Verrazano-Narrows in 1964 – which has provided the foundation for the modern age of transit. A gallery talk and book signing with the artist and author is planned.

Funding for New York’s Golden Age of Bridges: Paintings by Antonio Masi is provided, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

The End of an Era

FUPress — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:40:13 +0000

The recent death of Maersk McKinney Moller a few days shy of his 99^th birthday calls attention to the fact that the Moller family, of Denmark, established and continues to control what quickly became the largest merchant shipping company the world has ever seen. Founded in the early years of the 20^th century, the company would not become the colossus it is today until the onset of containerized cargo transport in the final decades of the century.

In 1999, Maersk purchased the American company, Sea-Land Services, that had pioneered the concept of carrying cargo in containers in the late 1950s and today Maersk Lines, as the shipping company is generally known, operates more vessels than its three largest competitors combined.

The late Maersk McKinney Moller headed the A.P Moller-Maersk Group as CEO from 1965 until 1993, and then continued to serve as Chairman until 2003. The corporation’s headquarters are in a magnificent building along the Copenhagen waterfront, just a short walk from the famous state of the Little Mermaid, a fictional character created by another famous resident of Copenhagen, Hans Christian Andersen.

By Brian Cudahy, author of Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World

James Johnston at Claymont Court Mansion

FUPress — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:27:35 +0000

Author James H. Johnston spoke at Claymont Court Mansion this past weekend. Claymont is one of a number of Washington family homes around Charles Town, WV. Johnston joined Walter Washington and Betsy Wells (Washington’s descendants) as part of an effort to educate and inform people of the rich history in Jefferson Country, West Virginia.

While Walter and Betsy highlighted the family history of the Washingtons in the area, Jim Johnston took a slightly different approach.
Betsy Washington Wells
Jim spoke about the Bealls, a prominent family in the area. The Beall family owned Yarrow Mamout, a slave that is the subject of Jim’s forthcoming book From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family.

Through this historical account, Jim has reconstructed a unique narrative of black struggle and achievement from paintings, photographs, books, diaries, court records, legal documents, and oral histories. From Slave Ship to Harvard traces the family from the colonial period and the American Revolution through the Civil War to Harvard and finally today.
Walter Washington

Yarrow Mamout, the first of the family in America, was an educated Muslim from Guinea. He was brought to Maryland on the slave ship Elijah and gained his freedom forty-four years later. By then, Yarrow had become so well known in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., that he attracted the attention of the eminent American portrait painter Charles Willson Peale, who captured Yarrow’s visage in one of his paintings.

Recently, the portrait of Yarrow Mamout has been sold by the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing the continual impact that the past is continually brought into the present. The era of the Washingtons, Bealls, and Mamouts continues to stay with us.

For more information on the seminar, please click here.