The New York City Municipal Archives has recently completed a long-term project to digitize and make available 167 hours of WNYC-TV films, adding to the more than 400 hours of video available in the digital gallery. The most recently digitized films date from the late 1960s through the early ‘70s, a time of broad social changes accompanied by violence and assassinations of public figures. New York City government faced a rapidly shifting tax base and increasing public debt that would ultimately spiral out of control. The digitization of this visual record fills in more details of the city’s history during this tumultuous period. The following clips highlight some of the video digitized over the course of the project.
The Problem of Books
At a government repository such as the Municipal Archives there is no shortage of books. Ledgers, logbooks, meeting minutes, photographers’ notebooks, books of deeds, court proceedings, atlases, and many other bound volumes can be found in the collections. Some are robust and in good shape; others are delicate or damaged. The books range in size from small notebooks a few inches wide to volumes that can be measured in feet. Ledgers from the New York District Attorney from the late 1800s recently digitized in the Archives’ laboratory weighed as much as 35 lbs. each.
Brooklyn’s 370-Year Heritage of Stray Goats
During the 17th century, New Utrecht was one of several Dutch colonial settlements and the Town records during that period were written in Dutch. On March 16, 1648, the entry in [New Utrecht ledger title] is short and to the point: “The officer may seize and take possession of the goats which run without keepers, since they injure all the fruit trees and do other damage.” There were not further entries in the ledger concerning these marauding orchard raiders, but we can assume they were properly rounded up and returned to their home farms.
Conditions in Harlem Revisited: From the 1936 Mayor’s Commission Report to Today
On September 20, 2022, city, state, and national leaders, activists, scholars, clergy and community members convened at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to participate in a conference, “Conditions in Harlem Revisited: From the 1936 Mayor’s Commission Report to Today.”
Cover page, Mayors Commission on Harlem, Report, 1936. Mayor LaGuardia Collection. NYC Municipal Archives
To the People of New York - Mayor LaGuardia statement, March 20, 1935. Mayor LaGuardia Collection. NYC Municipal Archives
The conference coincided with release of the 1936 Mayor’s Commission on Harlem Report. The complete text of the report is now available online.
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned a review of neighborhood conditions in the wake of civil unrest in Harlem during March 1935. Although the report had been published at the time by the New York Amsterdam News, a Black-owned news outlet, the report itself was never officially released. The report was filed with Mayor LaGuardia’s papers which are now housed in the Municipal Archives.
The Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem consisted of ten high-profile New Yorkers who lived and worked in Harlem including poet, playwright and novelist Countee Cullen, Arthur Garfield Hays, founding member and general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, and A. Phillip Randolph, labor leader and head of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
Six subcommittees—Justice, Education, Housing, Employment, Healthcare, and Social Services—held public hearings where one hundred and sixty witnesses testified. The Commission submitted the report to the Mayor on March 19, 1936. It vividly described conditions in Harlem: under-resourced schools, job discrimination, struggling hospitals, unsafe neighborhoods, unjust policing, inadequate healthcare services and housing that was dilapidated and too expensive; conditions still prevalent today.
Eighty-six years later, the day-long conference at Schomburg brought scholars, advocates, residents, and researchers together to address each of the six key focus areas from the 1936 report. Conference participants related the report to current-day concerns based on input from 62,000 New Yorkers through the NYC Speaks initiative. The top three concerns include public safety, employment and housing. When asked ‘How can the government make your neighborhood safe,’ Harlem residents said, ‘Build more affordable housing and reduce homelessness.’ Other solutions offered up by local residents included employment programs for justice-involved people, better pay for teachers, more accountability for law enforcement and rent stabilization. Young people asked for more mental health services in schools.
The 1936 report concluded that the “economic and social ills of Harlem which are deeply rooted in the very nature of our economic and social system,” could not be rapidly corrected. “Yet the Commission is convinced that, if the administration machinery set itself to prevent racial discrimination . . . the people of Harlem would at least not feel that their economic and social ills were form of racial persecution.”
Many of the conference speakers remarked on how the report read as if it could have been written today. Wallace L. Ford II, Professor of Public Administration, Medgar Edgars College, spoke during the Housing and Land Use session. “Here we are in 2022 and we have to ask ourselves, what has changed?” During the Healthcare and Environment sessions, Dr. Mary Bassett, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health pointed to structural problems and solutions. “We have to start talking about the bricks and mortar of structural racism.”
Similarly, the panelists observed that the Commission’s recommendations—to promote equality through investments in decent housing, good education, excellent health care, among other basic goods —are still awaiting action. As Dr. Mary Bassett concluded, “We need political leadership,” to make meaningful change.
Closing out the conference, Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright gave this charge to the audience: “Eighty-six years from now, what will history say about what we did and what we were able to do in terms of making sure that there was social justice and equity for people of color here in the city of New York?”
Learn more about the 1935 events in Harlem and the LaGuardia Commission at the NYC Department of Records and Information Services.
View the Harlem Conditions project website to take a deeper dive into the subject and conference details.
Download a full program with bios for every speaker.
The conference was convened through collaboration by the Department of Records and Information Services, the New York University McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture – New York Public Library, Vital City, NYC Speaks, and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives.
Video Recordings
Morning Session:
Afternoon Session:
Mayor LaGuardia's Latin American Scholarship Program
Eighty years ago, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia invited college students from all the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean to apply for scholarships to study in New York City. He established the New York City Committee for Latin American Scholarships, Inc. to administer the program, select the students, and facilitate their travel and housing.
Drag Racing - 1668-Style
When thinking of reckless driving, one might picture teenage motorists drag racing down main streets in revved up automobiles—something like a scene from George Lucas’ 1973 movie American Graffiti, or James Dean’s 1955 Rebel Without A Cause. You’d be right to think of brash American youths cruising in cars but that’s only the 20th century version. The records in the Municipal Archives Old Town collection show this is not a new phenomenon in the least. This tradition, in fact, goes back to the earliest days of European settlement during the seventeenth century in what is now New York City.