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Tag: Civil Rights and Social Justice Map

Village Preservation Resources for African American History Month

Welcome to February, and African American History Month! Village Preservation has long documented the stories behind the streets, buildings and people of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. Those investigations have enabled us to offer several great resources to learn more about our neighborhoods, including our African American history, including our Civil Rights and […]

John Brown and Edmonia Lewis: Civil Rights Crusaders Who Intersected in Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village has long been a mecca and incubator for radical social justice advocates. With Village Preservation’s interactive map of the Greenwich Village Historic District as well as our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map, we can take a virtual walk through the neighborhood to visit significant sites related to many of these remarkable activists. […]

Great NYC Museums Go #BeyondTheVillageAndBack

New York City is blessed with a broad range of historic and internationally recognized cultural institutions across the five boroughs. But few know how many of them have origins here in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. A look through our recently released Beyond the Village and Back maps, one covering Manhattan below 72nd […]

‘The Birth of a Nation’ Galvanizes a Movement #SouthOfUnionSquare

Throughout the 20th century, the area south of Union Square attracted painters, writers, publishers, and radical social organizations, many of whom were challenging accepted American social and cultural ideals. The release on February 8, 1915 of The Birth of a Nation — a silent white supremacist propaganda film credited with both resurrecting the Ku Klux […]

Chinese American Activists Fight for Their Rights in Our Neighborhoods

Our neighborhoods have been the home of many of history’s most important civil rights and social justice leaders, as documented in Village Preservation’s Civil Rights and Social Justice Map. Three of our lesser-known map locations, however, highlight the under-recognized stories of 19th century Chinese American immigrant-rights activists. Some of these influential individuals, families, and organizations […]

The Fight to Recognize LGBT Civil Rights History in Our Neighborhoods

On January 16th, 2013, Village Preservation sent a letter to the  New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) requesting that it landmark key sites of significance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history we had identified. At this time, no buildings in the city were explicitly recognized or protected by the LPC primarily for […]

Looking Back On Our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map

Village Preservation’s Civil Rights and Social Justice Map was launched on January 3, 2017. This online resource, which marks sites in our neighborhoods significant to the history of various civil rights and social justice movements, includes over 200 locations. We’re proud that the map has been viewed by over 100,000 people in its three short […]

Richard Wright in Greenwich Village

This is one in a series of posts marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District. Click here to check out our year-long activities and celebrations. Richard Wright (September 4, 1908 — November 28, 1960), novelist and short-story author, is considered among the most important figures of 20th-century American fiction.  […]

African American History in the East Village

The East Village is probably not the first neighborhood that comes to mind when most New Yorkers think about African American history.  But this incredibly rich, multi-layered neighborhood was home to some remarkably consequential events, places, and figures in African-American history. To help explore just some of them, we have created a new African American […]

Alex Haley and the Village

The renowned writer Alex Haley was born on August 11 in 1921. In the 1960’s, the Haley rented a writing studio in the back of the Greenwich Village building at 92 Grove Street. It was here that Haley conducted over 50 interviews with Malcolm X over a 2-year period, beginning in 1963. Malcolm X, the […]

Top Five Greenwich Village Moments in Fourteenth Amendment History

The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted on July 28, 1868, played an important role in setting legal precedents for equality after the Civil War. The most radically worded of the Reconstruction Amendments, it was intended by its post–Civil War Radical Republican sponsors to stop the efforts by the former Confederate states to nullify emancipation. Its language promotes “liberty” […]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Mountaintop

On April 3rd, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered what would become both his last and one of his most powerful speeches, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” In it, he called for unity and non-violent protests while challenging the United States to live up to its promise and ideas, saying he could see the day […]

Black History Month 2018 – Learn and Celebrate with Us!

Black History Month gives us the opportunity to look at an important and too often overlooked or undervalued part of American, New York, and neighborhood history and highlighting.  Within our neighborhoods, there is an incredible array of African American histories, contributions, and culture all around us — sometimes hiding in plain sight. African Americans have […]

The Women’s House of Detention

To walk by the verdant, lush garden behind the graceful Jefferson Market Library today, one can scarcely imagine that it was once the site of an eleven-story prison, the notorious Women’s House of Detention. Found on our Civil Rights and Social Justice map, this former imposing edifice served as a prison from its opening on […]

Mapping Civil Rights and Social Justice — A Year Later

On January 3, 2017, GVSHP launched our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map.  Something in the air told us there might be a hunger and need for this kind of information.  But even we would not have guessed that the map would receive over 70,000 views in that time, with its praises sung in BrickUnderground, […]

Labor History in the Village

Some of the most important events and most prominent figures in the labor movement bear strong connections to the Village and East Village.  Without these courageous individuals, or the events connected to them, we might never have had fair wages, better working conditions, or the right to collective bargaining.  Below are a few standout homes […]

W.E.B. Du Bois Makes – and Teaches – History at the New School, September 27, 1948

On September 27, 1948, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, more commonly known as W.E.B. Du Bois, began teaching the very first African-American history and culture class ever taught at a university, at Greenwich Village’s New School for Social Research. This history-making event appears on GVSHP’s Civil Rights and Social Justice Map (which can always be found […]

Celebrating David Rothenberg and the Fortune Society

Last night, GVSHP and the Fortune Society hosted a celebration in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Fortune Society’s founding by David Rothenberg, and marking the release of GVSHP’s oral history with David and his addition to our Civil Rights and Social Justice Map.  If you missed last night’s celebration, or want to relive […]