The Battle for Gay Rights, continued

On Wednesday April 2, 1986, at 10 a.m., in the Board of Estimate Chambers in City Hall, Mayor Edward I. Koch held a public hearing before signing Intro. #2, the ‘Gay Rights’ bill. Before opening the hearing for comments, he spoke:

“This bill would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodation. It is long overdue…. A version of this legislation has been before the City Council for fifteen years, and I have testified in its support, both as a Member of Congress and as Mayor. At last, we can have a law that would guarantee justice too long denied to people in the City of New York who have been deprived of the right to earn a living, to obtain shelter or to have access to services and public accommodations simply because they are heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. At last, we can have a law that would liberate from the fear of discovery, discrimination and violence the thousands of gay men and lesbians—as well as heterosexual men and women whose sexual orientation is misperceived—who live in our city, and would permit them to devote more of their energies, talents and intelligence to their professional and personal lives. At last, we can have a law that would ensure fairness and equality for all of us.”

Take a moment to view footage from the Municipal Archives collection that so vividly tells the story.

To learn more about the WNYC-TV collection, browse the nearly 1,000 digitized films in the digital gallery here and discover many other collections made freely available. The digitization of these films was funded by a Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund (LGRMIF) grant from the New York State Archives.  

The Battle for Gay Rights

The New York City Municipal Archives’ moving image collection provides unique documentation on diverse subjects. Several recent digitization projects have made this visual record more widely available. This week, For the Record highlights newly digitized films and video tapes of iconic NYC LGBTQ+ rights activists like Sylvia Rivera, Andrew Humm, Betty Santoro, Marc Rubin, and many more. These activists worked from 1971 to 1986 to pass the so called ‘Gay Civil Rights Bill’ that added sexual orientation to New York City’s anti-discrimination laws, protecting queer people’s right to housing, employment and security. All of this footage was recorded either by municipal television channels serving the city or covert NYPD surveillance of the gay liberation movement in the wake of the Stonewall riot of 1969.

To learn more about the WNYC-TV collection, browse the nearly 1,000 digitized films in the digital gallery here and discover many other collections made freely available. The digitization of these films was funded by a Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund (LGRMIF) grant from the New York State Archives.

The 2022 ARB Report

In 2002, the City Council established the Archival Review Board. The five-member board was directed to “…render annually to the mayor a report reviewing the archival processing of any city papers.” Authored by Municipal Archives Director Sylvia Kollar, the recently published Archival Review Board FY 2022 Report chronicles the achievements of the City’s archival program during Fiscal Year 2022.

Highlights of the Report:

The 2022 Archival Review Board highlights several important accomplishments during the reporting period. On October 25, 2021, Commissioner PaulineToole and Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the new Municipal Archives storage and research facility at Industry City. The state-of-the-art storage and research facility will ensure preservation of the City’s heritage for generations to come.

Commissioner Pauline Toole and Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball open the Municipal Archives facility, Industry City, Brooklyn, October 25, 2021. NYC Municipal Archives.

In March 2022 the Municipal Archives launched the Historical Vital Records of NYC platform on the Department of Records and Information Services website. The Archives’ vital records collection is one of the largest in the country. The Archives began digitization of 13.3 million birth, death and marriage records in the collection in 2013. The Historical Vital Records site provides free online public access to more than nine million high-quality copies of birth, death and marriage records. Within three months of the launch, the site reached more than two million views and over 170,000 downloads.  

The ARB report also describes progress on several grant projects including preservation and digitization of the Old Town ledgers with support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Other work detailed in the report includes recent “adoptions” of archival and library items in need of conservation treatment as part of the “Save New York’s Past” fundraising initiative sponsored by the New York Archival Society.  

Gravesend Town Records Book 7, Old Town Record Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Please take a few minutes to read the Archival Review Board FY 2022 Report and look for updates on progress of the archival program in future blogs.  

NYC Undercover

This week, For the Record highlights two exceptional opportunities to experience innovative interpretations of archival material. Both make use of historical New York Police Department (NYPD) surveillance films from the Municipal Archives collection.

The first is the annual Photoville festival where the Municipal Archives has debuted “NYC Undercover: Post-War Sound and Vision from NYPD Surveillance and WNYC Radio” a film exhibit combining historic NYPD silent surveillance films from the 1960s and 70s, with vintage WNYC radio broadcasts.

Spring Mobilization Committee March, April 15, 1967. NYPD Special Investigations Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (later called the National Mobilization Committee) organized some of the first large-scale protests of the war in 1967.

DORIS archivist Chris Nicols created NYC Undercover using video from various events and WNYC radio broadcasts. The end results include ticker-tape parades for the Gemini III and Apollo 11 astronauts paired with an interview with legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson, who expressed his view that the astronauts were heroes, as well as an NAACP and Congress for Racial Equality protest in Southeast Queens matched with audio from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech to the City Council after winning the Nobel Prize, and more.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (third from right), Andrew Young (1), Bernard Scott Lee (2) and other supporters in the Spring Mobilization march near the Hotel St. Moritz, Central Park South and 6th Avenue, April 15, 1967. NYPD Special Investigations Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The NYPD surveillance films had been originally created by the Bureau of Special Services and Investigations (BOSSI) between 1960 and 1980. During their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, BOSSI gathered information on individuals and groups arrayed along the political spectrum, but particularly civil rights, anti-war and feminist activists.

Nicols selected the audio from the Archives’ collection of broadcasts recorded by the municipal radio station, WNYC. Launched in 1924, reporters from the city-owned station turned up at events for more than seven decades, recording everyone from news announcers, musicians, and celebrities, athletes, poets and politicians. In 1996 the radio station was sold by the City to the nonprofit WNYC Foundation and it will celebrate its centennial next year.

Earth Day, Union Square, April 22, 1970. NYPD Special Investigations Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. Earth Day celebrations in Union Square Park included cleanup crews composed of school children and community members. Con Edison, often criticized for their environmental policies, donated brooms, mops, and other supplies for the cause. Other events in the park included Frisbee games and a massive plastic bubble filled with “fresh air.”

NYC Undercover will be on display through Sunday, June 18 at the Emily Warren Roebling Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park, from 12-6 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 12-8 p.m. Friday through Sunday. For more information, visit https://photoville.nyc.

The second opportunity also makes use of historic NYPD surveillance films. On June 16, 2023, Department of Records and Information Services’ Public Artist in Residence, Kameron Neal, will debut Down the Barrel (Of A Lens). The screening will take place at the Brooklyn Army Terminal’s Annex Building. The program is free and will run from June 16, through June 18, 2023. More information and RSVP is available here.

During Neal’s residency at DORIS he examined the digitized NYPD surveillance footage from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. As noted above, the films capture a turbulent time in the City’s history. Mostly shot by plainclothes officers from 1960-1980, Neal’s interpretation focuses on a constellation of moments in the film collection when people stopped to look back directly into the camera lens; acknowledging they were being surveilled. 

Columbia students climb a barricade during protest, May 21, 1968. NYPD Photo Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. In the Spring of 1968, student protests broke out at Columbia over links with the Department of Defense and plans to build a gymnasium in Morningside Park. Students occupied several buildings.

Designed as a two-channel film installation, one channel contains footage of civilians looking directly into the camera, while the other creates an abstracted portrait of the NYPD through jittery shots of their shadows, trench coats, and shoes. The two channels face one another as a symbolic reimagining of these police encounters.

The Public Artist in Residence (PAIR) program is a municipal residency run by the Department of Cultural Affairs that embeds artists in city government to propose and implement creative solutions to pressing civic challenges. 

While both exhibits use some of the same film, the resulting projects are vastly different and illustrate how these rich collections can be used in creative pursuits. 

The City Cemetery on Hart Island

On February 26, 1875, Mary Halpine, age two months, was buried in trench no. seven at the City Cemetery on Hart Island. According to the cemetery burial ledger, Mary was born in New York City and died from Atelectasis (collapsed lung) at Bellevue Hospital on February 25.   

Hart Island Bulk Head, January 13, 1972. Department of Marine and Aviation Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The entry recording the death and burial of Mary Halpine is the first one in a ledger recently donated to the Municipal Archives collection of City Cemetery burial records.

The City of New York purchased Hart Island in 1868 and designated it for the burial of indigent and unclaimed persons. The Department of Public Charities and Corrections was given responsibility for the burials and record-keeping.

In 1988, City archivists transferred all extant burial records dated prior to 1975 that had been stored on the Island, to the Municipal Archives. The earliest ledger in the series recorded burials beginning in May 1881. There are significant gaps in the collection during the 1950s and 1960s due to water damage. In 2018, the Archives accessioned a ledger, with entries dating from May 1872 through February 1875, from the Department of Corrections Historical Society. The latest addition to the Archives collection of City Cemetery ledgers lists burials beginning in February 1875, through 1877.    

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City archivists transferred City Cemetery burial ledgers to the Municipal Archives from Hart Island on a Department of Corrections vessel, 1988. NYC Municipal Archives.

The City Cemetery burial records provide significant data for both family history research and investigation into broader topics such as immigration, public health, and social services. The ledgers list the name of the deceased person (if known), age, birthplace, how long in the country, date, cause and place of death, and date of burial. The ledger also indicates religion, although this information appears to have been inconsistently recorded, likely due to a lack of knowledge about the decedent’s affiliation. There is also a remarks column.    

At the conclusion of each month the clerk maintaining the ledger carefully tallied the total number of burials, and where the deaths occurred. The greatest number of deaths are recorded as “outdoor poor” which means they occurred somewhere other than an institution—at home, on the street, aboard a ship etc. Bellevue, Almshouse, Charity Hospital, Foundling Asylum, Riverside Hospital, Small Pox Hospital and Lunatic Asylum, account for the majority who died in institutions.    

City Cemetery Burial Ledger, February 1875 – January 1878. NYC Municipal Archives

The birthplaces of the deceased reflect early-to-mid-nineteenth century immigration patterns in New York City. Most decedents are native born, or from northern European countries. For example, between June 5 and June 9th, the decedents’ birthplaces included Germany, Ireland, France, Scotland, Austria and New York.    

Cause of death information also reflects the reality of New York City life at that time. Although the clerk did not tabulate causes, reviewing the list shows a world without good health care and modern medicine. Small pox, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and diptheria are just a few of the diseases that took the life of many city residents. Which is probably why “old age” is  rarely recorded as a cause of death. Some of those who died of advanced years are Alice Crosby, age 68, born in Ireland, died on July 2, 1876; Ann Kiernan passed away on July 7, 1876, age 69, and Philip Mitchell, on March 25, 1876 age 70. 

Also notable is the frequency of “drowning” as a cause of death. But based on the place of death, it appears that most were probably not related to recreational activities. During the first week of June1875 three unrelated persons drowned: an unknown man, age 40, found at Pier 9, in the East River; John Maurer, age 50, in the Harlem River, and another unknown man, no age, found at Pier 42, North River.  

Most persons listed in the cemetery ledger died of “natural” causes. However, German-born Fritz Reichardt, age 54, died on May 29, 1877, of a “pistol shot wound of head” on 7th Street between 8th and 9th avenues.    

City Cemetery Burial Ledger, February 1875 – January 1878. Recapitulation, May 1876. NYC Municipal Archives

The remarks column is mostly blank except for notations regarding disinterment and reburial. In one instance, in August 1876, an “unknown man” was apparently later “recognized as William Bement,” age 60. He died in the “woods on 128th Street near 10th Avenue.” His body was disinterred and delivered to Taylor & Co., at 16 Bowery, for removal to Elmira, N.Y.  Most “unknown” burials did not have such a conclusive ending.

Scanning the names recorded in the ledger, one is immediately struck by the number of children buried in the cemetery. Indeed, the second page of the ledger is almost entirely children: Bridget Daily, age one month, from smallpox; Thomas Dowers, twenty-days, of marasmus (mal-nourished); six still births—boy of Anne Purvis, girl of N. Sullivan, girl of Catherine Beaufort, and an unnamed male and female. Mary Ann (no last name), a two-year old founding, died of Scarlatina on 68th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues.   

Some clerks appear to have been more diligent in recording information about deceased children; or perhaps they simply had access to more specific data. Listings during the last week of July 1877, for example, include several premature and stillborn children. On this page, the clerk carefully wrote “female child of George and Carol Briner (stillborn); female child of John and Mary Ray (stillborn).”

New York City continues to bury its indigent and unclaimed deceased persons on Hart Island. In 2021, the City transferred jurisdiction over the Island from the Department of Corrections to the Department of Parks and Recreation. During Covid, the Department of Corrections had been overwhelmed by the quantity of burials and this function was transferred to contractors. Subsequently, the Human Resources Administration has assumed responsibility for the burials and record-keeping.