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What It Means to Be Hapa

Written by Sady on December 1st, 2011

Ken Tanabe, photo by Willie Davis

Today’s guest post is by Ken Tanabe, founder of Loving Day, a global movement for a new holiday to celebrate the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia.  Loving Day’s mission is to fight racial prejudice through education and to build multicultural community.  Ken will lead a conversation about what it means to be hapa with artist Kip Fulbeck on Thursday, December 8, 6:30p.m. at the Museum of Chinese in America.  This event is part of the Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations series, exploring mixed-heritage families, race, ethnicity, culture, and identity, infused with historical perspective.

The word “hapa” comes from Hawaii, a historical hot spot for interracial marriage, and the birthplace of the first multiethnic US President. It most commonly refers to people whose multiethnic heritage includes Asian ancestry. The hapa identity is an especially vibrant part of a growing movement towards multiethnic identity and community.

Being hapa wasn’t always a good thing. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states for most of US history, including marriage between whites and Asians. This made hapa children illegitimate in many places. Punishments for the parents of hapas could be anything from denial of a legal marriage to jail time and fines. These laws (and the social attitudes that formed them) made it clear that hapas should not expect a warm welcome into the world. Interracial marriage bans were not lifted until 1967 through a landmark Supreme Court decision aptly named Loving v. Virginia (now celebrated as Loving Day).

Celebrating Loving Day in New York, photo by Michael Kirby

In 2011, hapas are everywhere from census forms to celebrity A-lists. The hapa identity is growing fast in academia, the community, and the arts. UC Berkeley hosted the first Hapa Japan Conference this year with a focus on Japanese hapa identity. At Harvard, the third annual SWAYA (So… What Are You Anyway?) conference on mixed-race issues was hosted by Harvard Hapa, one of many active hapa student groups nationwide. A great documentary film entitled One Big Hapa Family was shown on PBS and has been traveling the festival circuit, including the first annual Hapa-Palooza festival in Vancouver.

Part Asian, 100% Hapa by Kip Fulbeck

Kip Fulbeck is arguably the most visible artist in the hapa community. He’s especially well known for The Hapa Project, which includes the book Part Asian, 100% Hapa, a traveling photo exhibition, presentations, and online communities. Fulbeck’s work has inspired many other artists to explore the hapa identity through photography and other media. This visibility has an important effect: for many, Fulbeck’s work is their introduction to the hapa identity and the first step on a path to exploring multiethnic identity.

 

The Hapa Project
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 6:30pm 

RSVP Required: programs@mocanyc.org
Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)
215 Centre Street, Manhattan
Directions to MOCA

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Events, Oral History, Public Programs | 2 Responses »
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Shirley Chisholm Day!

Written by Sady on November 28th, 2011

 

Celebrate Shirley Chisholm Day 11/30/11 by checking out The Shirley Chisholm Project’s online collection of oral history interviews with people who knew her well, including Richard Green, founder of the Crown Heights Youth Collective, who worked on Chisholm’s campaign; and feminist and journalist Gloria Steinem, who ran as a Chisholm delegate to the 1972 democratic convention.

January 25, 2012 will mark the 40th anniversary of Shirley Chisholm’s historic run for president, and launch a year-long, borough-wide celebration of this important Brooklynite  - stay tuned!

Intrepid political leader, Shirley Chisholm was born in Brooklyn on November 30, 1924.  When she was three years old, she went to live in Barbados with her maternal grandmother, returning to Brooklyn about seven years later.  She graduated from Girls High School, followed by Brooklyn College, and then she earned a Master’s in Eduction from Columbia University.  In 1968, Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress, and she was one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus.  In 1972, Chisholm ran an inspiring campaign to be the Democratic presidential nominee – the race was ultimately Nixon v. McGovern (see campaign commercials here).

To learn more about Shirley Chisholm check out the 40th anniversary edition of her autobiography Unbought and Unbossed and the documentary film Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed by Shola Lynch.

Brooklyn College will celebrate Shirley Chisholm with an annual keynote address on 11/29/11 - this year’s speaker is Anita Hill.
More information on this event here.

 

 

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Jungle Fever

Written by Sady on November 11th, 2011

We’re getting ready for the 20th anniversary screening of Jungle Fever (1991)
at BAM next Tuesday 11/15 7PM.

People who haven’t seen the film an awhile remember that awesome Stevie Wonder song and that it was Halle Berry’s first film role:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re interested in talking about how gender, race, and interracial romance play out in this film and we’re curious about how people will receive the film 20 years later – especially a Brooklyn audience who will know why it’s particularly relevant that Angie Tucci (Annabella Sciorra) is not only white, “H-bomb,” says Cyrus (Spike Lee), but from Bensonhurst, “Megaton bomb!”  Reading this New York Times review of the film from 1991 brings you back to that time.

Join Imani Perry, author of Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop and More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States;

Historian Renee Romano, author of Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America and co-editor of The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory;

And Michele Wallace, film critic, daughter of artist Faith Ringgold, and author of Black Macho and The Myth of The Superwoman and Dark Designs and Visual Culture in a conversation after the screening.

This event is co-presented by BAMcinématek.

Jungle Fever 20 Years Later
Tuesday, 11/15/2011 7PM

BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene
$12 / $7 for BAM and BHS Members

UPDATE:  Check out this Op-Ed on Jungle Fever & Harlem’s Identity Crisis from THIRTEEN’s MetroFocus.

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Museums and the Common Core: What’s Your Role?

Written by Todd Florio on October 31st, 2011

Last Tuesday, Brooklyn Historical Society hosted the New York Museum Educators Roundtable (NYCMER) in an event dubbed “Museums and the Common Core: What’s Your Role?” The event was open to NYCMER members and the public and the audience wound up being museum educators from across New York and beyond. Common Core refers to the new Common Core Learning Standards which are being rolled out by the State of New York and the NYCDOE.

BHS President Deborah Schwartz welcomes NYCMER and friends.

The night began with an introduction by our fearless leader, Deborah Schwartz who came to BHS after having been the Deputy Director for Education at The Museum of Modern Art and Vice Director for Education and Program Development at Brooklyn Museum. Deborah’s leadership at BHS always ensures that education is part of the institutional thinking process at every juncture. 

NYCMER Common Core Panel

After Deborah’s intro a panel of people who’ve had hands-on experience working in the implementation of the Common Core gave short “elevator speeches” or explanations about their roles. Moderator Dr. Rhonda Bondie shared a powerpoint presentation which is available here. Jody Madell also shared a powerpoint which is here.

This student response to a Van Gogh painting was popular with the crowd. The slide accompanied a lecture by Karen Rosner of the NYCDOE Office of Arts and Special Projects, which is a component of the Office of School Programs and Partnerships

One way NYCMER looked to connect this event to the national dialogue about the Common Core (which has been adopted by all but two states) was to live tweet the event. You don’t have to be signed up for twitter to see that the hashtag “#CommonCore” is replete with links to rich resources for educators.

NYCMER Intern Rebecca Mir Live Tweeting the Event from the Back Row

Throughout the night, Rhonda had us break into pairs or small groups to work through some of the tough concepts around the implementation of the Common Core. What follows are some of the ideas that were shared out by those groups.

 

  • Museum visits would build the seven attributes of college and career readiness.
  • Museums are a great resource for “stuff” that can be the basis for inquiry education
  • Museum educators can adopt a shared responsibility for students’ literacy with classroom teachers across grade levels and subject areas.
  • Museums can allow students the opportunities to make a claim about history, art, science, etc., find evidence to back it up, and share their reasoning.
  • Museums can be part of in-depth, project-based learning that draws on the classroom experience, independent conclusions, and the museum visit experience.
 

  • In support of teachers adopting Common Core, museums provide social spaces and broader settings for all learners, especially independent, inquiry-driven investigation.
  • Museums can support common core by encouraging critical thinking through inquiry-based learning, providing pre and post visit curriculum materials that build skills to support common core and encourage classroom support for on-site museum programs, and create interdisciplinary programs drawing on and incorporating multiple subject areas.

  • The Common Core is a great way to instigate better use of museum environments and encourage museum and school educators to take advantage of the content rich resources that support development of observation, questioning, research, synthesis and analysis, presentations skills, and multiple perspectives and help build deep understanding.
  • Inquiry-based learning leads to deeper and more complex understanding, critical thinking, and observational skills.
  • Common Core is about understanding versus just knowing.
  • Museum educators can help make the connections between our museum collections and the classroom.
 

  • Through professional development activities, museums can introduce curriculum materials and test them on teachers to help ensure that teachers understand how to use them.
  • Literacy is everyone’s responsibility; museums can help students construct meaning rather than absorb information.
  • Museums can collaborate with teachers, inquiry teams, and school communities to be a part of (and contributor to) common core’s implementation.
  • Museums provide a forum to apply the Common Core Standards in multiple literacies.

Different Perspectives from the Panelists Helped Contextualize the Common Core - (L to R) Karen Rosner (NYCDOE); James Short (AMNH); Jodi Madell (Lyons Community School); Cynthia Harris-Frederick (NYCDOE)

Finally, BHS Education Assistant Samantha Gibson took a stab at combining all of these great ideas into one “elevator speech” about museums educators role(s) in helping ensure that the implementation of the Common Core is a success:
As museum educators, our role in the implementation of the Common Core Standards is to adopt a shared responsibility for students’ literacy and education with classroom teachers across grade levels and subject areas.  Museum visits and museum-based classroom activities can be a vital part of in-depth, project-based learning that draws on the classroom curriculum, students’ independent conclusions, and the museum visit experience.
Museums can also support common core by continually encouraging critical thinking skills through inquiry-based learning, developing pre- and post-visit curriculum materials that build skills to support Common Core and encourage classroom support for museum tours and programs.  Finally, museum educators can continue to help make connections between our museum collections and the classroom to promote optimal use of these resources by students and teachers.
Special thanks to Rhonda Bondie and all of the panelists who generously volunteered their time to advance the field. Extra special thanks to BHS Education Intern Alex Kenyon who ran AV throughout the evening all of the great NYCMER board members who helped put the event together.

 

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“We Live in Brooklyn, Baby”

Written by Patricia Glowinski on July 29th, 2011

Several weeks ago I attended the Roy Ayers concert at SummerStage (here’s the live performance) in Central Park. It was a gorgeous evening, with a crowd that probably represented six of the seven continents. When Ayers played Harry Whitaker‘s song, We Live in Brooklyn, Baby (originally recorded on Ayers’ 1971 album, He’s Coming), everyone knew it. The entire audience sang in unison “We live in Brooklyn, baby. We’re trying to make it, baby. We wanna make it, baby. We’re gonna make it, baby.” (link to the 1971 version)

It was an amazing feeling when we–people from Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island…people from what looked to be everywhere and beyond–shared with each other our vision of Brooklyn. You could feel it too. Everyone who sang that song knew Brooklyn–had a connection to it in their own way. It started me thinking about the idea of Brooklyn. How has people’s ideas of what Brooklyn is and what it represents changed over the years? Who influenced/is influencing the idea of what Brooklyn is? Who is defining it?

So far, while working on the CLIR project here at BHS, I’ve come across many different ideas of what Brooklyn is and how it should be remembered. Our archival, photography, oral history, and map collections are filled with people’s ideas of Brooklyn. Further, I’m not the only one thinking about what and who makes Brooklyn, Brooklyn. Currently at BHS, we have an excellent exhibit that explores the idea of Brooklyn–Inventing Brooklyn: People, Places, Progress. The March/April 2011 issue of City Limits Magazine also explored the idea of Brooklyn, or rather how we define Brooklyn. And last night, at the Skylight Gallery located within Restoration Plaza, a new exhibit opened, Crown Heights Gold: Examining Race Relations and Healing in Crown Heights, that explores various views of one neighborhood in Brooklyn and one event that took place there, the Crown Height Riots of 1991. (Note: BHS is also hosting an event with the curator of Crown Heights Gold, Dexter Wimberly, and two of the artists from the exhibit on August 11, 2011; for more on Crown Heights, see BHS’s oral history collection: Crown Heights Oral History-Listen To This)

If you too are interested in exploring, examining, and defining the past, present, and future of Brooklyn, you can do your own research at BHS in the Othmer Library (Wed. through Fri. 1-5pm or by appointment). In the meantime, here are some examples of how Brooklyn is represented in our collections.

In the late 1960s/early 1970s Newsweek photojournalist/photographer Bernard Gotfryd shot these photographs of East New York, Crown Heights, and Fort Greene.

Kids in window, East New York. Photograph by Bernard Gotfryd, circa 1965. From the Bernard Gotfryd color slides and photographs, V1987.003 (Object ID # V1987.3.6)

 

Clean laundry, Crown Heights. Photograph by Bernard Gotfryd, circa 1965. From the Bernard Gotfryd color slides and photographs (V1987.003; Object ID #1987.3.17)

 

Street scene, Fort Greene. Photograph by Bernard Gotfryd, circa 1965. From the Bernard Gotfryd color slides and photographs (V1987.003; Object ID #1987.3.14)

Baseball seems to be in the blood of Brooklynites. Our collections definitely support this.

Actor, professional athlete, and Brooklyn son Chuck Connors (1921-1991) played baseball for the Bay Ridge Celtics before he went on to play for the Montreal Royals (the Dodgers minor league affiliate team at the time), the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Los Angeles Angels (then still a farm team), and the Chicago Cubs. (Oh yeah, he also played professional basketball for the Boston Celtics the first year the team was established in 1946…all before he went on to have a 40 year career as an actor).

Chuck Connors in his Bay Ridge Celtics uniform at Ebbets Field, 1938. From the Chuck Connors photographs (V1987.012; Object ID #V1987.12.9)

Ralph Irving Lloyd (1865-1969) was a Brooklyn ophthalmologist (actually, quite renowned in the field) and, lucky for us, a really good amateur photographer who took this early photograph of Brooklyn baseball.

Chicago v. Brooklyn. Albert Peter "Lefty" Leifield pitching, ball in air, circa 1912. From the Ralph Irving Lloyd lantern slides (V1981.015; Object ID #V1981.15.204)

The BHS archival collections contain many great family collections that tell of Brooklyn from each family’s individual and unique perspective. The Mulford family lived in the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood at 240 Hawthorne Street (the house is still there). Their family photograph collection dates from circa 1880 to 1930 and, of course, includes a baseball photo or two or three.

Oldest Mulford son (?) in his Kensington AC baseball uniform, circa 1900. From the Mulford family photograph collection (V1974.010; Object ID #V1974.10.68)

You can view these photographs and many others via our image database in the library. Some photographs are available online (with more to come), and there is the rest of our approximately 2000 linear feet of archival collections to research. Come, explore, research, examine, define…”cause we live in Brooklyn, baby.”

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Events, Exhibitions, Hidden Collections, Library & Archives, Oral History | 2 Responses »
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