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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.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Events, Oral History, Public Programs | 1 Response »
Tags: BAM, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bensonhurst, CBBG, Crossing Borders Bridging Generations, Fort Greene, Spike Lee

“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 »
Tags: Archives, baseball, Bernard Gotfryd, Chuck Conners, Crown Heights, Dexter Wimberly, East New York, Exhibitions, Fort Greene, Oral History, Photography Collection, Roy Ayers, street photograpy

Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Flatbush Avenue Extension, ca. 1925

Written by Emily Reynolds on June 15th, 2011

Flatbush Avenue Extension, ca. 1925, v1973.5.1257; Photography Collection; Brooklyn Historical Society.

This photograph shows bustling Flatbush Avenue Extension from an elevated rail platform at Fulton Street and Nevins Street. One can see from this photo that transportation around Brooklyn became much easier in the first quarter of the 20th century, as trolleys, el lines, and cars replaced horses and horse-drawn vehicles.

The Fulton Street Elevated was one of the earliest el lines, opening in 1888 and expanding through the early 1900s. Service on the Fulton Street Elevated was partially shut down in 1940 between Fulton Ferry and Rockaway Avenue, and the rest of the line closed permanently in 1956. More photos of the line, as well as detailed information about its history, are available at NYCSubway.org.

Each Thursday BHS emails a photograph of the week exclusively to our eNews subscribers. These images are culled from our collection of more than 50,000 photographs of Brooklyn and the New York City area. The photographs are also tweeted by BHS and displayed on our blog in a running series. Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery. Use this database to search for individual photographs. Currently a small number of our images are available online, but we regularly add new photographs. You can also visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Fri, 1-5 p.m. to search through our entire collection of images.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 3 Responses »
Tags: Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene, Photo of the Week, Photographs, Photography Collection

Memories of MetroTech

Written by Sady on February 24th, 2011

Image thanks to poly.edu

We were sad to learn that George Bugliarello, president emeritus of Polytechnic Institute of NYU, passed away last week. BHS interviewed Dr. Bugliarello (1927-2011) in 2007 for the oral history archives. The interview is available for listening in the Othmer Libary (accession #2008.031.5). You can read his obituary in The New York Times (2/22/2011).

In his oral history interview, Dr. Bugliarello talks about his role in conceiving the redevelopment of Downtown Brooklyn (near Poly) in the 1980s to create a research park now known as MetroTech.

Interestingly, BHS just added more memories of the early days of MetroTech to the oral history collection last Friday when we interviewed Colonel Marc Anthony Garcia in Fort Greene on the day before his promotion ceremony held at his parents’ brownstone. Col. Garcia was active in the Brooklyn political scene in the early 1980s. He travels widely for his career but always returns to Fort Greene and he remarks on what it is like to see the completion of MetroTech, once just an idea, and other development in the neighborhood. You can see more photos of Col. Garcia’s promotion ceremony on Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Patch and an oral history interview with Col. Garcia’s mother Yolande Garcia is also included in the BHS archives.

Image by Stefano Giovanini for Fort Greene Clinton HIll Patch

Posted in Oral History | No Responses »
Tags: Col. Marc Garcia, Fort Greene, George Bugliarello, MetroTech, Oral History Highlights

Fort Greene / Clinton Hill Audio Tour

Written by Sady on January 13th, 2011

Photo by Muemaphoto.com

To complement the Fort Greene / Clinton Hill Neighborhood & Architectural History Guide by Francis Morrone, the Brooklyn Historical Society presents a new audio tour of Fort Greene / Clinton Hill.

The tour is hosted by author, filmmaker, and longtime Fort Greene resident Nelson George. It features excerpts from oral history interviews from the Brooklyn Historical Society’s collections: artists, community activists, and longtime residents both past and present including professional basketball player Albert King, WNYC’s Jad Abumrad, and former Freedomways managing editor Esther Cooper Jackson.

Historian Francis Morrone tells us about landmarks like the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument and Underwood Park as well as the poet Marianne Moore. And we learn more about keystones of the neighborhood like BAM, Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, and Pratt Institute from the inside.

You can listen here, or download the audio tracks via iTunes: Search the iTunes Store for the free Brooklyn Historical Society podcast.

Fort Greene Park: Now the park is beautiful and safe, but for residents who remember the 1970s and 80s, it wasn’t always that way.