Today our office is closed in observance of the Juneteenth Holiday, which over the last thirty years has gained "prominence as an African American celebration of freedom and heritage," writes journalist Afi-Odelia Scruggs. (Scruggs also dispels five myths about Juneteenth). Originally celebrated as the anniversary of when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued orders to free enslaved people in Texas on June 19, 1865 (almost two years after the Emancipation Proclamation), the holiday is receiving additional attention this year amid protests against police brutality and racial violence.
This morning we visited the #BlackLivesMatter mural on Fulton Street between Marcy and Tompkins Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Artists and local residents will add to the mural names of those killed due to racial violence in the US. “We would hope that this would be a plaza where we can come and gather, and really have conversations about the future,” Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr. tells CBS New York. “And really just a focal point for the change that we seek.”
Many are calling for Juneteenth to be a federal holiday. “Recognizing Juneteenth as a national holiday would be a small gesture compared with the greater social needs of black people in America,” musician and entrepreneur Usher writes. “But it can remind us of our journey toward freedom, and the work America still has to do.” He adds: “As we celebrate today, let’s stay open to possibility. Let’s support black-owned businesses today and every day. Let’s uplift our resilient history. Let’s honor our people. Happy Juneteenth, America.”
OY/YO
Brooklyn-based artist Deborah Kass celebrates the diversity of New York City with her colossal sculpture OY/YO. The bright yellow, aluminum letters sit at over eight feet tall and after an earlier stay near Brooklyn Bridge are now at the North 5th Street Pier along the Brooklyn, Williamsburg waterfront. (The letters are even visible from the Empire State Building, which in turn can also be seen through the O!). The “YO” refers to both the Spanish, “I am,” and urban slang, while “OY” is a common Yiddish word to express woe or exasperation. Kass views these terms as equally important, symbolizing the “melting pot” of New York City. The artist tells Artnet: “The thing about this piece is it’s about so many communities coming together, and that’s what I hope people take from it.”
10 Street Photographers of New York
We love photography. Weegee and André Kertész are two favorites and ever since we saw the photographs of Vivian Maier, the great street photographer who lived and worked in Chicago (the documentary about her is fascinating), we've been following more and more street photography on Tumblr, Instagram, and elsewhere on the web. Here we thought we'd take a look at ten photographers working today who focus on our great city of New York, which seems to provide endless inspiration.
Read moreWelcome to the New Ellis Island
“Through the blue door, please.”
This line from the movie Brooklyn, which incidentally we highly recommend, is said by an American immigration official at Ellis Island to Eilis Lacey (played wonderfully by Saoirse Ronan) after her long and uncomfortable boat trip to America. After Eilis is processed at immigration, and as she makes her way to the blue doors, we see behind those doors a bright and heavenly light shining down, signifying hope and new opportunities in America.
Ellis Island, where those blue doors welcomed immigrants for many years, is one of the most famous American immigration landmarks. This tiny island off the southeast tip of Manhattan served as the nation’s first federal immigration processing center from 1892 to 1954, and millions of Americans (including me) can trace their heritage to ancestors who first arrived here. The National Park Service recently opened the newly-renovated and expanded Ellis Island Museum after extensive damage by Hurricane Sandy, and I decided to check it out.
Read moreMy Immigration Story
I’m an American Jew, the kind that bleeds first for the Constitution, the Knicks, rock ‘n’ roll, and Levi’s blue jeans, and second, for “the old country” as my father used to call it. I was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland, but I’ve always felt the breath of my ancestry on my neck. My immigration experience is second-hand, one borrowed from my parents and their parents before them and so on and so forth. From Exodus to exile to Ellis Island—that is my family’s Jewish experience.
Read moreLocked Away
Coney Island Dreamland
Nicknamed Cy, this sculpted Cyclops head hung above the Spook-A-Rama in the 1950s in Coney Island.
While summer seems a long way off now in the midst of an unpredictable and cruel winter (yesterday, twenty-five mile-per-hour bone chilling winds), Brooklyn Museum's exhibit, Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008, will remind you of warmer and sunnier weather soon to come. This colorful and fun show, the first major exhibition to explore the kaleidoscopic visual record of this iconic beach, documents the "historic destination’s beginnings as a watering hole for the wealthy, its transformation into a popular beach resort and amusement mecca, its decades of urban decline culminating in the closing of Astroland, and its recent revival as a vibrant and growing community." Featuring numerous artistic styles and subjects, the exhibit includes everything from 19th century paintings of the Coney Island shore by William Merritt Chase and John Henry Twachtman to iconic photographs and videos by Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Weegee, as well as contemporary works by Daze and Swoon. See it now before it closes March 13 and remember what George C. Tilyou, a prominent Coney Island developer, said: "If Paris is France, then Coney Island, between June and September, is the world."
My Immigration Story
Growing up, I never felt incredibly “American.” Though I never heard a family member speak a language other than English, and we had no relationships with relatives in the “old countries,” three of my four grandparents were first generation Americans and there was always a great deal of talk of being Swedish (on my father’s side) and Norwegian (on my mother’s).
Read moreBattle of the Boroughs: Tacos
New York City has a lot of restaurants. Some of them are pretty good; some of them are terrible. Since we love food and we love New York City, we’d thought it be interesting to have a food “borough off” between Brooklyn and Queens. The question: which borough has the better tacos? To achieve this important but ultimately impossible task (there are so many tacos to try even in just these two boroughs) Joseph and Carolyn sampled numerous places in their respective boroughs and out of these picked a winner for the other to try. Then they each decided: which is the best? The answer might surprise you.
Read moreMy Immigration Story
A series of posts by Daryanani & Bland staff sharing their immigration stories—how they (or their families) came to America and/or how they came to work in the immigration law field.
The stories of people’s cultural backgrounds, how they came to America, and the cultural traditions they brought with them are fascinating to me. That’s part of why I became an immigration attorney and why my own family’s immigration story is one that I have thoroughly explored.
My mother’s side of the family comes from England through a line that can be traced back to the earliest American settlers, including a Francis Drake (who our family thinks may be a descendent of the Sir Francis Drake but have yet to confirm) who settled in the colony of New Hampshire. An alleged religious dispute with the Puritans caused him to move his family further south. With multiple generations of my family living in Connecticut, it’s ironic that I was already living in Brooklyn, NY when my mother and aunt decided to start a genealogy research project and discovered that my great-great-great-great-grandfather Theodore Drake spent most of his life in Brooklyn, NY and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery—only blocks from where I live now. Theodore Drake turned out to be an interesting character. If I were on the show Finding Your Roots (if it ever comes back on the air—thanks Ben Affleck and Henry Louis Gates Jr.!) he would surely be the character they focus on (apart from Sir Francis Drake).
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