Digital Commons Network^™

Lionel Spencer Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summarized by Alan C. Ventura

In this heartfelt interview, Carlos Rico of the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project meets with Lionel Spencer to discuss the impact that COVID-19 has had on his life as a son and father. Spencer highlights his close relationship with his brothers and the challenges they have faced together, expressing admiration for their bond and hoping to have a similar connection with his own family going forward. Both Rico and Spencer take a deep dive into the challenges people face in adjusting to the lack of social interactions and their interest in understanding the impact of …

Helen Diane Foster Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summarized by Alan C. Ventura

In this extensive interview, Helen Diane Foster talks about her upbringing across different areas of the Bronx, her relationship with her father, Reverend T. Wendell Foster—the first black elected official to serve the Bronx—and her time spent on the city council, in turn becoming the first black woman elected to that position within Bronx County. Listen in as she and Dr. Mark Naison relive this monumental time in Bronx history, which most notably involved Foster’s attempts to stop the seizure of Macombs Dam Park for Yankee Stadium.

Patricia Payne Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Disciplines

African American Studies

Abstract

Summary by Jocelyn Defex.

This interview for the Bronx African American History Project was with Patricia Payne, a professor at Monroe College. She and Dr. Mark Naison discuss her family history and experiences growing up in the Patterson houses in the South Bronx.

Payne’s family moved to the Bronx from Harlem in 1949 and settled in the Patterson houses. Payne’s parents were from South Carolina; Her father worked as a taxman and auxiliary policeman, while her mother had limited formal education and worked occasionally as a domestic helper.

Patricia's memories of the Paterson houses began …

Hochberg, Herbert, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Herbert Hochberg, born in 1930, spent the first 10 years of his life in economic hardship because of the Great Depression. Both his parents migrated from Western Ukraine and lived in the Bronx since their marriage in 1928. They took in an infant to make end’s meet, and after the war his father went into the business of building two-family homes in the Bronx, while his mother stayed at home. Hochberg grew up across from Bronx Park until 1939 when his family moved to the newly developed Northeast Bronx near Allerton Avenue and Pelham Parkway. He describes the area as …

Rothstein, Richard, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Richard Rothstein, born in 1942, was born in Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, and lived on Webster Avenue with his parents who initially moved to the Bronx from Manhattan. Rothstein’s mother was a Hungarian immigrant, and he spoke Hungarian at home until the age of eight. The family later moved to Harrison Avenue, where he remembers having many Italian and Irish neighbors but very few Jewish ones. However, as Rothstein’s family was not religious, their lack of Jewish neighbors was not a bother. Rothstein remembers being bullied as a kid by some of his Irish and Italian peers and recalls …

Yelloz, Eva, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Eva Yelloz was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and came to the Bronx in 1949 with her parents. They lived in the Melrose neighborhood in the Bronx, on Avenue St. John. Her mother was 19 when World War Two began, working as an apprentice in a non-Jewish home, and she heard her family was in the Warsaw ghetto. Her father had been killed and the family was sent to Treblinka, but she jumped off the train, escaping and being nursed back to life by a non-Jewish family before becoming a partisan for the remainder of the war. …

Sweet, Harry, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Harry Sweet grew up on Boston Road and moved with his family to the public housing projects near Crotona Park and the Cross Bronx Expressway as a teenager. He remembers finding it impressive as a child that kids got to cross the street to Herman Ritter Junior High School, across from their apartment building, by themselves and how important it was when he got to do it. He walked to PS 50 and would walk home and back for lunch. Sweet remembers his elementary school class as mixed Jewish, Italian, and black, but as most of the Jewish and Italian …

Jacobs, Stuart, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Stuart Jacobs’ parents were both born in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, his mother living in the Pelham Parkway area of the Bronx and his father living in Brooklyn. Born in 1952, Jacobs lived in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood, which he remembers as 98% Jewish, until he graduated from college and moved to Queens. He remembers a close knit neighborhood, with many people he remains friends with to this day, and everything in the neighborhood being shut down for the Jewish holidays. He played sports in the elementary school schoolyard and in the street, and consistently …

Becker, Ann Joy, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Ann Joy Becker, born 1959, grew up outside of Parkchester on Thieriot Avenue in the Archer Stratton Co-op. Her grandparents, immigrants from Eastern Europe, were peddlers on Pelham Parkway. She attended PS 102 and Columbus High School, because her mother did not want her to go to James Monroe High School because it was considered a bad school and dangerous for a white girl. The co-op and surrounding area was mostly Jewish and Italian, with minorities on the other side of the highway. Becker explains there were more issues with other white ethnic groups than with minorities at that time. …

The Survival Of Dulles: Reflections On A Second Century Of Influence, Michael M. Canaris

Religion

This collection, marking the centenary of Avery Dulles’s birth, makes an entirely distinctive contribution to contemporary theological discourse as we approach the second century of the cardinal’s influence, and the twenty-first of Christian witness in the world. Moving beyond a festschrift, the volume offers both historical analyses of Dulles’s contributions and applications of his insights and methodologies to current issues like immigration, exclusion, and digital culture. It includes essays by Dulles’s students, colleagues, and peers, as well as by emerging scholars who have been and continue to be indebted to his theological vision and encyclopedic fluency in the ecclesiological …

Boletín V.22 (2017), Fordham University Latin American And Latino Studies Institute

Boletín (Fordham University. Latin American and Latino Studies Institute)

No abstract provided.

William J. Richardson, S.J.: Reflections In Memoriam, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Fr. William J. Richardson, S.J., was born in Brooklyn, New York on the 2nd of November, 1920. He died at the Jesuit Campion Health Center, in Weston, Massachusetts, on the 10th of December, 2016.

Leo O’Donovan, S.J., Richard Kearney, and Jeffrey Bloechl, each in different ways gathered the diffusions of mourning friends, students, colleagues, patients, and admirers of the late William J. Richardson, via email over the days leading up to and after his funeral.

As Bill was one of the founding members of the Heidegger Circle (Penn State, 1967) and was present at the first conference on Heidegger’s thought …

Ivan Illich’S Medical Nemesis And The ‘Age Of The Show’: On The Expropriation Of Death, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

What Ivan Illich regarded in his Medical Nemesis as the ‘expropriation of health’ is exacerbated by the screens all around us, including our phones but also the patient monitors and increasingly the iPads that intervene between nurse and patient. To explore what Illich called the ‘age of the show’, this essay uses film examples, like Creed and the controversial documentary Vaxxed, and the television series Nurse Jackie. Rocky’s cancer in his last film (and his option to submit to chemo to ‘fight’ cancer) highlights what Illich along with Petr Skrabanek called the ‘expropriation of death’. In contrast to what Illich …

Rivieccio, Anthony, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Born in 1960, Anthony Rivieccio moved to the Morris Heights section of the Bronx after his parents divorce with his mother and two sisters at twelve years old. Rivieccio recalls the racial tensions that developed in the South Bronx as the demographics changed leading to gangs. Rivieccio himself joined the gang The Devil’s Disciples. During the time he lived in the Bronx, Rivieccio remembers Fordham Road as an area of entertainment including arcades and movie houses, as well as a department store he would reluctantly visit with his mother on Saturday mornings.

As the fires moved closer to his location …

Belton, Frank Interview 1, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Frank Belton was raised in the Morrisania neighborhood of the South Bronx from the time that he was 9 years old. He was born in Harlem, then later his family moved around a bit before settling in a home on Chisholm Street in 1948. Although he had lived in the city when he was younger, he had his first experiences with Puerto Ricans when he moved to the South Bronx. Chisholm Street had a fairly mixed population, but his schools were mostly made up of Puerto Ricans. He says that this mixing of racial backgrounds did not affect relationships between …

Lewis, Doreen, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Doreen Lewis

Interviewer: Mark Naison

Summarized by Alice Stryker

Both of Doreen’s parents came from the south, her mother from Virginia and her father from North Carolina. Her father is Cherokee Indian and met her mother in Virginia. When he returned from WWII, her parents moved to the Bronx. She discusses the way her father identified himself, whether it was as a Native American or as a light-skinned black. She claims his identity shifted from one to the other as he got older. Her father worked for Swift and Company, who were involved with the meat business.

Although her …

Dukes, Nathan, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

In the interview granted by Nathan Dukes to AAHP, the interviewee discusses the community life style in the Patterson Houses during 50s, social issues such as drugs, numbers runners, religion, racism within the African American community in Patterson Houses.

In the first part of the interview, Nathan Dukes talked about the closely relationship of all families living in Paterson Houses and the kind of economy that the community was involved at the specific time he covered all the occupations that young people, fathers, and mothers that were tenants of the Paterson Houses were involved. According to him, while the kids …

Hanson, Avis Interview 2, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Avis Hanson 2^nd Interview

Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison, Natasha Lightfoot, Patricia Wright

Summarized by Alice Stryker

She begins by talking about her West Indian heritage. Her mother came from Antigua and her father came from Jamaica. Her mother and father met in New York City and got married shortly there after. The family moved to the Bronx, which she discussed in the first interview. When Avis was young, her mother sent for her aunt to live with them. However, they did not have good relations with the rest of her extended family. Her father’s Jamaican family did not …

Payne, Patricia And Russell, Marilyn, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Patricia Payne and Marilyn Russell are both college professors who grew up in the Patterson Houses – a housing project. As a child in the 1950s, Marilyn moved there from Harlem with her family: her mother, a stay-at-home mom, her father, a shipping clerk, and her siblings. Her parents were from the South, and she recalls the housing projects as very safe and clean, as well as very diverse.

Both Marilyn remember attending after school programs at their public schools, being supervised by tutors of the same sex, as well as having librarians read to children at the library. Meanwhile, …

Crier, Arthur, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Arthur Crier

Interviewer: Mark Naison

Summarized by Concetta Gleason

Crier is an organizer of the Morissania Review and a leading figure in Doo-Wop and Rhythm and Blues in the Morrisania community. Crier was born in 1935 in Harlem, but raised on Prospect Ave in the Bronx. His mother was from the South, specifically North Carolina, which is where he currently resides. He attended a mixed elementary school and also played street games with the other children on the block. The schools were very good and teachers genuinely cared for their students. The neighborhood was safe and the families looked …

Wade, Chrystal, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Chrystal Wade moved to the Bronx from Harlem when she was five years old after moving from the Harlem River Drive projects to Detroit and back to New York. Chrystal’s mother gave birth to her at age 18, but she was adopted by her grandparents at age five, as they wanted to make sure she would have a good structured family life. Upon moving into a five-story walkup at 532 East 157^th Street and St. Ann’s avenue, her father and brother-in-law almost immediately had an altercation with the neighbors because her family was the second black family in the …

Simmons, Victoria, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Victoria Simmons-Good grew up in the Patterson Houses. Her parents moved to the Bronx from Harlem for the affordable housing options offered in the Bronx. He earliest memory is from attending PS 18, which was located near her building. On her way to school, she and her friends would always stop at a Candy Store and eat sweets for breakfast. She also remembers attending a day camp during the summer with fellow children living in the Patterson Houses. She also remembers the music her parents listened to, which was mostly Motown and doo-wop.

She grew up in the Patterson houses …

Smith, Candace, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Candace Smith was born and raised in the Bronx. From what she recalls her family lived on the top story of a two family home in the Tremont neighborhood until moving to the Patterson Houses in 1957 when she was around age 8. The home in Tremont was in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and she does not recall there being any other black families in the neighborhood. On the other hand, when they moved to the Patterson Houses, she does not recall any white families in the neighborhood there. Both of her parents had also grown up in the Bronx, …

Carr, Sylvia, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Racial dynamics of the Bronx was the central theme of this interview. There was a consensus shared amongst each interviewee that the Bronx during their childhoods was a racially heterogeneous area. The area known as Fish Avenue were Sylvia Carr grew up was primarily composed of very well off blacks. However, the blacks who lived in this area were lighter skinned as each interviewee pointed out. Each participant acknowledged a certain light skinned v. dark skinned power dynamic. Indeed, some of those interviewed were able to “pass” and were often mistaken for white. In addition to the presence of blacks …

Boletín V.20:No.1 (2014), Fordham University Latin American And Latino Studies Institute

Boletín (Fordham University. Latin American and Latino Studies Institute)

No abstract provided.

Milagros, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Milagros is a former teacher in the Bronx who immigrated to the United States from Cuba. In her interview, she discussed her experience escaping from Castro’s government as well as the manner in which society had shaped her identity.

Prior to living in the United States, Milagros resided in Cuba for 20 years. She stated that in Cuba, race was not as important as it was in America. Instead, status was determined by which family you had been born into. However, she did say that neighbors in Cuba were like relatives to her family, and recounted incidents where she had …

Schrödinger And Nietzsche On Life: The Eternal Recurrence Of The Same, Babette Babich

Working Papers

Schrödinger and Nietzsche on Life: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same

This essay explores Schrödinger’s reflections on measurement, consciousness, and personal identity. Schrödinger’s, What Is Life? is read together with Nietzsche’s own reflections on the same question, in his aphorism What is Life? together with Nietzsche’s teaching of the eternal return of the selfsame. Schrödinger’s own thinking is influenced as is Nietzsche’s by Schopenhauer but Schrödinger also has the Vedic tradition as this influenced Schopenhauer himself in view.

The Ister: Between The Documentary And Heidegger’S Lecture Course Politics, Geographies, And Rivers, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The Ister, the 2004 documentary by the Australian scholars and videographers, David Barison, a political theorist, and Daniel Ross, a philosopher, appeals to Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne «Der Ister»and the video takes us «backward» as the river flows: beginning from the Danube’s delta where it ends in the sea and «journeying» with it to its source in the Alps.

the value of the Barison/Ross documentary for both political theory and philosophy is its illustration of the technological incursions or assaults on the river itself, that is to say: its representation of the ‘uses’ and hence …

Hill, Elighu Eldrid, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Eldrid Hill

Interviewer: Dr. Mark Niason, Ricardo Soto-Lopez, Dana Driskell

Summarized by Sheina Ledesma

Eldrid Hill is a former lieutenant of the New York City Fire Department who has been a long time resident of both Harlem and the Bronx. He has also been deeply involved in local politics and urban planning and a member of Community Board 3 in the Bronx for several decades. Hill was born on July 12, 1928 in Harlem. His mother was from the Dutch side of the island of St. Martin while his father was from St. Kitts. His father was an alcoholic …

Cruse, Harrison Jr., Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Harrison Cruse, Jr.

Interviewer: Mark Naison

Summarized by Sheina Ledesma

Harrison Cruse, Jr. was born on August 10, 1935 in Morningside Heights, Harlem. His mother’s family was originally from Virginia and North Carolina but decided to move north during the 1920’s after experiencing an increasingly racist and violent climate due to activity by the Ku Klux Klan. His father was African American and Native American and had grown up on an Indian reservation with his mother in Roanoke Virginia. His father served in the First World War and later joined the Northwestern Railroad where he worked for many years. …