Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J. Cudahy

Transportation

Fifty years ago—on April 26, 1956—the freighter Ideal X steamed from Berth 26 in Port Newark, New Jersey. Flying the flag of the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, she set out for Houston with an unusual cargo: 58 trailer trucks lashed to her top deck.

But they weren’t trucks—they were steel containers removed from their running gear, waiting to be lifted onto empty truck beds when Ideal X reached Texas. She docked safely, and a revolution was launched—not only in shipping, but in the way the world trades. Today, the more than 200 million containers shipped every year are the lifeblood of …

Martre, Patricia And Alfaro, Almilicar, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Patty Dukes, birth name Patricia Marte, is a woman of Dominican descent. Her parents left the Dominican Republic to move to Puerto Rico where she was born.

At five years old, she moved to the the United States, the Bronx specifically. Because her father was a member of the military, her family was given the opportunity to move to the US much more easily than other families. She lived with her parents, sister, and “brother” – who is actually her cousin, but was adopted by her family as a brother.

Rephstar, whose actual name is Almilcar Alfaro, is a man …

Diaz, Rebel, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Rebel Diaz

Rodrigo Venegas - "RodStarz" b. 19 November 1979; Churchsea, England

Gonzalo Venegas - "G1" b. 14 February 1985; Chicago, Illinois

Teresita Ayala - "Lah Tere" b. 24 September 1979; Chicago, Illinois

Rebel Diaz is a hip-hop group living and working out of the Bronx. The individuals making up Rebel Diaz come from politically active families in Chicago. The Venegas brothers are sons of Chilean "exiles." Their parents were student activists of El Movimento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. After the CIA military coup that placed Augusto Pinochet as head of state, their father was sent to jail and their mother …

Rollins, Joseph Metz, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Reverend Joseph Metz Rollins, Jr. was born 8 September 1926 in Newport News, Virginia. He graduated high school in 1943. Although Reverend Rollins remembers that “even though I was in a segregated situation, I grew up being encouraged to participated and be involved…” (Pg. 5). During World War Two, Rev. Rollins entered the Jay C. Smith Seminary. He was ordained in 1950 as a Presbyterian minister, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.

In 1953, In Tallahassee, Florida, Rev. Rollins helped with the organization of the Southern Presbyterian Church. He met Martin Luther King, Jr. After two girls …

Mcgee, Mildred Interview 2, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

This interview gives insights into Judge McGee's personality and beliefs. He was a judge for fifteen years and heavily involved in community politics. Leroi Archible describes him as “firm and stern, but fair.” He did not like lawyers who “tried to be cute.” Family was very important to him, and he supported his nephew, Roger Wareham, who was accused of “ planning to overthrow the government … (but he) was talking about: justice and fairness.” Guliani was the prosecutor but he lost the case. Judge McGee believed he was innocent and was willing to stake his house on that. There …

Robinson, Robert, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Robert Robinson (b. 8/11/1943) is a former public health specialist for the Center for Disease Control. The son of a bartender father from West Virginia and a mother from Massachusetts, Robinson was born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, on Stebbins Ave. During this time, the Stebbins Ave neighborhood was inhabited mostly by blacks and Puerto Ricans, and the two cultures remained relatively aloof from one another. Robinson recalls that there was some limited gang activity in the area: some local toughs from the surrounding areas would sometimes rough up the young people on Stebbins Ave, which did not …

Walker, William, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

William Walker, also known as Billy Bang, is a jazz violinist who grew up in the Bronx.

He was born in Plateau, Alabama, right across the tracks from Mobile. His mother had him when she was seventeen, and soon after moved into an apartment with her sisters in Harlem on Lenox Avenue between 111^th and 112^th Street. She cleaned the houses of Jewish families who lived on the Grand Concourse. His birth date is uncertain, although he places it at approximately 1947. His uncle served as a father figure.

Walker attended elementary school at P.S. 170. He attended …

Bowman, Willie Interview 2, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

The following is a transcript of the Bronx African American History Project’s second interview with Mrs. Willie E.P. Bowman. Although she covers some of the same subjects in this interview with Dr. Purnell that she did in her first interview, she also delves more deeply into her work with the community as opposed to her career in social and correction work.

Born on November 30, 1931 in Montgomery, Alabama, Mrs. Willie Ella Paschal Bowman spent just the first two years of her life in what she proudly described as the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1933, she and …

Bowman, Willie Interview 1, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWERS: Brian Purnell

INTERVIEWEE: Mrs. Willie E.P. Bowman (Interview One)

SUMMARY BY: Andrew O’Connell

Born on November 30, 1931 in Montgomery, Alabama, Mrs. Willie Ella Paschal Bowman spent just the first two years of her life in what she proudly described as the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1933, she and her mother headed north to stay with Bowman’s great aunt in Harlem, part of the first wave of the Great Migration that would soon develop as one of the most significant movements of peoples that this country has ever seen. After earning three dollars a week as …

Rodriguez, Felix, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Felix Rodriguez (b. 7/9/1967) is a New York-born filmmaker. Both his parents are Puerto Rican. Rodriguez was born in East Harlem and was raised for the first 10 years of his life in Queens. At this time, his parents moved back to Puerto Rico, where Felix attended junior high and high school. Because his first language was English, Rodriguez had to pick up Spanish in Puerto Rico. His primary occupation in Puerto Rico was as an attendant for his father’s livestock, a job that he hated. Puerto Rico was constantly being inundated with American popular culture, and soon enough Felix …

Mcgee, Mildred Interview 1, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Mrs. Mildred McGee was born June 29, 1927 and married to Judge Hansel McGee. Also interviewed here are her daughter Dr. Elizabeth McGee and Mr. Leroi Archible. In the first session, Mrs. McGee provides details of her education, her parents’ backgrounds, living in Harlem, the Bronx, Washington DC and moving back to the Bronx. She also describes her husband’s childhood and his education. She attended an elementary school where there were no African-American teachers and she had only one African-American teacher in Junior High who taught Social Studies. The students also learned how to sew, cook and housekeeping at school. …

De La Luz, Caridad, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Caridad de la Luz, a.k.a. La Bruja

Interviewer: Oneka LaBennet

Date of Interview: October 23, 2007

Summarized by Alice Stryker

La Luz’s parents came from Puerto Rico and lived in New York city, where they met. She was born in the Bronx in 1973 and has lived in the Bronx her entire life. She spent most of her childhood living on Leland Avenue, which was racially mixed. Her father was a mechanic for Volkswagen and her mother was a teacher at Murry Bertgraum High School. She went to P.S. 100 for grade school and P.S. 71 for Junior High …

Dacosta, Linval, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWER: Mark Naison, Natasha Lightfoot

INTERVIEWEE: Linval DaCosta

SUMMARY BY: Patrick O’Donnell

Linval DaCosta is a supervisor in the New York City Housing Authority and a head organizer for the Cricket in the Bronx league. He was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1938 and came to the US on December 10, 1950, whereupon he joined his parents, who had already immigrated. He did his elementary-middle schooling in Harlem, attended Stuyvesant High, and then went to CUNY Baruch for college, where he was (and continues to be) a member of the NAACP. He grew up playing cricket and soccer in …

Boletín V.13:No.1 (2007), Fordham University Latin American And Latino Studies Institute

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

No abstract provided.

Hinds, Burmadine, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWER: Dr. Brian Purnell

INTERVIEWEE: Burmadine Hinds

SUMMARY BY: Andrew O’Connell

Burmadine Hinds was born on August 1, 1939 in Valhalla, New York, but moved to Williamsbridge at an early age after her mother shipped her South to live with foster parents. Recounting her early life in Williamsbridge, Hinds talk about a visible discrepancy between dark and light skinned black as far as social matters were concerned. Hinds recalls that the hue of one’s skin within the black community often dictated what church one went to and what social clubs one joined.

Hinds nostalgically describes the Northeast Bronx of the …

Wilkes, Quinton, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

One of the pioneering members of the African American Studies department at Fordham University, Dr. Quinton Wilkes was born in 1941 and raised in High Point, North Carolina. Living with his grandparents in the South, Wilkes would travel north every summer to stay with his mother and other family members residing in the Bronx, giving him a knowledge of the university at which he would later go on to have such a formidable role.

Wilkes remembrances of traveling by train every year from High Point to New York City provide interesting insight into Jim Crow segregation in the South toward …

Caines, Robert Jr., Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWER: Oneka LaBennett, Mark Naison

INTERVIEWEE: Robert Caines, Jr. (a.k.a DJ Flawless)

SUMMARY BY: Patrick O’Donnell

Robert Caines, Jr. (aka DJ Flawless) was born on January 23, 1983, and grew up in the Mott Haven Projects in the Bronx. He is the son of Robert Caines, Sr. (aka Rockin’ Rob.) At the time of interview, he was unemployed, but had recently been working for the Scratch DJ Academy. Robert, Jr. was raised by his mother and his grandmother. Although his father was often absent, Robert, Jr. became interested in hip-hop by listening to his father’s music tapes. His mother, …

Dacosta, Lisa, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Lucy Dacosta

Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison and Oneka LaBennett

Date of Interview: August 23, 2007

Summarized by Alice Stryker

Lucy was born in the South Bronx in 1967. Her paternal grandparents were from Jamaica and her grandmother was the matriarch of the family. Jamaican culture was very much a part of her upbringing. Her father worked for the Housing Authority.

She attended P.S. 28 for kindergarten and then transferred to St. Margaret Mary for several years. She enjoyed going to school there very much. She played with many of the kids of her neighborhood as well as with her …

Material Possessions And Religious Boundaries In Early Modern Poland, Magda Teter

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 1719 trial of two Jews from Brest (Brześć) accused of breaking into a Bernardine church and robbing a tomb of a prominent noble woman, raises questions of material possessions and religious boundaries. Among things stolen were clothes and textiles used in wrapping the coffin of the deceased woman. They were also one of the reasons that the robbery was discovered and the Jews were caught: some months following the robbery the daughters of the two Jewish robbers were spotted wearing dresses made of the stolen textiles. This case is certainly most notorious but it is not the only example …

Symbolic Clothes Marginality And Otherness Of Jews And New Christians As Reflected By Their Dress In Two Christian Texts, Nadia Zeldes

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Clothes in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period denoted legal status and social standing. Jews (and other minority and marginal groups) were distinguished by clothing regulations, sometimes supplemented by the wearing of a special badge. However, beyond custom and law, there were subtle cues that signaled marginality such as the wearing of certain fabrics and colours etc. In Mediterranean Europe, that is in Italy, Sicily and the Iberian kingdoms, Jews wore more or less the same fashions as the surrounding society though there were restrictions and distinguishing marks imposed by either the ruler and the Church or the …

Partis, Michael, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Michael’s grandmother came to New York in 1972. She was originally born in Honduras, and then moved to Belize. From there she moved to L.A and then finally settled in New York. Michael’s Grandmother is Garifuna. His mother was born in Belize and moved with his grandmother to the Bronx, where she met his father. His father was originally from Brooklyn and moved to the Bronx because of a disagreement he had with his family. When his parents met they were in their early 20’s. Growing up he barely saw his father.

He grew up on 165^th and Bryant …

The Estates Of A Jewish Merchant And Of A Rabbi In Seventeenth Century Venice, Bernard D. Cooperman, Benjamin Ravid

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

As is well known, the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV; Venetian State Archives) is among the largest in Europe, and contains much material dealing with the Jews of Venice. This includes inventories of the estates of Jews compiled for the purposes of implementing the will of the deceased, and very fortunately two inventories of the estates of arguably the two most prominent Jews of the first half of the sixteenth century, representing two completely different types of Jews, both of whom have been the subject of considerable scholarly attention, have been located and published in the original Italian. One …

An Inventory Of An Inquisitorial Prisoner's Possessions, Miriam Bodian

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presentation will describe how an inventory of an inquisitorial prisoner's possessions, routinely drawn up at the time of a prisoner's arrest, throws light on the material circumstances and consumption patterns of the prisoner and his/her family, as well as on the material milieu he/she inhabited. The inventory is that of Francisco Maldonado de Silva, a physician in the Viceroyalty of Peru, drawn up at the time of his arrest for judaizing in 1627.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Inventory of the possessions of the licentiate Francisco Maldonado de Silva (1627)

Click here to view video.

The Possessions Of Two Italian Jews At The End Of The 16th Century, Flora Cassen

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The brothers Lazaro and Angelo Nantua were moneylenders in Gavi, a town under Genoese dominion, during the second half of the sixteenth century. In 1592, Angelo got into a violent argument with the chancellor of the town. This incident started a series of legal proceedings against the brothers that went on for years. The two documents I choose are (1) an inventory of all their posessions made in 1592 by order of the doge in Genoa (2)a letter written by the local podesta in which he complaints that they do not wear the yellow hat and gives a detailed description …

Jewish Display Silver After The Age Of Exploration, Vivian Mann

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Although there is literature on the impact of the discovery of the Americas on the European silver supply and the production works in silver, no one has examined its impact on the commissioning of silver by hevrot, particularly the Hevrah Kaddisha, both for their own use and as donations to the synagogue. This paper will examine in what ways Jewish patronage was similar to those of guilds and Christian confraternities and it what ways they differed.

This presentation is for the following object(s):

• Beaker of the Burial Society of Worms. Johann Conrad Weiss (active 1699-1751), Jewish Museum in New York, …

The Phoenix, The Exodus And The Temple, Limor Mintz-Manor

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation investigates the symbols of the Sephardic congregation in Amsterdam, mainly the Phoenix and the Pelican that symbolize the resurrection of Jesus in catholic Christianity, alongside the unique exegesis by several congregants of the Exodus narrative. The analysis of the symbols, images and the architecture of the congregation's synagogue, shows that they had played a major role in the construction of the "new" identity of the congregation. By utilizing them the congregation established the "resurrection" narrative of the Sephardic Jewry and its new beginning in Amsterdam. The rich cultural background of these symbols and images, both in the Iberian …

The Image Of The Jewish Wedding In The Works Of Eighteenth Century German Hebraists, Shalom Sabar

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

A relatively considerable number of images pertaining to the Jewish wedding survived from medieval to early modern Germany. These are to be found in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, illustrated books of customs (Minhagim-Bücher), decorated Torah binders (Wimpeln), and selected wedding artifacts. However, the most captivating and curious visual evidence on the various stages and customs of the Jewish wedding in Germany is not found in Jewish sources but in the work of eighteenth century Christian Hebraists. Despite the clear anti-Semitic overtones in their work, the images inserted in their books provide rare and significant insights into Jewish practices, folk beliefs and …

Jewish Consumption And Material Culture In The Early Modern Period, Emw 2007

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

At the 2007 Early Modern Workshop, speakers discussed the representation of Jews and their way of life in art and the use of various types of images and objects by scholars trying to learn about Jewish rituals, customs, and culture: images from Christian sources (Shalom Sabar), beakers (Vivian Mann), cloth and textiles used to make parokhet (Rachel Greenblatt). Can symbols used in synagogues and books tell us much about the values of the Jewish community? What role did ideology play in public representations of the Jewish community (Limor Mintz-Manor)? Scholars discussed the usefulness and pitfalls of using inventory records, focusing …

Callender, Mike And Caines Jr., Robert And Caines, Robert And Howell, Melvin And Johnson, Keith, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Mike Callender (b. 1/21/1963) grew up in the Patterson Houses and was deeply involved in DJ culture. He had access to many records, so he was a great resource for DJs who were looking for fresh beats to spin with. He was also a friend of Robert Caines, Sr. (DJ Rockin’ Rob), and he also did some DJing himself.

Robert Caines, Jr. (DJ Flawless, b. 1/23/1983) grew up in the Mott Haven projects, near the Patterson Houses. He is DJ Rockin’ Rob’s son, and accordingly, was introduced to Djing at a very young age. He first started experimenting with a …

Will As Commitment And Resolve: An Existential Account Of Creativity, Love, Virtue, And Happiness, John Davenport

Philosophy & Theory

In contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In Will as Commitment and Resolve, Davenport argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires.

The concept of "projective motivation" is the central innovation in Davenport's existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the contrast between "eastern" and "western" attitudes toward assertive willing, Davenport traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from …