The Attention Surplus Podcast
How Slavery Built New York City
When we think of American slavery, New York is hardly the first place that comes to mind. But there was a time when nearly half of white families in NYC owned another human being--more than any other city in the Thirteen Colonies with the exception of Charleston, South Carolina. Not only did it rely on enslaved people for manual labor, New York was also a city built on the Triangle Trade. It grew rich largely thanks to its economic ties with the brutal sugar plantation economies of the West Indies. In the 19th century, was replaced with an even more profitable connection to the American South. So when the nation became divided over slavery in the 1850s, NYC fell firmly on the side of the Southern cotton planters. In this episode, we'll talk about the myriad ways in which chattel slavery played a crucial role in creating the city we know and love today.
Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part I)
Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part II)
Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part III)
Slums to Suburbs: The History of Irish New York (Part IV)
Jewish New York, Chapter I: Birth of an Aristocracy
Jewish New York, Chapter II: The Refugee Crisis
For centuries, the majority of the world's Jews had lived in small towns called shtetls in the countryside of Eastern Europe. These were isolated, tight-knit communities where the Torah reigned supreme. By the late 19th century, dissatisfaction had been growing among younger Jews about the poverty, the antisemitism, the lack of opporunity, and the narrow-mindedness of the shtetls. Then, in 1881, a series of violent pogroms broke out in Ukraine, forcing thousands of Jews to flee first to major cities nearby and then to America. This exodus only picked up steam in the coming decades as the long-simmering desire to leave the shtetls boiled over. In total, more than three million Jews fled Eastern Europe between 1881 and 1914, and the bulk of them ended up in New York City. Here, they were crammed into tiny tenements where they worked long hours sewing garments to stay alive. In this episode, I'll attempt to humanize this story by giving a detailed account of what the journey to America, and the new lives the immigrants established there, were like.
Jewish New York, Chapter III: Sweatshops, Settlement Houses, Secularism, and Socialism
The mass migration from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the slums of New York uprooted centuries-old patterns of Jewish life, so it's only natural that Jewish culture also underwent a massive shift. As young Jews left the tight-knit communities of the shtetls behind for the great big world of the cities, Orthodox Judaism faded away and secular Yiddish culture blossomed. As Jews confronted the harsh realities of industrial capitalism in New York, socialism replaced religion as the great hope to end the suffering of the Jewish people. In this episode, I'll explore the vibrant cultural, political, and intellectual life of the Lower East Side as it became the center of America's socialist movement. I'll take you into the shoes of the garment workers, often teenage girls who didn't speak a word of English, as they put this theory into practice and stood up for their dignity as working women.
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