Six on New York: Building Stuyvesant Town: The housing solution that became an emblem of the Jim Crow North; Brooklyn Eagle Archives: October 30: ON THIS DAY in 1951, big a-blast rocks desert; One of the Central Park Five Shares His Story; "Blackwel
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"The residential complexes Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, built in the late 1940s, incorporating thousands of apartments within a manicured ‘campus’ on the east side, seemed to provide the perfect solution for New York City’s 20th century housing woes.
For Robert Moses, it provided a reason to clear out an unpleasant neighborhood of dilapidated tenements and filthy gas tanks. For the insurance company Metropolitan Life, the city’s partner in constructing these complexes, it represented both a profit opportunity and a way to improve the lives of middle class New Yorkers.
It would be a home for returning World War II veterans and a new mode of living for young families.
As long as you were white.
In the spring of 1943, just a day before the project was approved by the city, Met Life’s president Frederick H. Ecker brazenly declared their housing policy: “Negros and whites don’t mix. Perhaps they will in a hundred years, but not now.”
What followed was a nine year battle, centered in the ‘walled fortress’ of Stuy Town, against deeply ingrained housing discrimination policies in New York City. African-American activists waged a legal battle against Met Life, representing veterans returning from the battlefields of World War II.
But some of the loudest cries of resistance came from the residents of Stuy Town itself, waging a war from their very homes against racial discrimination."
Brooklyn Eagle Archives: October 30: ON THIS DAY in 1951, big a-blast rocks desert
October 30: ON THIS DAY in 1951, big a-blast rocks desert
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One of the Central Park Five Shares His Story
“How the New York press covered the story is a case in groupthink and reckless journalism,” said journalist and Lehman Assistant Prosfessor, Eileen Markey.
Dwyer referred back to when he covered the trials in 1990 and mentioned that he remembers thinking that the testimonies did not add up. “There in this gruesome crime, no exchange of biological tissue between the people accused of doing it and the victim. That to me was a startling moment,” he said referring to when there were no matches to their DNA. “How could you have a violent crime and no physical evidence whatsoever?”
“This was a place where journalists who had an open mind could have done a better job but didn’t,” Dwyer said. He indicated that when Reyes confessed to the crime, all journalists who covered the case were in complete shock. He said, “It took a long time for the truth to make its way out.”
Salaam and Dwyer mentioned the importance of having evidence to back up a case and to also include video evidence from interrogations. Salaam recalled hearing police beating up Wise in the room next door. “That’s what the public needs to see,” he said. “Imagine if they would have done their jobs.”
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"While here and there a cottage quaint
Seemed to repose in quiet ease
Amid the trees, whose leaflets waved
And fluttered in the passing breeze.
O morning hour! so dear thy joy,
And how I longed for thee to last;
But e’en thy fading into day
Brought me an echo of the past"
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