Activist New York

In 1886, New Yorker Stanton Coit founded the nation’s first “settlement house,” the New York Neighborhood Guild (today the University Settlement) on Forsyth Street on the Lower East Side. Inspired by the example of reformers in London’s Toynbee Hall, Coit and others moved to the city’s poorest neighborhoods to work with immigrants living in crowded, unhealthy tenement apartments. They lived as members of the community and helped local families receive health care, enroll in educational programs, join recreational clubs, and enjoy a range of social services.

On April 7, 1973, some 400 cyclists chanting “Bikes don’t pollute” rode through midtown Manhattan in a “Bike-In” that called for separate lanes to encourage bicycling and provide safety on city streets.

On August 2, 1962, architect Philip Johnson, urban activist Jane Jacobs, and dozens of others picketed outside Pennsylvania Station to protest plans to tear down the 1910 Beaux-Arts masterpiece. Their campaign was the culmination of over a decade of struggle to protect city landmarks. Although they lost the battle over Penn Station, the building’s demolition helped lead to the passage of New York’s 1965 landmarks preservation law.

On May 21, 1910, some 10,000 New Yorkers gathered in Union Square to demand that women receive the right to vote. “We call this the land of liberty,” Maud Nathan told the crowd, “…but there are no free sons born where the mother is not free.” The rally, the largest woman suffrage demonstration yet held in the country, symbolized New York City’s increasingly prominent role in the national movement for votes for women.

On February 21, 1934, John Wexley’s drama "They Shall Not Die"—highlighting the infamous rape charges against the “Scottsboro Boys”—premiered at the Royale Theatre on West 45th Street. With its condemnation of southern racism and injustice, the play helped usher in a new era on the Broadway stage.

In 1657, 31 settlers in the Dutch colony of New Netherland (now New York and New Jersey) risked arrest and banishment when they spoke up in defense of members of the Society of Friends—known as Quakers—who had been banned from the colony. Insisting on their right “to do good unto all men,” these residents of Vlissingen (today’s Flushing, Queens) offered shelter to Quakers despite the disapproval of Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant.

In 1962, lawyers Kieran O’Doherty and J. Daniel Mahoney helped form the Conservative Party of New York, aiming to take action against what they saw as a city and state gone seriously wrong. New York has a long history of conservative activism, but in the 1960s, this tradition merged with new fears and discontents stemming from changes in the city, nation, and world.

More than 100,000 New Yorkers celebrated the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, forming the largest gathering in the nationwide celebration. New Yorkers flocked to Union Square for speeches and concerts. Mayor John V. Lindsay closed Fifth Avenue to cars, enabling marches and picnics in the blocked-off streets.

Upheaval in the Garment Trades | 1900-1915 In the early 20th century, New York was the largest city and garment production the largest manufacturing business in America. The garment trade was made possible by tens of thousands of immigrant workers, who labored long hours under unsafe conditions in crowded tenements or factories.

Between 1820 and 1860, 3.7 million immigrants landed in New York Harbor—at a time when the city’s population numbered less than one million. No laws existed to regulate or curtail the flow of newcomers. Economic and political unrest propelled people across the Atlantic, including more than half a million Irish fleeing famine from 1845-1851.