Welcome to Activist New York!

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INTRODUCTION

New York City has never been a place where people keep their views to themselves. Activist New York explores the long history of New Yorkers speaking their minds and mobilizing around issues they believe in. This exhibition presents 14 moments of activism in New York from the early 19th century to the present. Together these moments show both progressive and conservative ideas on a range of issues within seven themes: immigration, gender equality, political and civil rights, religious freedom, environmental advocacy, global issues, and economic rights.  

New York’s energy for social change emerges from its status as one of the densest and most diverse cities in the world. Activists have taken advantage of the city’s unique concentration of money, media, and organizations to further their causes by using an array of tactics, from behind-the-scenes organizing and political lobbying to art and public protests. Beginning with a selection of objects from our current moment of heightened and often controversial activism, the stories in this exhibition show how generations of New Yorkers have come together—and clashed—as they sought change in their own lives, their communities, their city, and the world.  

 

BEWARE OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE: NATIVISTS AND IMMIGRANTS, 1830 TO 1860  

Between 1820 and 1860, 3.7 million immigrants landed in New York Harbor, including more than half a million Irish fleeing famine from 1845 to 1851. No laws existed to regulate or curtail the flow of newcomers. In 1835, New Yorker Samuel F. B. Morse and others created the first political party against immigration, the Native American Democratic Association. Anti-immigrant or “nativist” activists formed clubs and political parties in the 1840s and 1850s that sought to deny immigrants access to jobs, citizenship, and the right to vote. Irish and German Catholics were targeted for their religious practices and political views, in particular their perceived devotion to the Pope and the Vatican. 

Immigrant men and women mobilized against nativist sentiment and carved out their own communities in New York. But nativism did not disappear. Federal immigration laws of the 1920s established a quota system to limit the number of newcomers based on country of origin that lasted until 1965. 

Key Events

1777 — New York’s new state constitution allows freedom of religion 

1786 — The city’s first Catholic church, St. Peter’s, opens 

1835 — Samuel F. B. Morse and other New York Protestants form the Native American Democratic Association 

1845 — Irish potato famine begins, sets off wave of new immigration 

1853 — American (“Know-Nothing”) Party founded 

1882 — Chinese Exclusion Act is passed to stop Chinese immigrants from entering or remaining in the country 

1924 — National Origins Act uses quotas to limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe 

1965 — Hart-Celler Act broadens immigration for the first time since 1924 

The Nativist Agenda

New York activists like inventor Samuel F. B. Morse and publisher James Harper blamed the city’s immigrants for the poverty and crime that plagued the growing slums. In Morse’s words, foreigners were “filthy and ragged in body, ignorant in mind… they fill your streets with squalid beggary, and your highways with crime.” Nativists aimed to lengthen the period before new arrivals could become citizens, vote, or hold public office, and to pass laws that protected Americans from immigrants competing for their jobs. 

 

WHAT HAS NEW YORK TO DO WITH SLAVERY? THE BATTLE OVER ABOLITION, 1830 TO 1865

After New York State abolished slavery in 1827, a small group of New York City abolitionists, such as David Ruggles and Abby Hopper Gibbons, continued to work for an end to slavery nationwide. Both black and white activists denounced New Yorkers who profited from slavery through investment and trade, and aided slaves who escaped to the North. New York was also home to vigorous defenders of slavery, who viewed African Americans as inferior and warned that abolition would hurt the nation’s economy. During the Civil War, tension in the city erupted in the Draft Riots of July 1863, which targeted African Americans and abolitionists and resulted in over 100 deaths and widespread destruction—the worst episode of mob violence in New York City history. 

Many African Americans fled New York during and after the Draft Riots, never to return. Slavery ended with the Civil War in 1865, yet New York remained a divided city for decades, with racial segregation of most businesses, housing, and schools. 

Key Events

1625 — First enslaved Africans are brought to New Amsterdam 

1827 — After Governor John Jay passed a law of gradual emancipation in 1799, slavery is abolished in New York State 

1835 — New York Committee of Vigilance established with David Ruggles as secretary; becomes part of the Underground Railroad 

1850 — Mass public meeting in New York supports the new Fugitive Slave Act 

1861 —Civil War begins 

1863 — New draft law leads to riots in New York President Abraham Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation 

1864 — New York raises its first African-American regiment to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War 

1865 — Civil War ends; 13th Amendment ends slavery in the United States 

Civil War

Most New Yorkers initially supported the North against the Southern rebellion in 1861. But after two years of war, many had lost patience with the war effort. In 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which turned the war into a struggle against slavery, fueled a racist backlash. The government also announced the first draft to refill the ranks of the Union Army. The new law allowed any drafted man who paid $300 (a sum only the rich could afford) to hire a substitute to take his place on the battlefield.  

When the draft began on July 13, 1863, thousands of workers protested outside the city’s draft offices. The protests quickly turned violent. Crowds roamed the city, attacking abolitionists, wealthy Republicans, the police, and African Americans. After three days of rioting, the city was left with at least 105 dead, 306 wounded, and over 100 buildings burned—the worst civil uprising in the nation’s history.  

The riot had some concrete effects. The draft was modified, sparing many workers from the battlefield. Thousands of black New Yorkers left the city. But Republicans and abolitionists did not back down. In March 1864, they sponsored New York’s first black regiment, the 20th Colored Infantry, to fight for the Union. The city remained a “battlefield” for pro- and antislavery activists. 

 

DEBATING VICE: THE ANTI-OBSCENITY AND BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENTS, 1870 TO 1930

New York City in the late 19th century was a hotbed of debate and conflict over sexuality, including what critics labeled obscenity or “vice.” At the height of the Victorian era, concerns over women’s bodies and behavior—especially prostitution, nudity, and sexual reproduction—intensified. These fears coalesced in the 1870s into an anti-obscenity movement, spearheaded by the notorious censorship crusader, Anthony Comstock, along with physicians and reform groups like the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. They argued that controlling immorality would offset the threats that mounting poverty and crime—often attributed to the city’s influx of newcomers and immigrants—posed to New York’s social order.   

Anti-obscenity crusaders achieved success in the 1870s and 1880s, when New York State passed legislation criminalizing abortion and prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives and other “obscene” materials. Many New Yorkers disagreed with the regulations and sometimes contested them individually or in small groups. Ultimately, New York City activists such as Margaret Sanger, who led the birth control movement, rolled back these laws and challenged Comstockery. 

Key Events

1856 — Dr. Horatio R. Storer and the American Medical Association (AMA) launch a campaign to criminalize abortion, culminating in 1881 with New York’s passage of the strictest state abortion ban in the nation 

1873 — Congress passes the Comstock (Anti-Obscenity) Law 

1890 — The Clemenceau Case hits Broadway  

1914 — Margaret Sanger coins the term “birth control”; two years later, she opens the country’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, and authorities shut it down after 10 days 

1916 — Emma Goldman and others are arrested for speaking publicly on birth control and contraception in Union Square  

1919 — Mary Ware Dennett establishes the Voluntary Parenthood League, an offshoot of the National Birth Control League 

1921 — Margaret Sanger establishes the American Birth Control League, which becomes the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942  

1930 — United States v. Dennett rules that the Comstock Laws should not interfere with scientific sex instruction  

Challenges to Comstockery 

Many New Yorkers resisted Comstock’s anti-obscenity laws, among them free-love advocates, publishers, performers, activists, female doctors, and so-called “irregular” medical practitioners. They claimed Comstock’s censorship crusade had overreached and was endangering freedoms of expression, speech, and religion. 

 In the face of many efforts to challenge Comstockery in New York, the law remained intact until the early 20th century, when birth control advocates Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, and Mary Ware Dennett set out separately to fight regulations on the use and distribution of contraceptives. Despite their own rivalry, Sanger and Dennett each secured legal gains, in 1918 and 1930 respectively, which protected and enabled women of all classes and backgrounds to control their fertility under the law. 

 

RATIFY TO REPEAL: PROTESTING PROHIBITION, 1914 TO 1933 

In 1919, after decades of a national temperance campaign urging voluntary abstinence from alcohol, voters ratified the 18th amendment prohibiting alcohol’s manufacture and sale. New York City, with its famed nightlife and saloon culture, was at the center of the debate raging over “Prohibition.” While couched in the language of improving the health and moral standing of the populace, opposition to Prohibition often pitted Anglo-Protestants against immigrants and working-class New Yorkers. In addition, uneven enforcement and the continued circulation of illegal alcohol led to widespread lawbreaking, corruption, and a nationwide backlash. 

New York’s elected officials like Governor Al Smith and Congressman Fiorello La Guardia worked with grassroots activists, such as the Manhattan-based Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR), to dismantle Prohibition. In 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th—the only time an amendment has been entirely repealed. An early “culture war,” the controversy concerned not just alcohol, but also the government’s power to regulate behavior. 

Key Events

1842 — The Sons of Temperance organization is founded in New York 

1914 — William Anderson assumes control of the New York Anti-Saloon League, heightening the statewide campaign against Prohibition 

1917 — The United States enters World War I; Alcohol is banned for soldiers 

1920 — The 18th Amendment, prohibiting the manufacturing, transportation, and sale of alcohol in the United States, goes into effect 

1921 — Thousands of New Yorkers march up Fifth Avenue against Prohibition 

1923 — Al Smith signs bill to repeal the Mullan-Gage Law, ending local enforcement of Prohibition 

1929 — New Yorker Pauline Sabin founds the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR) with 12 other women 

1933 — Three-fourths of states ratify the 21st Amendment, repealing the 18th Amendment 

Prohibition and Prejudice 

Some Prohibition advocates presented their quest to outlaw alcohol as a battle between “native” and working-class ethnic cultures. A demand for sober workers during wartime helped usher in Prohibition during World War I. Supporters blamed immigrants and workers for the widespread violation of the law once enacted, and New Yorkers who frequented saloons—places to drink but also to hold union meetings, speak native languages, and in some cases vote in local elections—claimed they were unfairly targeted by law enforcement. 

As Prohibition wore on, foreign-born and working-class New Yorkers argued that it infringed on civil liberties and was un-American. At demonstrations, they carried placards that declared “We Prefer Brewers of Beer to Brewers of Bigotry.” Anti-Prohibition politicians and organizations appealed to New Yorkers across class, ethnic, and racial lines—a strategy that helped them repeal the 18th amendment. 

 

I AM A WORKING GIRL! UPHEAVAL IN THE GARMENT TRADES, 1900 TO 1915

In the early 20th century, garment production in New York was the largest manufacturing business in America’s largest city. 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. On November 22, 1909, immigrant worker Clara Lemlich of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) called, in Yiddish, for a General Strike. Lemlich’s “Uprising of the Twenty Thousand” and a devastating fire at the Triangle Waist Company factory in Greenwich Village in 1911 illuminated the contributions of working women and made labor unions key players in the life of the city. 

Alongside labor activists, elected officials and Tammany Hall reformers made New York a model of workplace legislation, and unions became crucial to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Yet in the mid-20th century, many garment factories left the city in search of lower costs and fewer regulations, and union power diminished. But in recent years, organized labor has made new inroads in the service economy, and the garment industry has renewed its emphasis on “Made in New York.” 

Key Events

1900 — International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) founded in New York City 

1903 — Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) founded to forge cross-class coalition on labor issues 

1909 - 1910 — “Uprising of the 20,000” shirtwaist workers’ strike lasts 11 weeks 

1910 — “Revolt of the 60,000” cloak makers’ strike lasts eight weeks 

1911 — Fire at Triangle Waist Company takes 146 lives 

1920 — Creation of the Garment District in Midtown Manhattan; “Red Scare” leads to arrests and deportations of leftists and labor leaders 

Leaders and Allies 

Working-class activists came to the fore in mobilizing the mostly female strikers of Local 25 during the 1909-1910 International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) strike. Clara Lemlich of Local 25 set the “Uprising of Twenty Thousand” in motion when she declared “I am a working girl” and called for a general strike. Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman became public figures known for their fiery speeches, and they both went on to long careers in New York’s labor movement. 

Other women became “allies” who supported the workers. Wealthy society figures and woman suffragists like Alva Belmont and Inez Milholland collaborated with the Women’s Trade Union League, founded in 1903 to forge a movement for female workers’ rights across class boundaries. Wealthy members of the so-called “Mink Brigade” used their automobiles to bring strikers to rallies, while Belmont paid the bail of arrested strikers. 

 

THE ALLIANCE IS FOR THE LAUNDRYMEN: ORGANIZING AND CHINESE EXCLUSION IN CHINATOWN, 1933 TO 1952  

In the face of daunting barriers and widespread racism, workers in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown engaged in unprecedented activism in the 1930s. Amidst the ravages of the Depression and the rise of radical politics Chinese-American workers demanded improved labor rights, connected with groups in the global anti-imperialist movement, and resisted longstanding, legalized discrimination. These movements were led by workers in hand laundries, which became the largest and most economically sustaining industry in the neighborhood in the era of Chinese Exclusion.   
  
The motto “the Laundry Alliance is for the laundrymen” captured the democratic vision of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance (CHLA, or “Niuyue Huaqiao Yiguan Lianhehui”). Founded in 1933 to fight discrimination from City officials, members took an anti-hierarchical stance that influenced all of Chinatown. They defied top-down organizations such as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, and after gaining access to citizenship in 1943, urged laundry workers to vote. They also remained engaged with events in China, largely supporting Chinese communists against Nationalist forces and threats from Japan, which led to intense scrutiny from the FBI by the 1950s. With the recent rise in anti-Chinese discrimination and violence amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, histories of repression and resistance in New York’s first Chinatown remain as important as ever.   

Key Events

1882 — Chinese Exclusion Act takes effect nationwide, prohibiting immigration from China and denying paths to citizenship for most Chinese Americans in the United States; Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Associated (CCBA) founded in New York the following year. 

1927 — Civil war in China between Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong begins, splitting allegiances of Chinese New Yorkers 

1933 — Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance (CHLA) founded in New York City by laundry workers 

1938 — CHLA members march in Manhattan to support China against Japanese invasion initiated by the Marco Polo Bridge incident the previous year   

1940 — China Daily News founded in New York, published until 1989  

1943 — Chinese Exclusion technically ends when the US and China ally during World War II, but immigration numbers are capped at 105 people per year until quotas change in 1965 

1952 — CHLA members and China Daily News staff who support the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after communist victory in 1949 are targeted by the FBI and imprisoned under the Trading with the Enemy Act 

1978 — Laundry worker and writer Tung Pok Chin publishes the memoir Paper Son, One Man’s Story; his wife Wing Fong Chin goes on to help lead the 1982 Chinatown garment worker’s strike 

Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance  

In April 1933, Lei Zhuofeng, Zhu Huagun, and 250 other Chinese New Yorkers sprang into action to form the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York (CHLA). The group arose in urgent response to a bill by the City’s Board of Aldermen that imposed hefty increases in hand laundry licensing fees and citizenship requirements—which most residents were denied under Chinese Exclusion laws. After the group hired a lawyer to testify to the burdensome and discriminatory nature of these proposals, the City reduced the fees and added an exemption to the citizenship clause for Asian New Yorkers.   

The CHLA had 3,200 members by the following year, nearly half of the Chinese laundry workers in New York. In addition to fighting ongoing discrimination from the government and industrial laundries, the CHLA provided legal services, helped members apply for laundry licenses, and provided mutual aid and recreation from its headquarters at 191 Canal Street. CHLA members also founded the political group Quon Shar, the newspaper China Daily News, and their own wet-wash factory. Membership decreased in the 1950s, but the organization lasted into the 21st century.  

 

WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED: NEW YORK AND CIVIL RIGHTS, 1945 TO 1964 

In 1947, former Army Captain Joseph R. Dorsey and two other African-American veterans sued to obtain apartments in the new, whites-only Stuyvesant Town housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Although their lawsuit was not successful, their case symbolized a new era in civil rights activism in New York City, which had become the world’s largest African-American urban community. Following World War II, African-American New Yorkers and their allies mobilized against discriminatory policies by employers and banks, segregation of public schools, and controversial uses of force by police. New Yorkers also fought against southern "Jim Crow" segregation laws, by raising funds or joining civil rights campaigns in the South. 

By the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, New York had also passed anti-discrimination laws in employment and housing. Yet that year rioting broke out in Harlem after a white policeman fatally shot African-American teenager James Powell. Racial tensions persisted, but in 1968, when other cities erupted after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, cooperation between Mayor John V. Lindsay and community leaders minimized violence in New York. 

Key Events

1909 — National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded in New York City 

1943 — Benjamin J. Davis elected to the City Council to fill the seat of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who becomes the first African-American New Yorker elected to Congress 

1947 — Dorsey et al sue Stuyvesant Town after the 1943 announcement that it would not be open to black families 

1950 - 1951 — New York State and then New York City pass fair housing laws to ban discrimination in publicly-assisted housing 

1956 — Two years after Brown v. Board of Education decision orders integration of schools, NAACP Schools Workshop formed to integrate New York City schools 

1963 — Harlem resident Bayard Rustin organizes March on Washington 

1964 — New York City public school boycott; Police shooting of African-American teenager results in six-day Harlem riot 

1968 — Teachers’ strike over community control experiment in Ocean Hill-Brownsville

Battles for Equal Schools and Housing

New York City’s public schools became racial battlegrounds in the 1950s. Segregation was officially illegal, but activists accused the city of violating the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. They complained that the city tolerated inferior schools in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and other neighborhoods populated primarily by people of color. In 1956, Reverend Milton Galamison and other New York activists formed the NAACP Schools Workshop to pressure the city to create a timetable for integrating public schools. While they garnered widespread attention from a citywide public school boycott of over 400,000 children on February 3, 1964, schools remained largely segregated. 

Housing in New York was also segregated in unofficial and official ways. The whites-only Stuyvesant Town housing project led to one of many campaigns against housing discrimination. In 1950 and 1951, the New York State Legislature and then the New York City Council passed the nation’s first fair housing laws, prohibiting discrimination in publicly assisted housing. A 1963 state act followed, outlawing discrimination in private housing. Despite the laws, private owners were slow to comply, and housing discrimination remained an unsolved problem for African-American New Yorkers. 

 

“TAKE NEW YORK CITY OUT OF THE WAR”: PROTESTING VIETNAM, 1965-1975  

On April 15, 1967, as many as 400,000 protesters marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand an end to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the way. It was the largest antiwar demonstration in U.S. history to date. The march was planned by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (“the Mobe”), a loose coalition spearheaded by 82-year-old New York peace activist A.J. Muste. The Mobe reflected alliances between the city’s longtime pacifists and a new generation of radical youth who sought to end the war and change the world.  

New York was home to many of the nation’s key antiwar organizations, which attracted a diverse range of antiwar youth, artists, veterans, elected officials, and the middle class. But conflict over the war also increasingly divided the city, and in 1970, construction workers attacked antiwar protesters on Wall Street. In 1975, after more than 4,000 New Yorkers had died in Indochina, protesters gathered again in Central Park to commemorate the war’s end, but trauma and divisions from the Vietnam War remained.  

Key Events

1954 — Vietnamese troops defeat French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu; U.S. sends first American soldiers the following year 

1964 — After an alleged North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin, Congress approves increased military involvement in Vietnam and the antiwar movement emerges in response 

1967 — Martin Luther King Jr. denounces the war at Riverside Church, and 11 days later returns for the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam   

1968 —Tet Offensive, My Lai massacre in Vietnam; President Lyndon Johnson declines to seek re-election; Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy assassinated; youth protests occur around the world 

1969 — Moratorium demonstrations take place in New York on October 15 and Washington, D.C. on November 15 

1970 — “Hard Hat Riot” near Wall Street 

1971 — The New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers 

1975 — Two years after the Paris Peace Accords ended direct U.S. involvement in the war, South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnam, the last U.S. troops depart, and the country is formally unified; “The War is Over!” celebration in Central Park 

Artists Against the War 

As the center of the postwar art world, New York’s antiwar movement included many artists, from painters Jasper Johns and Faith Ringgold to musicians Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and John Lennon. Many others participated in “Angry Arts Week,” from January 29 through February 5, 1967, when a bevy of film screenings, theatrical events, poetry readings, and concerts encouraged New York artists to speak out “through their own work” against Vietnam.  

New York artists ranging from the avant-garde to the mainstream also offered a broader cultural critique during the Vietnam era. Groups such as the Art Worker’s Coalition emphasized ties between the war abroad and inequality at home—including in the art world itself. Alongside organizations devoted to black power, women’s liberation, gay liberation, and others, New York activists fought for greater inclusion in cultural forms as well as in formal politics.

 

WHEN EXISTENCE IS RESISTANCE: TRANS ACTIVISM IN NEW YORK, 1969 TO 2019  

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn—an unlicensed, Mafia-owned club popular among a diverse mix of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer New Yorkers. Police raids and arrests were common at the time, since New York State routinely denied liquor licenses to bars that catered to LGBTQ patrons. This time, the clientele pushed back, and the Stonewall raid sparked three days of protests on the streets of Greenwich Village. Advocates for gay rights had been active in the city for decades, but the Stonewall uprising energized a mass movement.  

Transgender New Yorkers were a vital part of this struggle, even as they faced marginalization within society and the movement. Protesting discrimination and violence against their bodies, clothing, and other markers of identity and expression, trans activists won their first victories in the form of state protections in the early 1970s. They also pushed for inclusion in the gay and women’s liberation movements. In recent years, an intergenerational group of trans activists has renewed a broader push for inclusive language, legal protections, and identity expression, confronting gender binaries and seeking safety, equality, and power.  

Key Events

1918 — New Yorker Jennie June publishes Autobiography of an Androgyne, the first book to chronicle the experiences of someone who might identify as transgender today   

1967 — Lee Brewster organizes a drag ball for gay civil rights group Mattachine Society—events first held in the 1920s in Harlem 

1969 — Stonewall uprising begins June 28th; Queens Liberation Front forms; The first LGBTQ health clinic, St. Marks Clinic, opens 

1970 — Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) forms; Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March (what would become the LGBTQ pride parade) held in New York City  

1973 — Sylvia Rivera ostracized at Gay Liberation Day rally in Washington Square Park; STAR disbands 

1999 — First Trans Day of Remembrance on November 20 to memorialize lives lost to anti-transgender violence 

2002 — Trans protections added to New York City human rights law for the first time 

2019 — New York State legislature passes the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), offering protections to transgender New Yorkers statewide 

Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries  

In 1970 two Stonewall participants, Sylvia L. Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, started Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), seeking to empower marginalized youth and people of color before the term “transgender” was widely used. The first group in the United States to organize explicitly around trans rights and self-determination, STAR emerged from the gay mobilizations after Stonewall. In addition to stigma within gay groups, STAR 

faced opposition from many in the women’s liberation movement who excluded and denounced the experiences of trans women.  

Rivera and Johnson, who had both experienced homelessness as teenagers, sought to provide housing and family support structures for other trans youth of color. STAR House, which operated from late 1970 into 1971 on East 2nd Street in the East Village, was the first group shelter in the nation dedicated to serving trans youth. STAR also called for radical change within the gay liberation movement and society at large. The group folded in 1973. But over the next two decades, trans activists continued to develop their own communities of support. STAR’s pioneering work has impacted trans organizing to this day, including the New York-based Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the recent passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) in New York State.  

 

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL: WOMEN’S LIBERATION IN NEW YORK, 1960 TO 1982

“We’re a movement now,” proclaimed feminist Kate Millett to tens of thousands of women who marched through the streets of New York on August 26, 1970, to demand full gender equality. It was the 50th anniversary of the passage of woman suffrage, and the Women’s Strike for Equality March, led by the National Organization for Women, was calling for new rights: free childcare, equal opportunities in education and employment, and access to abortion. Among the activists who spoke alongside Millett were Betty Friedan, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Bella Abzug. The women’s movement had long roots, but by 1970 it had arrived.  

New York became the organizational and intellectual center of the new women’s liberation movement. New Yorker Carol Hanisch had coined the phrase “the personal is political” in 1968, and the women’s movement increasingly addressed issues of sexual politics, motherhood and marriage, and intersectional identity, along with causes such as equality under the law, financial independence, and gender parity. The participants’ diverse identities, goals, and anger over their treatment as women sometimes produced conflict and dissent, but they also created a more multifaceted women’s movement than is often remembered—one that has paved the way for the surge in women’s activism today. 

Key Events

1917 — New York women win the right to vote; the 19th Amendment enfranchises women nationally three years later, but certain state and federal laws block many women of color from the polls 

1960 — The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the first oral contraceptive, Enovid 

1963 — The President’s Commission on the Status of Women, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, releases its first report; Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which prohibitions discrimination in employment based on race, color, national origin, religion, and sex 

1966 — National Organization for Women founded 

1970 — Women’s Equality Day march in New York City 

1973 — The Supreme Court establishes the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade  

1982 — The Equal Rights Amendment fails to be ratified 

2017 — Women’s March in Washington, DC, New York City, and across the country 

Reconsidering Waves 

In 1968 The New York Times Magazine published an article in its March issue coining a new term: “The Second Feminist Wave.” While women in the 1960s and ’70s often invoked the “first-wave” suffrage generation, they also built on the continuous work of inter-generational New York activists. Women who emerged from left-wing movements of the 1930s included Queens resident and labor activist Betty Friedan, who wrote The Feminine Mystique and was the first president of the National Organization for Women, and Florynce “Flo” Kennedy, a lawyer and civil rights activist.  

They were joined by a diverse generation of younger activists inspired by the civil rights movement and energized by an openly feminist agenda, from Gloria Steinem of Ms. magazine, Frances Beale of the Third World Women’s Alliance, and Kathie Sarachild of the Redstockings to Elizabeth Holtzman, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. They united behind the cause of gender equality, rather than supporting special protections for women as earlier generations had done. At the same time, they often split over questions of race, class, and sexual orientation. 

 

POWER TO ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE: THE YOUNG LORDS IN NEW YORK, 1969 to 1976

“¡Basta ya!”—”Enough!” was the feeling of Young Lords member Mickey Melendez and other East Harlem activists. It was the summer of 1969, and the group had blocked traffic on 110th Street with piles of garbage to protest inadequate sanitation services. They had already asked the city for brooms to clean their neighborhood’s streets and, when refused, they went ahead and took them. The “garbage offensive” was the first campaign of the city’s Young Lords Organization, a radical “sixties” group led by Puerto Rican youth, African Americans, and Latinx New Yorkers.  

New York’s Young Lords, although originally part of a national organization, reflected the lived experiences of Puerto Ricans in New York City. The group mounted eye-catching direct action campaigns against inequality and poverty in East Harlem, the South Bronx, and elsewhere. They also called for revolutionary changes to U.S. society and national independence for Puerto Rico—through any means necessary. The Young Lords changed their name and emphasis in 1972, but in three short years, they had equipped their members with lifelong organizing and media skills and achieved lasting victories in health and education in New York and beyond.

Key Events 

1898 — U.S. forces invade Puerto Rico as part of the Spanish American War; Puerto Rico becomes a United States territory in 1900 

1947 — 30 years after the Jones-Shafroth Act gives partial U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans born after 1898, Operation Bootstrap propels mass migration from Puerto Rico to the mainland, largely to New York 

1968 — Young Lords Organization starts in Chicago; later allies with the Black Panther Party and others to form the Rainbow Coalition  

1969 — The New York branch of the Young Lords Organization is founded; garbage initiative and other campaigns are launched 

1970 — Young Lords and others occupy Lincoln Hospital; separate from Chicago branch and become the Young Lords Party 

1971 — Young Lords Party opens a branch in Puerto Rico, which lasts about a year 

1972 — Young Lords Party in New York ceases operations, becomes Puerto Rican Revolutionary Worker’s Organization 

1976 — Puerto Rican Revolutionary Worker’s Organization ceases to exist; a new Lincoln Hospital opens in the Bronx 

Health Activism 

Many of the Young Lords’ campaigns emphasized the need for increased health resources for Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and other communities of color in New York. These campaigns called for improved sanitation services, lead paint detection, free breakfasts for children, testing for tuberculosis, and safe reproductive rights for women.  

One of the largest campaigns targeted Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, long known for its decrepit building and inadequate care. In July 1970, 150 people, including Young Lords, nurses, medical residents, and allies in the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement, occupied the facility to demand improvements to both the building and its services. Some of the “Think Lincoln” coalition’s demands bore fruit, such as language translators and acupuncture programs. In 1976, after continued organizing, a new Lincoln Hospital opened its doors in the Bronx.  

 

AN ACCESSIBLE CITY FOR ALL: DISABILITY RIGHTS IN NEW YORK, 1968 TO 2017

In 1935, a small group of activists calling themselves the League for the Physically Handicapped staged a “death watch” at the Works Progress Administration offices in Manhattan. Their demand was New Deal jobs for New Yorks with disabilities–which they won. This unprecedented direct action was one of several early but disparate efforts by New Yorkers to push back against disability discrimination, from blind activists in the 1920s and returning World War II veterans to parents of children with cerebral palsy.  

The modern disability rights movement, comprised of a wide range of people with physical and intellectual disabilities and influenced by other social movements, took off in New York in the 1960s. Longstanding advocates pushed for the nation’s first municipal office focused on the disability community in 1968. Two years later, a new generation of activists founded the Brooklyn-based grassroots group Disabled in Action. Together they fought for new policies and legislation including the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. They also continued to mobilize for access to the city’s built environment, created resources to live independent visible lives, and formulated a proud disability identity. In the process, they made a more inclusive city for all, and helped expand thinking about the diversity of human bodies and minds.  

Key Events

1946 — Paralyzed Veterans of America and Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association founded in New York 

1968 — Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Handicapped established; city Human Rights Law amended to include disability 

1970 — Disabled In Action founded in New York 

1973 — Section 504 of the National Rehabilitation Act passed without enforcement; Mayor’s Office of the Handicapped (later renamed Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities) begins operating in New York City

1987 — Willowbrook State School closes after protests and litigation over treatment of youth with disabilities; New York City passes Local Law 58 mandating accessible buildings 

1990 — Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) signed into law, takes effect in 1992; New Yorkers stage Disability Independence March in Manhattan the next year

1996 — Taxis for All campaign launched in New York  

2017 — CIDNY v. MTA lawsuit leads to long-term subway accessibility plan released in 2022, 38 years after the first subway access agreement in 1984 

Public Transit 

New York City can be a uniquely challenging environment to navigate, with its urban density and a reliance on public transit that has long been inaccessible to anyone who does not use stairs. Disability rights activists have waged prolonged campaigns for mobility-enhancing features like curb cuts at sidewalks, lifts for buses, and elevators at subway stations. Novel programs also emerged, like a travel training program founded in 1970 for public school students with disabilities run by the Department of Education’s individualized learning division District 75; Access-a-Ride vehicles in 1990; and a current taxi fleet that is partly wheelchair accessible and can be hailed using an app.  

In 2022, a decades-long campaign for an accessible subway reached a new benchmark, with the settlement of the federal lawsuit Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (CIDNY) c. MTA. Under the settlement, half of the city’s 472 subway stations will have alternatives to stairs by 2035, and nearly every subway station will be wheelchair accessible by 2055. 

 

RACIAL JUSTICE TODAY: THE MOVEMENT FOR BLACK LIVES, 2012 TO 2017

The 2020 uprisings have brought #BlackLivesMatter back to the center of national conversation.  Organized by queer Black women Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the hashtag first appeared on Twitter in 2013 as a rallying cry to “recognize the humanity of all Black life.”  It has since anchored activism against anti-Black racism in the criminal justice system and beyond. New York activists have been integral to what is known as the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a sustained and organized force for change across the country. 

The issues raised by M4BL were not new in 2013: Black New Yorkers have protested violent and discriminatory police treatment from Brooklyn in 1925 to “stop-and-frisk” policies introduced in the 1990s. Movement activists have built on this legacy by highlighting problems they see as interconnected: systemic racism, gender discrimination, health hazards, anti-immigrant sentiment, and economic inequality. In 2020, continued police and vigilante killings of Black people, including George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the COVID-19 pandemic—with its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities in New York and elsewhere—ignited an unprecedented wave of Black-led activism propelled by calls to “defund the police” and reimagine a more just, caring, and equitable society. 

Key Events

2012 — Trayvon Martin is killed in Florida by George Zimmerman 

2013 — The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter emerges in response to Zimmerman’s  acquittal; New York State Supreme Court declares “stop-and-frisk” policing by NYPD unconstitutional 

2014, July — Eric Garner killed in New York; August: Michael Brown killed in Ferguson, Missouri; November: Akai Gurley killed in New York and Tamir Rice killed in Cleveland; December: Millions March in Manhattan 

2015 — Kalief Browder commits suicide after spending three years at the Rikers Island jail without a trial, prompting protests and a promise by Mayor Bill de Blasio to close Rikers  

2016 — Fifty groups release “A Vision for Black Lives” the same month Philando Castile and Alton Sterling’s deaths make headlines nationwide; BYP100 sit-in at NYPD’s union, the Police Benevolent Association 

2017 - 2018 — Amidst nationwide protests, New York M4BL activists protest the Trump administration’s ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries; help lead the Women’s March; and successfully protest to remove the Fifth Avenue statue of Dr. Marion J. Sims, who experimented on bodies of enslaved Black women  

2019 — New York City Council votes to close Rikers, but provokes controversy by approving rezoning for building four new smaller jails 

2020 — Black New Yorkers suffer higher infection and fatality rates from COVID-19; George Floyd killed in Minneapolis; Unprecedented ongoing protests throughout New York City; M4BL convenes first Black National Convention in almost 50 years   

Millions March 

Racial tensions in New York surged in the early 2010s after a series of local and national events. In 2011 Black and Latino New Yorkers comprised approximately half of New York City’s population, but made up 84 percent of the 685,000 stops made by the New York Police Department and 89 percent of inmates at the Rikers Island jail complex. 

In 2014 a crescendo of protests over government use of force occurred across the city. Eric Garner died on Staten Island in July after being choked by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers while allegedly selling loose cigarettes. In November Akai Gurley was shot by new NYPD officer Peter Liang in a public housing stairwell in Brooklyn. Activists cited the chokehold used on Garner as illegal and the use of a gun on Gurley as unprompted. Protesters stopped traffic on the West Side Highway and staged “die-ins” in front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. On December 13, 60,000 New Yorkers took to the streets of Manhattan for the Millions March.