Three churches, a school, and dozens of homes were demolished
^^^^Prominent abolitionist Albro Lyons and Mary Joseph Lyons were residents of Seneca Village.
The community, called Seneca Village, began in 1825 and eventually spanned from 82nd Street to 89th Street along what is now the western edge of Central Park. By the time it was finally razed in 1857, it had become a refuge for African Americans. Though most were nominally free (the last slave wasn’t emancipated until 1827) life was far from pleasant. The population of African Americans living in New York City tripled between abolition and complete emancipation and the migrants were derided in the press. Mordecai Noah, founder of The New York Enquirer, was especially well-known for his attacks on African Americans, fuming at one point that “the free negroes of this city are a nuisance incomparably greater than a million slaves.”
More than three-fourths of the children who lived in Seneca Village attended Colored School №3 in the church basement. Half of the African Americans who lived there owned their own property, a rate five times higher than the city average. And while the village remained mostly black, immigrant whites had started to live in the area as well. They shared resources ranging from a church (All Angels Episcopal), to a midwife (an Irish immigrant who served the entire town).
But in 1857, it was all torn down.
Even as the church was being built on 86th street, then painstakingly painted white, the original settlers fought for their lands in court. Andrew Williams was paid nearly what his land was worth, after filing an affidavit with the state Supreme Court. Epiphany Davis was not as fortunate, losing hundred of dollars.
By 1871, Seneca Village had largely been forgotten. That year, The New York Herald reported that laborers creating a new entrance to the park at 85th Street and 8th Avenue had discovered a coffin, “enclosing the body of a Negro, decomposed beyond recognition.” The discovery was a mystery, the paper reported, because “these lands were dug up five years ago, when the trees were planted there, and no such coffins were there at the time.” That’s unlikely, as the site was the graveyard of the AME Zion church.
Researchers from Columbia, CUNY, and the New York Historical Society have been working on excavating the site of Seneca Village since the early 2000s. The work has been slow, with excavation starting in 2011.
The only official artifact that remains intact on the site is a commemorative plaque, dedicated in 2001 to the lost village.
People didn’t know about this? We learned about this in school bc the village welcomed and sheltered Irish immigrants during the Famine.
The authorities hated the place because the residents were highly politically active and had ties to the Underground Railroad.
A lot of people assume, because Manhattan was in The North[tm], that it must have been an abolitionist-friendly place (and that its residents then would have had as favorable view of Lincoln as residents today have of Obama).
But the truth is: much of the money flowing through Wall Street was profits from the cotton, sugar, rum and slave trade. The Power Brokers of NYC were solidly on the side of the slaveholders in the South.
WHAT
Black people were always the original currency and stock market of the U.S.
This isn’t exclusive to the city either, New York has a bad history of destroying black neighborhoods. Syracuse, NY did something similar in the 1950s and destroyed a black community so that they could construct the I-81 highway.
[Karen] Mok and [Cassandra] Lam are co-founders of The Cosmos a community dedicated to connecting and supporting Asian women through transformational leadership retreats, workshops, and events.
“One thing we want to do for The Cosmos is to create events for Asian women by Asian women. We want to reach out to creators, entrepreneurs, activists — anyone who is accessible, real women who have expertise and passion for knowledge and sharing. We care a lot about meeting normal women who have something special she wants to share. She should have a community to do that and feel supported,” Lam explained.
The Cosmos hopes to raise $10,000 by May 1st in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
im still super fuckin salty that 2 of my instructors for my psych degree specifically mentioned not wearing makeup and feminine clothes as a sign of “deteriorating mental health.” specifically, that if a woman walks into your practice, and you’ve never seen her before, and she’s not wearing makeup or dressing up or shaving, then she’s going to be a “difficult case” and when she starts to do these things it’s a sign that therapy is progressing well.
especially since when i was at Rock Fucking Bottom ™ i was over-performing femininity as a) a way to dissociate from myself, my trauma, and the dysphoria i was experiencing and b) a last-ditch effort to get Approval, Validation, and Attention when i felt like i was unattractive and worthless. don’t let anyone tell you that “psychology used to have a misogyny problem and issues with pathologizing gender nonconformity, but it’s solved now because more women than men are earning psych degrees!!” because the problems are still very much there, they just change forms every couple of decades.
I'm sure you've already been asked something along these lines, but I have a vegan friend considering getting a dog who is not "morally okay" with feeding an animal a non-vegan diet. I don't really know what to say??
It’s hard, because you don’t want to alienate your friend and when faced with cognitive dissonance and pressure people tend to make snap judgement to the side that’s most familiar and emotionally for them. Try to educate them about the realities first and then try to gently make your point.
First, talk to them about if they really understand the nutritional needs of a dog and how hard it is to keep them from being malnourished on a vegan diet. If they’re not, you can link them to this article that explains it.
Second, make sure they know none of the commercial foods are truly vegan - the supplements that make up for the lack of animal products are still, actually, derived from animal products. I chased down how those supplements are produced and using actually vegan supplementation would make the dog food so costly as to be prohibitive - they’d be competing with the human cosmetics market, which is impossible to do on a budget, so they use non-vegan supplements.
When people are really determined to feed animals that need animal products to survive vegan diets, I tend to frame it as an immediate ethics dilemma. If they feed a non-vegan food, they’re supporting the deaths of multiple animals who would die regardless of if they bought the food and whose welfare they have no personal influence over - but they’re providing the best possible welfare for an animal whose quality of life they have voluntarily taken sole responsibility for. If they choose to feed a vegan diet, they get the moral righteousness of not supporting an industry they don’t like… but the dog that they voluntarily took in and accepted personal responsibility for is going to suffer directly and they are entirely responsible for that. I think the good of one animal you have direct influence over is more important than taking a moral stand about an industry and multiple animal lives that the lack of one person’s business doesn’t do a damn to effect.
If you are genuinely not okay with feeding meat to a pet and/or thereby supporting an animal-killing pet food industry, that’s a legitimate moral position.
The inescapable moral obligation that goes with that position is: do not own a pet that must eat animal protein to live, or to be healthy and happy.
If you won’t feed a dog meat, don’t keep a dog.
This goes triple for cats and ferrets. You control every aspect of your pet’s life, or close to. If you can’t devote time and consideration into giving them what is best for THEM, don’t get a pet.
![diaryofanangryasianguy:
“ 03/08/18
Asian Women Navigating Gender and Race Launch New Organization
“ [Karen] Mok and [Cassandra] Lam are co-founders of The Cosmos a community dedicated to connecting and supporting Asian women through transformational...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1694018a026cd72e260aa5d9df110f98/tumblr_p5a476lJi31vz7fezo1_1280.jpg)
