TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 31
Episode 31 “Potters Field(s)”: with Andrew Berman, Executive Director, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. By the early 1800’s New York City boasted a population of over 200,000, qualifying it as the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. As New York City’s population grew, so did its number of dead. The fact that the number […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 32
Episode 32 “Boroughs of the Dead”: with Marie Carter, Editor, writer, teacher, and tour guide. When detectives and forensic scientists were called to investigate the Hart Island human remains, found littering its beach, none of them could have known they had been probably treading on additional mass graves, hidden beneath New York City’s parks, buildings, […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 33
Episode 33 “Angels of Mercy”: with William Seraile, Professor Emeritus, Lehman College, City University of New York. The Colored Orphan Asylum was founded, in New York City in 1836, as the nation’s first orphanage for African American children. The agency weathered three wars, two major financial panics, a devastating fire during the 1863 Draft Riots […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 34
Episode 34 “Grave Yard of Strangers”: with Norma Jean Gradsky. Leo Birinski was a playwright, screenwriter and director. He worked in Austria-Hungary, Germany and in the United States. Birinski was the screenwriter of many Hollywood productions including, “Song of Song”s starring Marlene Dietrich, “The Lady Has Plans”, starring Paulette Goddard, and perhaps his most famous, […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 35
Episode 35 “AIDS”: with Michael Bronsky, Professor, Harvard University. On a hot midsummer night in June of 1969, a group of police officers stormed into Greenwich Village’s tiny Stonewall Inn, one of Manhattans early gay and lesbian bars. The patrons of Stonewall revolted. For many this confrontation would eventually become known as the Gay Liberation […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 36
Episode 36 “Burial Grounds in a Segregated City”: with Tom Angotti, Professor Emertis, Hunter College. During the period of Dutch and English settlement, New York City was one of the nation’s largest urban centers for the slave trade and served as a financial patron, of the plantation economy, in the South. In the Dutch colony, […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 37
Episode 37 “AIDS-The First Five Years”: with Jean Ashton, Director, New York Historical Society Resources & Programs. It is estimated that during the AIDS epidemic thousands of AIDS victims were buried on Hart Island. Many because they had become disowned by their family and died unclaimed, and many more because there was no one left […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 38
Episode 38 “Lloyd “The Whistler” Threlkeld”: with Douglass Fraser, Professor and Musicologist. Lloyd Buford Threlkeld, also known as “The Whistler” for his ability to make sweet melodious sounds emerge from his practiced nose flute, also played the guitar and sang. “Whistler and his Band” was one of the most famous jug bands of its time. […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 39
Episode 39 “The Orphan Trains and Charles Loring Brace”: by Michael T. Keene In 1848 Ireland was gripped by famine. Nearly a million people would die of starvation and typhoid Fever. Desperate for survival, a million more Irish would abandon their homeland and come to America. Many settled in the Five Points section of lower […]