Category Archives: New York City

Any and all documents and quotes related in any way to the cultural, social, economic, and political life of Five Boroughs of New York City.

The Weekly Text, 20 February 2026, Black History Month Week III: A Reading on Arturo Schomburg

Sometime not long after I returned to New York in 2021, I attended a lecture a the New York Public Library (the main on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, with the lions Patience and Fortitude at the front) on Arturo Schomburg. When I lived in Harlem, I walked by his namesake, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, every morning on my way to work. I also regularly stopped in to view exhibits there as well.

Therefore, Arturo Schomburg has been something of a presence in my intellectual life since 2004.

There are two biographies of Arturo Schomburg: Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Schomburg,  by Vanessa Valdes or Arturo Schomburg: Black Bibliophile and Collector by Elinor Des Verney Sinette. I read the latter

One thing that I did pick up on at the lecture and in Ms Sinette’s book, however, was the existence of this article from the man himself. This is a PDF of an article “Arthur” (one thing I learned about Schomburg is that very little is known about him, including which given version of his given name he was using at any time) Schomburg wrote on Black History, “The Negro Digs Up His History.” Nota bene, please, that I have only posted the reading; next year at this time (I already have the basic structure assembled) you’ll find a fully realized lesson plan to accompany this article.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Places in Black History: St. Nicholas Avenue, Harlem, New York, New York

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Ashcan School

“Ashcan School: (Also called The Eight and The New York Realists) A term applied, loosely and belatedly, to a group of American realist painters. Although they never actually formed a school, eight painters—Robert Henri (1865-1929), John Sloan (1871-1951), Maurice Prendergast (1859-1927), George Luks (1897-1933), Everett Shinn (1876-1953), William Glackens (1870-1938), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939), and Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)—held an independent exhibition at The Macbeth Gallery in New York in February 1908. Their paintings, which featured prizefights, bars, and city street scenes, departed from the artistic conventions of the turn of the century and were greeted with a storm of critical disapproval. These depictions of the working-class milieu—romantic and vital, but also squalid and brutal—shocked viewers used to genteel and fashionable pictures. The exhibition and the work of the artists, however, exerted an enormous influence on the development of American realistic painting.

The original eight came to be associated with other painters, including Walt Kuhn (1880-1949), one of the organizers of the Armory Show, and George Bellows (1882-1925), whose work, of all of the painters of the school, has perhaps retained the most critical interest.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Diego Rivera

“Diego Rivera: (1886-1957) Mexican muralist. After study in Mexico City and Spain, he settled in Paris from 1909 to 1919. He briefly espoused Cubism but abandoned it c.1917 for a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of color. Returning to Mexico in 1921, he sought to create a new national art on revolutionary themes in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. He painted many public murals, the most ambitious of which is in the National Palace (1929-57). His mural for New York’s Rockefeller Center aroused a storm of controversy and was ultimately destroyed because it contained the figure of Vladimir Lenin; he later reproduced it at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. With Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, he created a revival of fresco painting that became Mexico’s most significant contribution to 20th-century art. His large scale, didactic murals contain scenes of Mexican history, culture, and industry with Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers drawn as simplified figures in crowded, shallow places. Rivera was married to Frida Kahlo almost uninterruptedly from 1929 to 1954.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

The Weekly Text, 29 August 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Charles Ponzi

This week’s Text is a reading on Charles Ponzi accompanied but its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

In the fall of 2008, when the United States economy crashed and nearly took the rest of the world down with it, I had just accepted a job at an economics-and-finance-themed high school in the Financial District in Manhattan. I rode the 2 or the 5 train from the North Bronx to the Wall Street Station. My school was on Trinity Place, right across the street from Zuccotti Park. In other words, I worked right in the middle of the Financial District while the place was–metaphorically–going up in flames. It was a weird time: the streets were weirdly quiet, and the restaurants and bars, usually full of boisterous traders, were dead.

Then came Bernie Madoff. My students couldn’t understand what he’d done, but several of them sure were interested. These documents are some of the fruits of my labor that sought to educate these kids about, well, rip-off artists.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Cultural Literacy: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences, the first a bit long, and three comprehension questions.

Incidentally, the reading on this document terminates with the imperative to “See Seneca Falls Convention” in parentheses.  You’ll find a Cultural Literacy worksheet on that event here.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

The Weekly Text, 28 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Edith Wharton

For the fourth and final Friday of Women’s History Month 2025, here is a reading on Edith Wharton with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

And that is it for Women’s History Month for 2025.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Langston Hughes: Excerpt from “Theme for English B”

“As I learn from you,

I guess you learn from me—

although you’re older—and

white

and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.”

Langston Hughes

Theme for English B l. 37″ (1951)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

The Weekly Text, 28 February 2025, Black History Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Langston Hughes

For the final Friday of Black History Month 2025, the Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal is this reading on Langston Hughes along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. These documents join a solid body of material by and about Langston Hughes on this blog.; to find others, just search his name on the home page.

And now we move on to Women’s History Month 2025 in March.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Places in Women’s History: Greenwich Village, New York, New York

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