The International Workers Order (IWO) was located at 80 Fifth Avenue for its entire lifetime, from 1930 until 1954.

This progressive mutual-benefit fraternal organization was a pioneering force in the U.S. labor movement, and took some incredibly powerful positions for civil rights.

International Workers Order emblem, 1930-1939 For a quarter of a century, the IWO fought relentlessly for racial equality, interracial solidarity, industrial unions, and social security programs that would protect working-class people.

Louise Thompson Patterson, 1960 The IWO operated under the principle that there would be “No Jim Crow in the IWO,” and at its height the consortium included 188,000 members from many political, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. In the 1930s and 1940s, African American members of the IWO instituted the Lincoln-Douglass Society. Beyond championing civil rights, the Society offered high quality health insurance to its members, who often faced discrimination from private insurance companies. IWO vice president and Harlem resident Louise Thompson Patterson was one of many notable activists to fight for racial equality as part of the IWO. In addition to operating as an interracial organization, the IWO supported campaigns such as the federal anti-lynching bill, the permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, the integration of the armed forces, the elimination of Jim Crow segregation in public facilities, and the protection of black voting rights. It also organized rallies in defense of the “Scottsboro Boys,” the nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of rape and sentenced to death in 1931. Congressman Vito Marcantonio of East Harlem, who served as the IWO’s vice president, introduced legislation drafted by the IWO to bar discrimination against Jewish, Italian, and black individuals in war work. Furthermore, the IWO demanded the integration of Major League Baseball, segregated beaches, and the Stuyvesant Town co-ops in New York City.

Langston Hughes, 1936 The IWO also organized the Harlem Suitcase Theater, led by Thompson Patterson, which sought to bring socially-conscious theater to African American audiences throughout the Depression.

Portrait of Robert Earl Jones in Langston Hughes' "Don't You Want to be Free?" Its debut production, “Don’t You Want to be Free?” was written by Langston Hughes, whose poems had already been showcased in other IWO publications. Actors Butterfly McQueen and Robert Earl Jones performed in this play, which served as their acting debut.

Paul Robeson, 1942 The Suitcase Theater, which featured productions on topics including racism, lynching, and industrial workers poverty, travelled to Atlanta, Nashville, and other American cities. Actor, musician, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson was another IWO member, and frequently performed at the Order’s rallies and concerts. From its beginning, the IWO was the frequent target of House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations, and in 1954 the organization was disbanded following legal action undertaken by the state of New York.

Ed Koch and Bella Abzug with President Jimmy Carter, 1978 80 Fifth Avenue also housed from its founding in 1973 until 1986 the headquarters of what was then known as the National Gay Task Force (which became the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1985, and is now the National LGBTQ Task Force). The Task Force was the very first national LGBT rights organization in the United States, accomplishing groundbreaking changes in those first dozen or so years and laying the foundation for many more in the years which followed, as well as initiating battles for civil rights which are still being fought today. This was the Task Force’s very first headquarters and its only in New York, and it remained here for more than a dozen years until it moved to the nation’s capital in 1986. The Task Force’s accomplishments during the time they were located here represented several giant leaps forward for LGBTQ Americans. After employing tactics like staffing booths at the American Psychiatric Association’s Convention to challenge the group’s official categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness, in 1973 the Task Force secured the removal of homosexuality from the APA’s official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, reducing a significant stigma attached to LGBT people and paving the way for further legal reforms. In 1975 the Task Force advocated for the successful ruling by the U.S. Civil Service Commission eliminating the longtime ban upon gay people serving in federal government employment, ending decades of witch hunts against government workers suspected of being gay which dated back to the McCarthy era and before. In 1977, the Task Force brokered another historic first – the very first meeting of any LGBT group with the White House. The meeting directly resulted in changes in policies at the Bureau of Prisons and the Public Health Service, while also initiating policy discussions that would continue for decades and contributed to the incorporation of support for gay rights within the Democratic Party platform. In 1978, the Task Force got the U.S. Public Health Service to stop certifying gay immigrants as "psychopathic personalities." Also during its time at 80 Fifth Avenue, in the late 1970s the Task Force staff conducted the first national survey of corporate hiring policies (called Project Open Employment) to determine whether U.S. employers explicitly barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This was followed a few years later by another of survey municipal police departments, laying the groundwork for successful campaigns, beginning at this time and continuing to this day, to secure protections by government and private employers against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (and eventually gender identity as well). Toward that end, the Task Force was instrumental in drafting and securing introduction of the very first federal gay rights bill in Congress in 1975 by local Congressmembers Bella Abzug and Ed Koch, as well as several other representatives. While the bill did not pass then and still has not passed the entire Congress (a current more limited version, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, has passed both the Senate and the House, but not in the same session), it has been consistently reintroduced in various forms in the forty-five years since, gaining increasing support. This bill, first put forward by the Task Force, has become the basis for non-discrimination laws passed by 22 states and the District of Columbia, as well as hundreds of cities, counties, and localities throughout the United States (the question of whether discrimination based upon sexual orientation and gender identity is allowed by federal law remains a subject of debate nearly a half century later).

Jean O’Leary, 1973 During its years at 80 Fifth Avenue, the Task Force also played a critical role in winning support from the mainstream women's movement for lesbian and gay rights, which had previously been cool or even hostile to including or supporting the lesbian cause. This most famously manifested itself in 1969 when NOW President Betty Friedan warned of the ‘Lavender Menace’ faced by the women’s movement becoming too closely associated with lesbians, and dropped the organization’s connections to lesbian groups. The Task Force successfully campaigned for a lesbian rights resolution at the 1975 national convention of the National Organization for Women, reversing NOW’s prior stance. In 1977 Task Force co-Executive Director Jean O'Leary and women board members obtained endorsement of lesbian and gay rights from the U.S.-sponsored conference for International Women's Year. O'Leary was also the only openly lesbian delegate on President Carter's International Women's Year Commission. The Task Force also began the national response to an epidemic of hate crimes against LGBT individuals during its time here. In 1982, it began its Anti-Violence Project, which focused on data-gathering on anti-LGBT hate crimes when almost no other entities were collecting such data, producing reports that were regularly cited as authoritative on the subject of homophobic violence. That same year they set up the first national telephone crisis line designed to provide assistance to people who had been harassed or assaulted, and in 1984 the Task Force issued the first comprehensive report on hate crimes directed at the gay community nationally. During their time at 80 Fifth Avenue the Task Force also laid the groundwork for securing passage of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act by the Task Force co-director Jean O’Leary. House of Representatives in 1987-- the first federal law to address sexual orientation (the bill was finally passed by both houses and signed into law in 1990).

“Save Our Children” campaign fundraising card Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Task Force also led national response to a growing backlash against gay rights laws and increasing gay and lesbian visibility. Right-wing groups and the newly-constituted ‘Moral Majority’ were leading campaigns to repeal gay rights laws in Miami-Dade, St. Paul, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas, and other locales across the country, and to prevent states from Hawaii to Massachusetts from passing gay rights laws. Anita Bryant, who said “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life... I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before” led a campaign called “Save Our Children.” Its intent -- often successful -- was to block or repeal laws prohibiting employment discrimination against lesbians and gay men, using fear of recruitment of children into “the homosexual lifestyle” as an organizing tool. These efforts laid the groundwork for the right wing’s promotion of anti-gay referenda in the 1990s and 2000s, and their more recent efforts against bills which prohibited discrimination based upon gender identity. The Task Force also led the successful opposition to the so-called ‘Family Protection Act’ introduced in Congress at the behest of the Moral Majority in 1981, which would have had disastrous consequences for LGBTQ Americans if enacted. The bill would have banned federal funding of any organization which in any way supported gay rights or even preached tolerance of gay people; allowed any state, local, or private entity to fire teachers on the basis of sexual orientation; amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to specify that anti-gay discrimination is legal; and prohibited any federal agency and the federal government itself from enacting or enforcing any non-discrimination measures based upon sexual orientation – illustrating the steep barriers the Task Force faced, and overcame, at the time. In 1985, the Task Force secured the favorable Supreme Court decision of NGTF v. Oklahoma, which partially overturned a law prohibiting gay teachers from discussing gay rights – one of the few positive Supreme Court decisions regarding LGBT rights during a decade that saw a significant backlash against gay and lesbian rights.

Dr. Bruce Voeller, undated During its time at 80 Fifth Avenue, the Task Force also took a lead role in the fight against AIDS, at a time of indifference at best, and overt hostility and discrimination at worst, from many institutions and branches of government. The Task Force’s Executive Director, Dr. Bruce Voeller (who lived nearby at 186 Spring Street), conducted early research establishing that condoms prevent the spread of AIDS, and established the use of the term Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, rather than the inaccurate and stigmatizing “Gay Related Immune Deficiency” -- the name by which what came to be called AIDS was originally known. In 1983 the Task Force hired the first AIDS lobbyist from a gay organization to work the halls of Congress and federal agencies. That same year the Task Force’s Executive Director Virginia Apuzzo testified before Congress to excoriate the Reagan Administration for the lack of federal response to AIDS. In 1984, she and others raised funds to launch the AIDS Action Council, the country’s first advocacy organization focused on public policy and funding to meet the AIDS crisis, securing the first federal funding for community-based AIDS education and helping to negotiate FDA approval of the first HTLV-III antibody test. All of this work took place at a time when thousands of people, initially largely gay men in cities like New York, were being infected with HIV and eventually dying from AIDS, with little to no federal government response or assistance. From the beginning of its existence, the Task Force also lobbied heavily for overturning the ban on gays serving in the military, and advocated for fair treatment for gay and lesbian servicemembers who were still being dishonorably discharged by the thousands simply on the basis of their sexual orientation. With the tremendous growth of the Task Force during its thirteen years at 80 Fifth Avenue and the increasing need for a day-to-day presence in Washington D.C. to respond to the AIDS crisis and other federal legislative matters, the organization moved its headquarters to the nation’s capital in 1986. Its time at 80 Fifth Avenue, however, was one of historic accomplishments, challenges, and laying the groundwork for decades of advocacy and social change which would follow.

David Rothenberg, 2017 David Rothenberg, one of the Village’s most prolific activists, discusses his work on the Board of Directors of the National Gay Task Force (now the National LGBTQ Task Force) in his oral history. Listen to David Rothenberg’s Oral History here. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

This building served as the headquarters of the NAACP (founded Feb. 12, 1909) and The Crisis magazine from 1914 until the mid-1920s, when they moved up the block to the no-longer-extant 69 Fifth Avenue (some evidence suggests as early as 1923, while other evidence indicates as late as 1926 – see also here), and DuBois & Dill Publishing, which published the first magazine for African American youth. This was a time of extraordinary growth, accomplishment, and challenges for both the NAACP and its affiliated The Crisis magazine, funded and edited by W.E.B. DuBois. Both were focused on the epidemic of lynchings of African-Americans and race-based violence taking place at the time, discrimination in voting, housing, and employment faced by African-Americans, and the proliferation of demeaning, derogatory, and dehumanizing representations of African Americans in media such as the film The Birth of A Nation. At the same time their tenancy here coincided with and reflected a flowering of black culture with the Harlem Renaissance, and growing African American aspirations for greater freedom and opportunity emanating in part from participation in World War I and the principles of democracy and self- determination which were the premise for the United States’ joining the conflict, and the Great Migration which began at this time and saw more African Americans living in the North, Midwest, and West, where they encountered both new opportunities and new obstacles.

NAACP logo The NAACP Headquarters The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909 as a bi-racial social justice organization seeking to end bias and discrimination against African Americans and ensure their equality of opportunity in the United States. Founded by Dr. Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling, Bishop Alexander Walters, Rev. William Henry Brooks, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells, among others, the new organization’s first public meeting was held a few blocks away at the Great Hall of Cooper Union. DuBois was named the organization’s Director of Publicity and Research, and founded what would be the official organ of the NAACP, The Crisis magazine. During this time, the status of civil rights for African Americans was arguably deteriorating in many ways in the United States; lynchings were commonplace and occurred with impunity; states were introducing legislation to ban interracial marriages; and in his first year in office (1913), President Woodrow Wilson officially introduced segregation into federal government agencies, establishing separate workplaces, bathrooms, and lunchrooms for blacks and whites. It was into this challenging environment that the NAACP emerged when it established its headquarters here at 70 Fifth Avenue in 1914. While other national organizations had been established to advance civil rights for African Americans, none lasted more than a few years, and none had the broad and growing institutional support the NAACP attracted. Having grown rapidly in just five years to have twenty-four branches and three thousand members, the organization was in need of more space, which brought them to 70 Fifth Avenue, a newly-constructed commercial building at 13th Street just below Union Square. Among the organization’s first campaigns while at 70 Fifth Avenue was to challenge the newly- instituted segregation within the federal government with a highly-publicized “Open Letter to President Wilson.” At this time the NAACP also succeeded in securing the repeal of an American Bar Association resolution barring the admission of black lawyers, and in the opening of the women’s suffrage parade in Washington D.C. to black marchers. In 1915, their second year at 70 Fifth Avenue, the NAACP launched its campaign against D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of A Nation, which opened February 8 of that year, arguing that it distorted history and slandered the entire black race. The wildly successful film was credited with the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and an increase in violence against African Americans; its prominence was raised by being shown at the White House by President Woodrow Wilson, the first such showing ever in the presidential residence. That same year the NAACP participated for the first time in litigation to advance its agenda – the beginning of a long and storied history of the NAACP changing the national landscape through the courts, which of course included the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, ending legal segregation and the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ in this country. The NAACPs’ founding President (1909-1929) Moorefield Storey successfully argued the case of Guinn vs. U.S. before the Supreme Court, striking down a ‘grandfather clause’ in the Oklahoma Constitution which effectively barred most black men from voting by limiting the franchise to literate men or those whose ancestors were eligible to vote before January 1, 1866. The NAACP also filed an amicus curiae brief in the case. In 1916, the NAACP responded to the mutilation, burning, and lynching of an illiterate seventeen year old black farmhand in Waco, Texas accused of raping and murdering a white woman. Labeled “The Waco Horror” by the NAACP, the organization sent an investigator to Texas whose report, including pictures of the horrifying act, was published in The Crisis and distributed not only to the magazine’s 42,000 subscribers, but 700 white newspapers, members of congress, and affluent New Yorkers in an effort to gain support for the NAACP’s newly established anti-lynching fund. The NAACP’s anti-lynching organizing brought national attention to the oft-ignored crime, and mobilized political and business leaders in both the North and South to speak out against this de facto state-sanctioned domestic terrorism.

1917 Silent March on Fifth Avenue In 1917, following the brutal East St. Louis race riots in which between forty and two hundred fifty African Americans were killed, thousands were made homeless from the burning of their homes, and thousands eventually left the city, the NAACP organized a silent protest down Fifth Avenue of nearly 10,000 African American men, women, and children. They marched to only the sound of muffled drums, carrying signs with messages such as “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” “Make America safe for democracy” and “We march because we want our children to live in a better land.” This was the first protest of its kind in New York City, and only the second instance of African Americans publicly demonstrating for civil rights (the NAACP’s protests against The Birth of A Nation and the Silent March, organized from their headquarters at 70 Fifth Avenue, were arguably the first large public demonstrations for African American civil rights in the country). That same year the NAACP succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to rule that ordinances restricting where African Americans could live, as had been passed in an increasing number of localities including Baltimore and Louisville, were unconstitutional violations of the 14th Amendment, and won the battle to allow African Americans to be commissioned officers in World War I, allowing six hundred African Americans to achieve that rank.

“A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” Flag In 1918, the NAACP secured passage of an amendment to the New York State civil rights law protecting African Americans – their first such statewide success which they used as a model for progress in other states in subsequent years. After bitter resistance, the NAACP also finally secured from President Woodrow Wilson a public pronouncement against lynching, which he had previously refused to do. That same year an anti-lynching bill was introduced in the House based on a bill drafted by NAACP co-founder Albert E. Pillsbury. The bill called for the prosecution of lynchers in federal court, and made state officials who failed to protect lynching victims or prosecute lynchers punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. It also allowed the victim’s heirs to recover up to $10,000 from the county where the crime occurred. In 1919, the NAACP released its landmark report “Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918,” in which it listed the names of every African American, by state, whom they could document had been lynched. This continued to bring unprecedented attention to this longstanding and uncontrolled epidemic of violence in America. In the aftermath of the end of the First World War and the subsequent unrest and intolerance which gripped the nation, twenty-six race riots erupted across the country during that “Red Summer,” and a record number of lynchings took place. Membership in the NAACP grew to about 90,000 and circulation of The Crisis grew to over 100,000 after it published W.E.B. DuBois’ “Returning Soldier,” a report documenting the indignities suffered by black service members in France at the hands of the U.S. military. In 1920 the NAACP led investigations into and exposed U.S. military atrocities and abuse in Haiti following the American occupation of the Caribbean nation, arguing for American withdrawal and making it a campaign issue in the election of 1920 seized upon by successful candidate Warren G. Harding. The passage of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote gave the NAACP the opportunity to highlight the continued disenfranchisement of black women and men. They demanded that congress investigate the systematic denial of the vote to African Americans in the South in the 1920 election, and that where such discrimination was found, those elected to congress not be seated. The revived Ku Klux Klan’s publication The Searchlight announced that the NAACP, which was increasingly active in the South, was its arch enemy. Multiple accounts also say that the NAACP began flying its iconic flag printed with “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” in simple white sans-serif letters against a plain black background from its headquarters in 1920, and continued to do so until 1938, when they were forced to remove it or face eviction. While the sole photographic record of this appears to be an image from 1936 when the flag flew from their next location just up Fifth Avenue at No. 69 (demolished), if this frequently-cited date is correct, then this campaign began at 70 Fifth Avenue.

Flyer calling for the federal anti-lynching bill, 1922 In 1921 the NAACP secured the reintroduction of federal anti-lynching legislation in the new congress, and met with new President Warren G. Harding to lobby for his support, an end to segregation in federal employment, independence for Haiti, and action against the disenfranchisement of African Americans throughout the country. The following year, the anti- lynching legislation was finally approved by the House by a vote of 230 to 119, after a vigorous campaign by the NAACP which included placing ads in newspapers across the country entitled “The Shame of America.” While the bill died in the Senate after a filibuster by Southern Democrats, congressmen in New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan, and Wisconsin who voted against the measure were defeated in the election of 1922 after their stance was made an issue in their campaigns. In 1923, the NAACP had another successful case before the U.S. Supreme Court when they appealed the convictions of twelve African American men sentenced to death and sixty-seven to long prison terms by an all-white jury. Those sentences had resulted from bloody riots in Arkansas in 1919 precipitated by a white mob attacking a mass meeting of black farmers trying to organize a union, in which as many as two-hundred blacks and twenty whites were killed. In Moore v. Dempsey those convictions were overturned, ruling that Moore v. the defendants’ mob-dominated trials were a violation of the due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The landmark decision reversed the court’s previous ruling in the 1915 case of Leo Frank, a Jewish man convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the Atlanta pencil factory that he managed, on specious evidence in what was widely seen as a case motivated by anti-Semitism. Later, Frank’s death sentence was commuted by Georgia’s governor, which led a mob to storm the prison and lynch Frank. As a result of the ruling, Frank’s lawyer Louis Marshall joined the NAACP’s legal committee. That same year the NAACP began what would be a successful legal challenge (handed down by the Supreme Court in 1927) against southern state’s “white primary” laws, which precluded black candidates from running in Democratic primaries, which were tantamount to the general election in those states.

"The Crisis" issue, July 1918 The Crisis Magazine Called “the most widely read and influential periodical about race and social justice in U.S. history,” The Crisis (originally subtitled ‘A Record of the Darker Races’) was founded by W.E.B. DuBois as the house magazine of the NAACP. The periodical called unprecedented attention to the lives and plight of African Americans, providing a forum for DuBois’ uncompromising philosophy of racial equality. In its first issue, DuBois said its purpose was to be “first and foremost a newspaper” that would “record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect Negro-Americans;” provide “a review of opinion and literature,” and “stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race” and vigorously defend the “highest ideals of American democracy.”

Langston Hughes, 1936 Particularly during its years at 70 Fifth Avenue (1914-1923), The Crisis was an incomparable showcase for black writers and artists, containing the first publication of the writings of Langston Hughes, as well as works by Zora Neale Hurtson, Countee Cullen, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Arthur Schomberg, and Jean Toomer. From an initial circulation of 1,000 in its first year of publication, the magazine’s circulation peaked while at 70 Fifth Avenue in 1919 at over 100,000, making it more popular than established journals like The New Republic and The Nation, while also growing from twenty to nearly seventy pages. According to DuBois, its mission was to pursue “the world-old dream of human brotherhood.”

Jesse Redmon Fauset From its founding in 1910 The Crisis included both hard-hitting reporting about injustices faced by African Americans and DuBois’ pointed commentary – about lynching, Jim Crow, and the failures of political leadership to address these issues, as well as exposing readers to relevant international issues, such as the non-violent passive resistance efforts for Indian independence being led by Mahatma Ghandi in 1922. But starting in 1918 while published out of 70 Fifth Avenue, The Crisis also came to include a rich and influential array of literature and art. That was largely reflective of the influence of Jessie Redmon Fauset, an African-American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator dubbed by Langston Hughes “the midwife of the Harlem Renaissance,” who began contributing to the magazine in 1912 and served as its literary editor from 1918 to 1926. By many accounts, she was also the main force keeping the magazine operating during that time, as DuBois was travelling the world. Both she and DuBois also introduced photography, painting, and drawing into the magazine as a means of communicating its message and giving a forum for expression to African Americans. In addition to civil rights and the arts and literature, The Crisis had a special emphasis upon education, promoting the rise of African-American colleges and African American studies (DuBois himself would teach the very first course in African American history just feet from here at The New School in 1948). DuBois reported heavily upon both the successes and challenges of Black colleges and universities, and dedicated two issues of the magazine each year specifically to the topics of education and youth respectively. The Crisis also had a special focus during these years on promoting the emerging black cinema.

W.E.B. Du Bois, 1918 DuBois and The Crisis also had a notable commitment to gender equality. Aside from the significant role given to Fauset, the magazine showcased the works of many female writers and artists. And DuBois made that support explicit in his political writings as well; in 1911 in the pages of The Crisis he wrote that “Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage; every argument for women's suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage; both are great moments in democracy. There should be on the part of Negroes absolutely no hesitation whenever and wherever responsible human beings are without voice in their government. The man of Negro blood who hesitates to do them justice is false to his race, his ideals and his country.” In fact, DuBois’ perspective sometimes put him at odds with the more moderate and still predominantly White leadership of the NAACP at the time. The Crisis gave him an opportunity to express this more uncompromising perspective; DuBois sharply criticized President Wilson for segregating the Federal government in the pages of The Crisis before and more bluntly than the NAACP. The Crisis also called for an outright ban on the film The Birth Of A Nation, based upon its distortion of history and glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its flagrant denigration of blacks.

The Brownies’ Book, June 1921 DuBois and Dill Publishing W.E.B. DuBois and his business partner Augustus Granville Dill created a short-lived but highly impactful publishing house, located for its entire existence at 70 Fifth Avenue/2 East 13th Street. The enterprise furthered DuBois’ mission of inspiring African Americans with stories of their peers and predecessors, as well as guiding them to a better future. These highly personal projects built upon the work he was already doing through the NAACP and especially The Crisis. The Brownies’ Book magazine was a collaboration of DuBois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Redmon Fauset, who served as literary and managing editor of the magazine, published by DuBois and Dill. Growing out of the youth and education issues of The Crisis, it was the first magazine ever made for African American youth. The monthly focused heavily on promoting standards of gender, class and racial behavior and pride, using photographs, art, and literature to inspire young African-American children. The magazine’s message was consistently to do well in school, take pride in one's appearance, and learn about one's heritage, often citing African folk tales and drawing on other aspects of traditional African culture. One of the goals of the magazine was to dispel the “grotesque stereotypes" of the "Dark Continent," a disparaging term used for Africa and its people. African American children were frequently exposed to such portrayals along with the white children who were the implied audience in contemporary children's literary works. In the October 1919 issue of The Crisis in which DuBois first announced that publication of The Brownies’ Book would begin in January of the following year, he also laid out its agenda: To make colored children realize that being "colored" is a normal, beautiful thing. To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race. To make them know that other colored children have grown into beautiful, useful and famous persons. To teach them a delicate code of honor and action in their relations with white children. To turn their little hurts and resentments into emulation, ambition and love of their homes and companions. To point out the best amusements and joys and worth-while things of life. To inspire them to prepare for definite occupations and duties with a broad spirit of sacrifice. Like The Crisis, The Brownies’ Book had covers showcasing the work of prominent black artists. While utilizing games and music to engage its young audience, the magazine also included literature, poetry, information on current events, and biographies of successful African Americans, including Sojourner Truth, Phillis Wheatley (a slave seized from Africa at age 7, who in the 18th century became the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry), and popular Vaudeville entertainer Bert Williams. The first issue featured a photo of African American children marching in protest of lynchings and racist violence in the Silent March of 1917. DuBois had a regular column called “As the Crow Flies” relating current events to children; Fauset had an advice column called “The Judge;” a section called "Little People of the Month," showcasing the artistic and academic achievements of children submitted by and a regular feature was readers. Notable authors published in The Brownies' Book included Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Winifred Davidson, Effie Lee Newsome and Georgia Douglas Johnson. The magazine published Hughes’ high school graduation picture along with those of other high school graduates, and was the first publication to print Hughes’ poetry. There was little advertising; the modest amount included was often for literature geared towards black children which typically could not be found in bookstores. Because of this, the magazine was almost entirely dependent upon subscriptions to maintain it. In spite of Fauset, DuBois, and Dill’s best efforts, it never gained enough subscriptions to become financially self-sufficient, and ceased publication in December of 1921. DuBois and Dill Publishing’s other celebrated product was Elizabeth Ross Haynes’ Unsung Heroes (1921), a book about “the lives of seventeen men and women of the Negro race told in a way to inspire the children of our time.” The seventeen biographies chosen by Haynes, herself a pioneering African American activist and social worker, included those who were almost entirely unknown in the early 1920s, and those who had not been given their historic due. These included Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Alexandre Dumas, Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker, Booker T. Washington, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Phillis Wheatley. By the mid-1920s DuBois and Dill Publishing House ceased operations, and the NAACP and The Crisis moved to new quarters just up the block at 69 Fifth Avenue (northeast corner of 14th Street) where they remained for decades (the building was demolished in the 1950s).

Henry Morgenthau Sr., c. 1913 Near East Foundation 70 Fifth Avenue was also a haven for agencies dedicated to providing relief to those suffering from the catastrophes of worldwide wars and natural disasters. This included the Relief Fund for the Women and Children of Serbia during World War I and the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief or the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (later Near East Relief and now the Near East Foundation, the oldest nonsectarian international development organization in the U.S. and only the second humanitarian organization chartered by Congress). The latter was founded in New York in September 1915 in order to initiate relief measures and organize support in response to the unfolding Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. The group’s establishment was initiated by Henry Morgenthau Sr., the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1913 and 1916. Peter Balakian, in his book The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and the American Response, wrote: Ambassador Morgenthau went beyond the duty of his job as he became the crucial nexus between the killing fields and the American relief community and the press back home. A man of high moral conscience, Ambassador Morgenthau was most likely the first highranking diplomat to confront the leaders of the Ottoman government about its treatment of the Armenians. According to Morgenthau’s grandson, Henry Morgenthau III, his grandfather: … strenuously reported his concerns \[about the fate of Armenians within the Ottoman Empire] back to the State Department in Washington, where he was met not so much with opposition as with a numbing lack of interest…To get Morgenthau off his back, Secretary \[of State] Robert Lansing encouraged him to seek aid from private sources. He did. The result was the establishment of the Armenian Atrocities Committee, later redesignated as the Armenian Syrian Relief Committee and finally the great Near East Relief Organization chartered by Congress in 1919, which raised millions of dollars to the battle cry “remember the starving Armenians.” Today, the Near East Relief is credited with saving over a million lives, including 130,000 orphans. The Near East Relief Digital Museum commemorates America’s historic response to the Armenian Genocide by preserving, reconstructing, and sharing the rich history of the relief effort. This history is also showcased in the documentary film They Shall Not Perish. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, 1912 The first women’s suffrage parade in New York City took place along Fifth Avenue on May 4, 1912. One of the 10,000 marchers at the helm of the parade was Mabel Ping-Hua Lee (b. October 7, 1897). At 16 years old, Lee joined other Chinese American women riding on horseback along the march route, from Washington Square Park to 27th Street. Both The New York Tribune and The New York Times wrote articles about her activism prior to and during this landmark event.

NYC Suffrage Parade, May 4, 1912 In 1912, Lee enrolled at Barnard College, where she joined the Chinese Students’ Association and wrote feminist essays for The Chinese Students’ Monthly. In 1915, she gave a speech at the Women’s Political Union’s Suffrage Shop, in which she encouraged the Chinese American community to uplift the education and civic participation of women. Following her graduation from Barnard, Lee became the first Chinese American woman to receive a PhD in economics, from Columbia University. She published her research in the book The Economic History of China. When her father passed away in 1924, Lee assumed his role as the director of the First Chinese Baptist Church of New York City. Lee was also the founder of the Chinese Christian Center, a community center providing a health clinic, kindergarten, vocational training, and English classes. Though women gained voting access in 1917, and the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, Chinese American immigrant women could not vote until 1943. The Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese American immigrants from obtaining United States citizenship and therefore voting rights. It remains undetermined whether Lee ever became a U.S. citizen and voted here. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

59 Fifth Avenue was originally owned by prominent businessman and philanthropist Jonathan Sturges, who bought the home for his daughter Virginia Reed Sturges Osborn and son-in-law William H. Osborn (Sturges lived just a few doors away in the now-demolished 5 East 14th Street).

Jonathan Sturges, c. 1840 Sturges was one of the founders of the Union League Club, the pro-Union, anti-slavery club established to support the cause of the Union and abolition during the Civil War in the face of significant opposition from New York’s governing elite and its working class. Sturges was also the club’s second president beginning in 1863, at the time when the club, located a few blocks north of Sturges’ home on Fifth Avenue, was a prime target, along with the Colored Orphans Asylum, of mobs during the 1863 Draft Riots. Club members kept the mobs at bay with an armed vigil in the locked and barricaded clubhouse. Following the riots the club chose a bold gesture to show it was not intimidated by such threats; they recruited, trained, and equipped for military service a Colored Infantry regiment, whom club members accompanied on a march from the Union League clubhouse to Canal Street’s Hudson River piers to see them off to duty in Louisiana (the club continued this tradition during World War I, when it sponsored the 369th Infantry, the famed Harlem Hellfighters, which was commanded by club member William Hayward).

“Presentation of Colors” by Edward Lamson Henry, 1864 Virginia Osborn, in addition to being a great patron of the arts, was also extremely involved in philanthropic services to benefit the infirmed and impoverished — endeavors she shared with her mother Mary Cady Sturges. Among other positions, she served on the board of the art section of the 1864 New York Sanitary Fair, which was held to raise money for medical provisions for the Union troops during the Civil War. In 1854, William H. Osborn took over the presidency of the Illinois Central Railroad. During his tenure with the Illinois Central, Osborn worked with Abraham Lincoln, then general counsel for the railroad, as well as Ambrose Burnside, its treasurer, and George McClellan, its chief engineer and Vice President. The latter two served as generals in the Union Army during the Civil War, while Osborn directed the movement of Union troops and supplies on the Illinois Central. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Beginning in 1926 the Columbia Phonograph recording studios were located here, and some time not long after the OKeh Phonograph recording studios were located here, both remaining until mid-1934. OKeh Records was founded in 1916 by Otto K.E. Heinemann.

Columbia disc by Art Gillham from the mid-1920s OKeh eventually merged with Columbia, but initially established a strong reputation for producing “race records,” i.e. recordings by and for African Americans, including some of the early greats of jazz and blues, such as Louis Armstrong.

Teddy Wilson at a Benny Goodman rehearsal, 1950 The renowned record-producer, civil rights activist, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee John Hammond made his very first recordings here. While Benny Goodman is often credited with integrating American music by working with African American musicians and vocalists, Goodman himself would credit Hammond, who made it his personal mission to advance the integration of the music industry. Hammond suggested and indeed pushed Goodman to record music with African American musicians, and arranged many of the first integrated recording sessions.

Billie Holiday, 1947 After initial resistance from Goodman, Hammond got him, Holiday, and the great African American swing pianist Teddy Wilson to record together here in what was Goodman and Hammond’s first integrated musical recording session (while Black and white musicians might at times play together at clubs, recording together was a taboo which Hammond participated in shattering). Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Suffrage Parade, October 23, 1915 On October 23rd, 1915, what would be the largest women’s suffrage parade in history began at Washington Square Arch. The New York Times described it as “The latest, biggest and most enthusiastic of suffrage parades, and the one which, according to the leaders of the suffrage forces, will be the last ever needed to plead their cause in New York. They marched up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to Fifth-Ninth Street yesterday afternoon, blazoned the whole city with the yellow of its banners, and brought out what seemed to be the larger part of the population of Manhattan to look at them." The New York Sun described it as “a three mile argument for equal rights — a dignified, splendid argument — and every vantage point along the gay colored way was covered with men and women who saw its force. Through the chill of a windy afternoon, though the sun shone on the mighty host, the great army of women passed, the white costumes of many glittering in the sunlight, defying the cold wind that the onlookers felt to their spines as they stood to see it all.” The New York Evening World observed that “Some whose names are to be found all through the Social Register marched side by side with working mothers with babies in their arms. A large proportion of the marchers were young girls who would not be old enough to vote were they enfranchised. They made up in beauty what they lacked in years and were cheered all along the crowded Fifth Avenue sidewalks.” The New York Times observed that about 10% of the approximately 30,000 marchers were men. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In 1894 the headquarters of the New York City Woman Suffrage League moved into 10 East 14th Street. The League had been founded in 1870 under the original name of the New York City Woman Suffrage Society, just a year after the New York State Woman Suffrage Association was founded in 1869 in Saratoga Springs. Lillie Devereux Blake was the leader of both the state and city organization. At the time the League moved to 14th Street, only Wyoming and Colorado had given women the right to vote, and New York State was about to hold a convention to revise its Constitution, as was done every twenty years. The League’s Constitutional Amendment Campaign Committee was formed in December 1893, and held a pre-convention rally on May 7th, 1894 led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at Cooper Union. Harriot Stanton Blatch, John Milton Cornell (the owner of Cornell Iron Works) and Samuel Gompers (the president of the American Federation of Labor) also spoke. Here it was announced that the headquarters of the League at 10 East 14th Street would be open through the summer to support advocacy efforts, lobby for a place at the Convention, and stake out support for a suffrage amendment.

Lillie Devereux Blake, undated The New York City Woman Suffrage League chose this location strategically. Right in the middle of the bustling high-end shopping district, this building provided an opportunity for the League to connect with wealthy women who could finance and otherwise support its campaign. During this fight, Governor Hill and Governor Flower supported appointing the women as delegates, and leading suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Mary Seymour Howell were able to address the state legislature with the same request. The organization collected 332,000 names on petitions and obtained over $10,000 in lobbying funds, securing the right to send delegates to the summer convention. At the convention, however, the delegates narrowly declined to support the suffrage amendment. New York Suffragists would not give up the effort, and waged their campaign for another twenty-three years. Finally, on November 6th, 1917, women in the state of New York were granted the right to vote. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In the 1950s this building was the home of union organizer and civil rights advocate David Livingston, a confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. who arranged a meeting between King and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

United Auto Workers logo Under his leadership, District 65 of the United Auto Workers became one of the earliest supporters of the civil rights movement. Livingston was also notable for his early outreach to women and minorities. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Over the years, the four buildings that comprised the Albert Hotel hosted many of the most prominent names in American arts, literature, music, and radical politics. According to the State and National Register Report for the Hotel Albert, the Hotel St. Stephen, which was absorbed by the Hotel Albert in 1895, accepted some African American guests as early as 1889.

Charles S. Johnson In 1943, the Amsterdam News published an article about the Hotel Albert titled “No Jim Crow In This Hotel.” However, the article itself shared a more nuanced story. It was written following an incident in which a black student of the Workers School was declined a room and a delegation from the Workers School launched a protest in response. The article quoted the hotel’s manager saying the hotel had a policy of not discriminating. In 1938, Professor Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University, one of the co-directors of the Institute of Race Relations at NYU, stayed at the Hotel Albert with his wife. Johnson went on to become Fisk University’s first black president in 1946.

“If He Hollers Let Him Go” by Chester Himes, 1945 In the mid-20th century The People's Radio Foundation, Inc., moved to the Hotel Albert. Its goal was to establish a radio station dedicated to "interracial unity and the brotherhood of man." A number of important African-American literary figures also stayed at the Hotel Albert throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Chester Himes was listed at this address in the 1950s, Richard Wright stayed here in 1949, and Charles Wright stayed here in the 1960s. Amiri Baraka (previously known as LeRoi Jones) wrote about meeting a friend at the Hotel Albert in the 1960s. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The Social Reform Club at 45 University Place boasted a membership featuring the city’s most renowned reform leaders, and attempted to confront the most pressing issues facing working people locally and internationally. The Social Reform Club was formally organized in 1894 to cultivate consciousness about, and organize around the improvement of, industrial and social conditions. As a critical part of this mission, it sought to unite working people with their allies. Poet and reformer Ernest Howard Crosby helped found the Club after a meeting with political economist and journalist Henry George in late 1894. Its first president was Charles Spahr, who worked as the author and editor of Outlook magazine. Dr. Anne M. Filiaci writes that the Social Reform Club leadership also included lawyer Edmund Kelly, former New York State Assemblymember Ernest Crosby, and Ethical Culture Society-founder Felix Adler. Labor union leader Samuel Gompers, Progressive leader Josephine Shaw Lowell, and author William Dean Howells were also part of the club’s advisory board.

Samuel Gompers, 1902 According to Samuel Gompers’ published papers, the group required that half of the members be wage earners, and the Club’s 1898 annual report — cited by the editors of Gompers’ papers — revealed that over one third of the club’s 310 members were in fact wage earners. In addition to hosting classes, lectures, and conferences, documented widely in newspapers of the time, the Club coordinated non-partisan support of legislation. Dr. Filiaci similarly emphasizes the Club’s attempt to strike a balance between exploring political ideologies and developing practical solutions. Originally, the group met regularly at rooms on Bond Street, before moving to a now-demolished building at 28 East 4th Street. Around the turn of the century, the Social Reform Club was located at 45 University Place.

Lillian Wald, 1905-1945 The Social Reform Club is mentioned in a number of biographies of New York City’s most prominent reformers, especially women, illuminating how much of an influence it had on shaping the politics and networks of these individuals. Lillian Wald; labor leader Leonora O’Reilly; philanthropist and activist Louise Perkins; Greenwich House founder Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch; civil rights activist Mary White Ovington; socialist, suffragist, and settlement house worker Florence Ledyard Cross Kitchelt; and writer and women’s movement leader Charlotte Perkins Gilman were all associated with the Club. The Club’s membership also included labor activist and educator Edward King, attorney and activist Edward Warren Ordway, journalist Jacob Riis, economist E.R.A. Seligman, journalist and editor Albert Shaw, and public parks and settlement activist Charles Stover. Without a doubt, the Social Reform Club played a profoundly significant role in the lives of the city’s most renowned and influential reformers, and in shaping the movements in which they were involved. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Starting in the 1930s, 35 East 12th Street housed the headquarters for the Communist Party of the United States.

Communist Party emblem A number of associated offices were also located at this address, including the National Negro Congress. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Igal Roodenko was a printer, anti-capitalist, socialist, and anti-war and civil rights activist whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Over the course of his life, Roodenko participated in a number of the most significant civil rights and social justice movements of the twentieth century, including the first Freedom Ride, for which he was arrested in 1947. During World War II, Roodenko was a conscientious objector, and served 20 months in federal prison from April 1945 to December 1946. While here, he wrote letters to government officials and other figures about securing amnesty for imprisoned conscientious objectors, and received replies of support from Albert Einstein, Emily Greene Balch, Eric Sevareid, and Dorothy Thompson. From 1947 to 1977, Roodenko was on the executive committee of the War Resisters League, serving as its Chairman from 1968 to 1972.

Igal Roodenko When Roodenko was released from prison, he founded the Libertarian Press with Dave Dellinger, who had also been imprisoned as a conscientious objector. In 1950, Roodenko started his own press, which he maintained for about two decades. In 1957, his business was listed at 36 East 10th Street. In his later life, Roodenko spoke openly about being gay, and supported the Gay Liberation movement. Upon his death, he was part of the group Men of All Colors Together, which confronted racism in the gay community. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

During the Civil War, 813 Broadway was the home of the Hall of the Loyal National League, an organization established to support the Union and bring about the end of slavery throughout the country, not just in the slave states in revolt (as the Emancipation Proclamation did).

James A. Roosevelt, 1896-1899 The Loyal National League was composed of some of New York City’s most elite men. The league had locations all throughout the country during the Civil War with the 813 Broadway location being one of the largest and most prominent. The Secretary of the League was James A. Roosevelt, uncle of future president Theodore Roosevelt. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In the 1920s, a number of leftist and labor organizations moved into the former St. Denis Hotel. Among these groups was the American Negro Labor Congress, which published The Liberator from Room 338. In 1950, the Peace Information Center, for which W.E.B. Du Bois served as chairman, moved in. The DuBois-founded Freedomways: A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement, was published out of Room 542. The Labor Research Association in Room 634 also published five- and ten-cent pamphlets with titles including “Negro Liberation.”

American Negro Labor Congress, 1929 Prominent figures of the African American civil rights movement, including Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, and James Baldwin were all connected with the organizations housed in this building. As a result, they were each labeled as “subversive” by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In late 2018, after plans were announced to demolish the historic building to make way for another tech-related development, Village Preservation staged a protest outside the building attended by hundreds of local residents. Nevertheless the city refused to act, and in 2019 the building was demolished, with the new office tower replacing it. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The publishing company The Academy Press was located at 112 Fourth Avenue. While operating out of this building, it published a number of texts, including The Real Chinese in America by J.S. Tow (1923). Tow was the Secretary of the Chinese Consulate General of New York, and in this book sought to confront and combat the widespread prejudice and discrimination experienced by Chinese Americans.

"The New York Evening Call" issue The New York Call newspaper was also located here. One of The Call's most remarkable contributers was Robert Berkeley "Bob" Minor (1884 – 1952), a political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and a leading member of the American Communist Party. He became the highest paid cartoonist in America, but left that lucrative work to join left-wing publications and causes, including The New York Call. Minor eventually ran for multiple political offices in New York and in other parts of the country. From 1923 to 1924, Minor sat on the Executive Committee of the Friends of Soviet Russia, the American affiliate of the Comintern's Workers International Relief organization. Minor was responsible for the Party's "Central Committee for Negro Work," and oversaw the Communists attempts to build unity with Marcus Garvey and his "Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League." Minor had been disappointed by the watering down of the "Negro Equality" proposal the Communists submitted to the founding convention of the Farmer–Labor Party in 1924. He believed the party leadership under William Z. Foster "went along with ... concessions in the hope of mollifying antiblack southern farmers and AFL leaders with an eye toward future cooperation." Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The great jazz musician Randy Weston lived at 204 East 13th Street in the 1960s, during the peak of his jazz career. At this time this section of the East Village was a hub of jazz and blues music in the United States, when Charlie “Bird” Parker and Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter both called the neighborhood home. Throughout his career, Weston incorporated African musical elements in his work, and played an important role in advancing the argument, now widely accepted, that the roots of jazz trace back to African music. Some of his most popular compositions include “Hi-Fly,” “Little Niles,” and “Blue Moses.”

Randy Weston, 1984 Weston was also a key political figure in global civil rights activism. As African countries fought for freedom from colonial exploitation in the mid-20th century, Weston saluted their struggles in his music. His album “Uhuru Afrika” (Swahili for “Freedom Africa”), which was released in 1960 and included lyrics written by Langston Hughes, was banned in South Africa by the country’s apartheid regime.

“Uhuru Afrika” album cover by Randy Weston, 1961 In 1959, Weston became a leading member of the United Nations Jazz Society, a group seeking to spread the love of jazz throughout the world. Two years later, in 1961, Weston made his first visit to Africa, traveling to Nigeria as part of the American Society for African Culture. After a second trip, Weston decided to make his stay more permanent, and moved to Morocco in 1968. He remained here for five years, traveling throughout the country and running the African Rhythms Cultural Center, a performance venue that supported artists from various traditions.

“Tanjah” album cover by Randy Weston, 1974 Weston’s musical accolades earned him Grammy nominations in 1973 for his album “Tanjah” and in 1995 for “The Splendid Master Gnawa Musicians of Morocco.” In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts gave Weston its Jazz Masters award, the highest accolade available to a jazz artist in the United States. He was voted into DownBeat magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2016. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .