Letter From The Editors

Each year New York recognizes important anniversaries of key moments in the state's history—many of them fundamental turning points in the nation's social, cultural, economic, and political life, and 2021 marks decennial acknowledgments of two especially difficult moments in the Empire State's recent past: the 1971 Attica Uprising and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In this issue of New York History Jan Seidler Ramirez of the 9/11 Memorial Museum reflects on some of the human tragedies of twenty years ago, beginning with a voting machine, in our "Artifact New York" feature. To interrogate the history of the uprising and state violence at Attica in September 1971, our reviews editor Aaron Noble has drawn together scholars, journalists, and relatives of some of the key figures for our major feature, which examines the creation of memory and the search for truths at the fiftieth anniversary of the Attica Uprising.

While the memories of these and other major incidents inform contemporary discourse on important social questions, the articles in this issue remind us that such history is constantly unfolding, and that historical work can allow less celebrated characters and incidents to provide a more holistic view of related themes, or alternative angles on the same moment in time. A century before Attica, inmates of diverse institutions were challenging heavy-handed administration—Thomas J. Balcerski's article on hierarchy and resistance at Sailors' Snug Harbor reveals ways aged seamen opposed authoritarian rule in the late nineteenth century. In the same period, African Americans were crafting strategies and organizing at the grassroots level to challenge increasingly violent and institutionalized racist hierarchies, and Michael B. Boston's article on the National Negro Business League demonstrates that entrepreneurship was a critical, if understudied strategy of racial uplift in turn-of-the-century New York. Conflicts over notions of justice grow especially contentious when tied to the politics of militarism and even war—Melissa Franson's research on the Catskills at the eve of the Civil War shows that local newspapers fueled a contentious partisanship by identifying slavery as the central animating question in the region's—and the nation's—political life. Charles F. Howlett shows how concerns about civil liberties and academic freedom propelled the Committee on Militarism in Education to challenge the state-sanctioned bellicosity that had arisen during World War I by battling the ubiquity of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Uneven distribution of power often manifests in economics and in politics, and articles by Gideon Cohn-Postar and Marsha E. Barrett show the intersection of the two at very different moments in New York's development. Cohn-Postar elevates labor-left activism against voter intimidation by employers within the story of New York State ballot reform. Barrett provides fascinating insights into the ways Nelson Rockefeller's personal fortune shaped statewide politics and influenced gubernatorial administration in the Empire State for nearly a generation, while also revealing that, for most of this period, the public was relatively undisturbed by ostentatious displays of wealth in political life. While Rockefeller, whose actions as governor during Attica are critically assessed in this issue, was largely able to avoid financial scrutiny in New York, his nomination to the vice presidency in 1974 invited an assiduous interrogation of the politics of wealth.

We are grateful, as always, for the guidance of our esteemed Advisory Board, the insights of dozens of volunteer peer review readers, and the continued support of our institutional partners at the New York State Museum and Cornell University Press.

Excelsior! The Editors