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In the spring of 1961, responding to complaints from well-heeled homeowners around Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York's Department of Parks and Recreation forbade young people from playing music around the park's turned-off fountain on Sunday afternoons. A few hundred young people gathered at the fountain for a peaceful protest. Cops rioted and mauled them. One local newspaper called it, however, a "beatnik riot."

#greenwichvillage #washingtonsquarepark #beatnik #beatniks #folkmusic #nypd #newyorkhistory #riot #johnstrausbaugh

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In the 1930s, the Lower East Side's Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics for two songs that bookended the Great Depression, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and "Over the Rainbow."

#thewizardofoz #overtherainbow #judygarland #yipharburg #brothercanyou spareadime #lowereastside #immigrants #iragershwin #hollywood #broadway #aprilinparis #bingcrosby #lydiathetattooedlady #grouchomarx

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During World War II, Walt Disney Studios produced many propaganda cartoons for the government, starring Donald Duck and other well-known characters. Their subjects ranged from the importance of paying your income tax to farting in Der Fuehrer's Face.

"The Spirit of '43":

https://archive.org/details/TheSpirit...

"Education for Death":

https://archive.org/details/youtube-l...

"Der Fuehrer's Face":

https://archive.org/details/DerFuehre...

#disney #waltdisney #waltdisneystudios #donaldduck #derfuehrer'sface #derfuehrer #hitler #nazi #worldwarII #propaganda #cartoon #popeye #bugsbunny #mussolini #hirohito #internetarchive #stereotype #goering #goebbels #johnstrausbaugh

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In 1938, with war looming in Europe, Irving Berlin offered popular singer Kate Smith a new patriotic song to debut on her radio show. It’s forgotten today that in the form she sang it, “God Bless America” wasn’t just a patriotic anthem, it was an isolationist one, about how glad Americans should be that they were far from the “storm clouds” gathering “across the sea.” Then, just one day before Smith’s broadcast, the Nazis made one of their most despicable moves yet, and everything changed.

#irving berlin #katesmith #godblessamerica #isolationism #nazis #worldwar2 #johnstrausbaugh #kristallnach #hitler #jews

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On the night of Wednesday, June 22, 1938, the whole world was focused on Yankee Stadium. Joe Louis, nicknamed the Brown Bomber, was fighting a rematch with Max Schmeling, called Hitler’s Superman. This was much more than a prizefight. Around the world, this was seen as a symbolic duel between democracy and fascism, freedom and slavery, white and black.

#joelouis #maxschmeling #boxing #hitler #nazis #prizefighting #yankeestadium #johnstrausbaugh

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No one captured New York City in its noir 1930s and 1940s better than the photographer Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee. Ceaselessly roaming New York's streets, often at night while his competitors slept, Weegee took thousands and thousands of photos that visually defined what he called the Naked City. An exhibition of his work is on view at the International Center of Photography on the Lower East Side until May 2025.

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When Moe Asch died in 1986, his extraordinarily eclectic Folkways Records had put out 2,186 long-playing records, from Woody Guthrie to Ho Chi Minh, Leadbelly to Langston Hughes, jazz, gospel, Yiddish music, calypso, and instructional records like "Speech After the Removal of the Larynx." Most did not sell well, but at least one of them, Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music," set off a seismic shift in American culture.

#johnstrausbaugh #bobdylan #moeasch #folkwaysrecords #peteseeger #woodyguthrie #folkmusic

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During World War II, Times Square was crowded with soldiers and sailors, and girls and women who wanted to be around them. The authorities labeled these females "victory girls," "khaki-wackies," and even "patriotutes."

Excerpted from my book "Victory City."

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