Unsung History13 Kesä 2022

The Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village

The 12-story Women’s House of Detention, situated in the heart of Greenwich Village in New York City, from 1932 to 1974, was central to the queer history of The Village. The House of D, as it was known, housed such inmates as Angela Davis, Afeni Shakur, Andrea Dworkin, and Valerie Solanas, and was formative in their thinking and writing. On the night of the Stonewall Riots, the incarcerated women and transmaculine people in the House of D, a few hundred feet away from The Stonewall Inn, joined in, chanting “Gay power!” and lighting their possessions on fire and throwing them out the windows onto the street in solidarity.

Joining me to help us understand more about the Women’s House of Detention and its role in queer history is historian and writer Hugh Ryan, author of the 2022 book, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Women’s House of Detention, Jefferson Market Courthouse, View Northwest from West 8th Street, at Sixth and Greenwich Avenues, 1943,” Municipal Archives, Department of Public Works Collection.

Additional Sources:

“Prison Memoirs: The New York Women’s House of Detention,” by Angela Davis,The Village Voice, Originally published October 10, 1974.
“The Women’s House of Detention,” by Sarah Bean Apmann, Village Preservation, January 29, 2018.
“Women’s House of Detention,” 1931-1974, by Joan Nestle, Out History, Historical Musings 2008.
“'The Women's House of Detention' Illuminates a Horrific Prison That 'Helped Define Queerness for America',” by Gabrielle Bruney, Jezebel, May 9, 2022.
“Site of the Women's House of Detention (1932-1974),” by Rebecca Woodham and Clio Admin,” Clio: Your Guide to History. February 26, 2021.
“The Queer History of the Women’s House of Detention,” by Hugh Ryan, The Activist History Review, May 31, 2019.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(230)

Jane Addams, Hull House, and Chicago's Nineteenth Ward

In the fall of 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House on Chicago’s Near West Side, full of good intentions to help the poor people of the neighborhood. They were a force for good, p...

10 Elo 46min

Buddy Bradley

Buddy Bradley, born in the Jim Crow South in 1905, made his way to Harlem at age 16 where he learned to tap dance and became a chorus boy. He was sought out on Broadway as both teacher and choreograph...

27 Heinä 50min

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

During World War II, afraid that major league baseball would need to pause while men were overseas fighting, Philip K. Wrigley, chewing gum mogul and owner of the Chicago Cubs, spearheaded a new profe...

13 Heinä 54min

The Declaration of Independence

The Continental Congress voted to break from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, and approved the text of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, but it took weeks for the news to spread throughout the ...

29 Kesä 48min

The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building

The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building loom large in the American imagination, symbolizing the conflicting ideas of liberty and empire; their meanings and characters have shifted over tim...

15 Kesä 38min

An American History of Purses

Today the US handbag market is estimated to be nearly $12 billion, with most of the purchasing done by women, but into the early 20th Century purses hadn’t yet become the nearly-exclusive domain of wo...

1 Kesä 40min

The Lady Bird Special

On the morning of Tuesday, October 6, 1964, the Lady Bird Special, a 19-car train carrying First Lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, her supporters, members of the press, and a security detail, departed...

18 Touko 41min

Policing Slavery & Black Rebellion in the American South

Enslaved Africans were forcibly shipped to Virginia starting in 1619 in response to a severe labor shortage. From the beginning, enslaved laborers resisted by fleeing and through violence, and white e...

4 Touko 50min