Stephen Somerstein was a 24-year-old student at the City College of New York’s night school and picture editor of the student newspaper when he photographed some of the most iconic images of the civil rights movement. With his five cameras in tow, he traveled by bus to Alabama in 1965 to document the Selma to…

If you’ve ever visited the New-York Historical Society, you’ve probably enjoyed saying hello to (or even taking a selfie with!) our Frederick Douglass statue outside our 77th Street entrance. While we’re thrilled to celebrate his work every day as he welcomes visitors to the Museum, we’re especially excited this year to celebrate his life and…

Opening Friday, June 26, our provocative exhibition Art as Activism features 72 posters from the 1930s through 1970s. Despite their varying messages—some promote violence, others peace; some champion reform, others revolution—these works collectively showcase powerful political messages that went “viral” decades before the birth of the internet. The posters and broadsides focus on the American…

“Write right from left to the right as you see it spelled here.” Did you print your answer? If so, you got it wrong—it should have been written in cursive. “Spell backwards, forwards.” Did you include a comma? Wrong. Did you omit the comma? That’s wrong, too. These are only two of the 30 questions…

On January 16, the New-York Historical Society will open Freedom Journey 1965: Stephen Somerstein Photographs from Selma to Montgomery. This exhibit features the stunning and historic photographs of Stephen Somerstein, documenting the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights March in January 1965. We spoke to Mr. Somerstein about traveling to the march, the art of photography, and being present at…

Most American students learn about Rosa Parks, the African American civil rights activist who was famously refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955. A few learn of Claudette Colvin, a teenager who was arrested for the same crime earlier that same year in Montgomery, Alabama, and whose testimony in Browder…

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and our new exhibition, The Dream Continues: Photographs of Martin Luther King Murals by Vergara, we present “Tracking Time,” written by photographer Camilo Vergara. Here, he speaks about his decades of documenting America’s poor urban communities, and how he became a “builder of virtual cities.”  For more than…

It’s been over twenty years since the peak of the AIDS crisis, and evidence of activists’ fight for recognition and action can still be found all around the city. People With AIDS plaza is located right outside City Hall. Thousands of people participate in the AIDS Walk every year in Central Park. Still, twenty years…