{"id":1196,"date":"2016-06-01T10:29:05","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T14:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/?page_id=30"},"modified":"2017-12-09T01:41:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T06:41:20","slug":"greenwich-village","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/greenwich-village\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenwich Village"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Greenwich Village <\/h3>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Greenwich Village is a neighborhood in lower Manhattan that has been known since the early 1900s as the center of the arts in New York City.[1]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe Village\u201d, as it is commonly known, grew intermittently throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and managed to escape the grid pattern that now covers the island.\u00a0 By the beginning of the twentieth century the ethnic diversity, lower cost of living, and growing atmosphere of tolerance made Greenwich Village home to many of the city\u2019s creative types and members of the counter-culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One of the most important art forms in 1960s Greenwich Village was theater.\u00a0 Two highly influential intuitions for theater, New York Shakespeare in the Park festivals and the Public Theater in Greenwich Village, were founded by Joseph Papp.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Merce Cunningham Dance Company was founded by choreographer Merce Cunningham in 1953.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 In 1944, Cunningham first collaborated with avant-garde composer John Cage.\u00a0 In 1948 they taught summer classes at Black Mountain Collage where a few year later Cunningham would eventually found his dance company which would eventually find its home in the West Village until it was dissolved in 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Advertised as “The Wrong Place for the Right People”, Caf\u00e9 Society was the first racially integrated nightclub in the nation.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 It was founded 1938 by Barney Josephson, a Jewish man from Trenton, New Jersey.\u00a0 Josephson was one of six children from a widowed mother.\u00a0 At a young age Josephson became involved in the \u201cNegro liberation\u201d and from that he developed a love for jazz music.\u00a0 After graduating high school in 1919, his brother Dave offered him a one third stake in his shoe store plus living expenses once he turned twenty-one.\u00a0 Josephson saw this as an opportunity to save and retire at a young age so he accepted.\u00a0 Working for Dave, Josephson was responsible for buying and so he would make weekly trips to New York City where he would be taken out by his suppliers to various clubs such as the Cotton Club in Harlem.\u00a0 During this time almost every club in the city was owned by the mob and segregation of nightclubs was standard.\u00a0 These clubs where even though many of the entertainers were African American they would not be allowed as patrons or even allowed to perform with white people on stage.\u00a0 This type of behavior was unacceptable to Josephson, he said in his book:<\/p>\n

\u201cWherever I went there was no Negro patronage. I thought, \u2018Look what they\u2019re doing to these people.\u00a0 The only unique thing that we possess culturally in this country is the music the Negro people have given to us, our only indigenous art form. Gospel, blues, jazz, rock and roll, all originated from the spirituals and slave songs down South. Everything else was brought over from Europe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

During the years of prohibition (1920-1933) he would also frequent speakeasies throughout the city.\u00a0 It was in these illegal bars that he noticed something interesting regarding society, \u201cRules were rewritten. Issues of race and class were obscured for booze and a good time\u201d.\u00a0 Josephson had come up with an idea for a cabaret with a particular mission.\u00a0 He wanted to make a social and political statement with this club and also have it run like a real business instead of a pseudo-racket like the gangsters did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front, a club whose stated advertised<\/em> policy would be just that.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t, so far as I know, a place like that in New York, or in the whole country for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

His brother\u2019s business at the time, however, was doing very well and had three locations so he did nothing.\u00a0 That was until the depression hit and killed Dave\u2019s business so after his mother\u2019s death in 1935 with nothing keeping him in Trenton anymore Josephson moved to Atlantic City.\u00a0 One of the shoe clerks who had worked for him in Dave\u2019s store had opened his own store in Atlantic City and hired Josephson.\u00a0 It was here Josephson worked until spring of 1937 when he got a call from his other brother Leon.\u00a0 Leon knew of Josephson\u2019s dream so he borrowed some money, called up Josephson, and told him to quit his job and move to the city because his dream was going to become reality.\u00a0 [4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Rent was cheap in the Bohemian Greenwich Village and he found a place at 2 Sheridan Square (currently 1 Sheridan Square).\u00a0 Opening a nightclub made him the target of the mob, the crooked cops on the mobs books, as well as people who objected to racial integration but with Mayor LaGuardia on the warpath against organized crime he decided to make his move.\u00a0 On December 28th<\/sup>, 1938 the club opened and Billie Holiday, who was unknown at the time, performed in the opening show.\u00a0 Many famous jazz musicians performed at Caf\u00e9 Society such as Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Les Paul, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Django Reinhardt, Charles Parker, and Billie Holiday.\u00a0 Billie Holiday\u2019s rise to fame could easily be attributed to her 1939 breakout performance at Caf\u00e9 Society of \u201cStrange Fruit\u201d which stunned the audience and eventually became her biggest selling record.\u00a0 This song based on a poem about lynching by Abel Meeropol and set to music was introduced to Holiday by Josephson.\u00a0\u00a0 She was afraid of what the reaction of the audience would be and it was only because of his insistence that she ended up performing it.\u00a0 The club was successful and a second club uptown was opened in 1940.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of its mission to help integrate American society Josephson\u2019s club was the venue for many left-wing events and fundraisers during and after World War II.\u00a0 Both clubs remained successful until on March 5th<\/sup>, 1947 when Leon was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a communist.\u00a0 Leon, despite being ostracized by the American Communist Party, was a vehemently self-proclaimed Marxist.\u00a0 Leon believed the committee was unconstitutional and in an attempt to bring the legitimacy of the committee to the Supreme Court refused to testify citing the First Amendment\u2019s freedom of speech, thought, and association as his reasons.\u00a0 This resulted in him being found guilty of contempt.\u00a0 The resulting bad press surrounding this incident caused a sharp decline in club attendance and clubs closed the following year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Village Vanguard jazz club was founded by Max Gordon on February 22, 1935.\u00a0 Many of the jazz virtuosos played in this club such as bassist Charles Mingus, saxophonist John Coltrane, and pianist Thelonious Monk. [5]<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the most important counter culture movements to come out of Greenwich Village was the Beat Generation.\u00a0 The Beat Generation was an avant-garde literary movement that developed as a reaction to the status quo imposed by the Cold War Era.[6]<\/a> Writers Jack Kerouac (who coined the term \u201cBeat Generation\u201d in 1948), Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were the forefathers of the movement.\u00a0\u00a0 Kerouac and Ginsberg were former Columbia University students who met in 1944.\u00a0 Later that year they met Burroughs and all moved into the apartment of Joan Vollmer, who eventually became Burroughs\u2019 wife. Each of these men, although from different states and very different backgrounds, all shared this idea of a \u201cNew Vision\u201d.\u00a0 Over the years they refined their New Vision into four pillars that would drive the movement for years to come and help shape The Village into the neighborhood it is today.\u00a0 These pillars were \u201cunfettered self-expression, sensory derangement as a means of perceiving truth, sexual experimentation, and the idea that art transcends conventional morality\u201d.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By the time the 1960s came around the Beat Generation, flourishing coffeehouse culture, and growing number of small theaters in Greenwich Village had provided the groundwork for some of the decade\u2019s most momentous cultural movements.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A very prominent movement started in the 1960s out of Greenwich Village, still clearly visible today, was the gay rights movement.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Greenwich Village had a prominent homosexual community including poet Allen Ginsberg, artist Andy Warhol, and more recently CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.\u00a0 In the 1960s gay and lesbian groups in The Village decided to start fighting against the oppression society has placed on them both in and out of the courts.\u00a0 Police would frequently raid gay bars arresting people and publicly announcing their sexual orientation during a time when homosexuality was actively discriminated against.\u00a0 On June 28, 1969 the Stonewall Inn riots on Christopher Street occurred.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Police had been raiding the Stonewall Inn for years in an effort to drive the gays from the community.\u00a0 In this particular instance the police raided the bar and arrested thirteen people and the patrons of the bar decided to fight back.\u00a0 The commotion attracted a crowd resulting in a powerful protest throughout the gay community and eventually a riot against the police and their harassment of gay establishments.\u00a0 This riot lasted six days and helped free the gay community to openly ask for equal rights.\u00a0 In reaction to the riot, the Gay Liberation Front was founded and the first annual Gay Pride Parade took place the June of the following year.\u00a0 The Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day march as it was called was a major turning point in gay rights and soon sister marches would start to be held all around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/h1>\n

Bochynski, Pegge. 2013. “Beat generation.” Salem Press Encyclopedia.<\/em> Salem Press.<\/p>\n

Bullard, Eric. 2016. “Pride parade.” Salem Press Encyclopedia.<\/em> Salem Press.<\/p>\n

Frank, Stanley. 1950. “Anything Goes in Greenwich Village.” Saturday Evening Post<\/em> (Saturday Evening Post Society, Inc..) 223 (12): 26-132.<\/p>\n

Josephson, Barney, and Terry Trilling-Josephson. 2015. Cafe Society : The Wrong Place for the Right People.<\/em> Urbana: University of Illinois Press.<\/p>\n

Myers, Alice. 2013. “Merce Cunningham.” Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia.<\/em> Salem Press.<\/p>\n

Ruth, Michael. 2016. “Gay rights movement.” Salem Press Encyclopedia.<\/em> Salem Press.<\/p>\n

Sax, Richard. 2014. “Allen Ginsberg.” Poetry Foundation.<\/em> Salem Press.<\/p>\n

\u2014. 2016. “Jack Kerouac.” Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia.<\/em> Salem Press.<\/p>\n

Stilling, Roger J. 2013. “Greenwich Village.” Salem Press Encyclopedia.<\/em> Salem Press.<\/p>\n

Wikimedia. n.d. “Cafe-society-ny.jpg.” Wikipedia.<\/em> Accessed 12 8, 2017. https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/5\/5e\/Cafe-society-ny.jpg\/360px-Cafe-society-ny.jpg.<\/p>\n

\u2014. 2012. “Stonewall_Inn_2012_with_gay-pride_flags_and_banner.jpg.” Wikipedia.<\/em> Accessed 12 8, 2017. https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/b\/b2\/Stonewall_Inn_2012_with_gay-pride_flags_and_banner.jpg.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0 (Stilling 2013)<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0 (Myers 2013)<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0 (Josephson and Trilling-Josephson 2015)<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> (Josephson and Trilling-Josephson 2015)<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> (Stilling 2013)<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> (Bochynski 2013)<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> (Bochynski 2013)<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> (Ruth 2016)<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> (Bullard 2016)<\/p>\n