Dr. Robert Snyder is the Manhattan Borough Historian and Professor Emeritus of American Research and Journalism at Rutgers. He spoke with the Amsterdam Information about his upcoming ebook, the position of a borough historian, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
AmNews: What are your duties as Manhattan borough historian?
One in all my duties is to create an archive for the Metropolis of New York that had been established lengthy earlier than I arrived on the scene. One other [is] to advocate for historic preservation that’s already being carried out by numerous preservationists in New York Metropolis. Third, which I believed I may do better of all, is educate individuals about historical past. I strive to try this in quite a lot of methods. I attempt to assist students who’re researching the historical past of New York Metropolis concerning the metropolis in a approach that’s extra accessible to common readers.
I attempt to assist journalists who’re masking town develop a richer understanding of historical past behind the headlines that they see in the present day. I attempt to promote good books which can be being written concerning the historical past of New York Metropolis. I do interviews for the New Books Community and the Gotham Middle for New York Metropolis Historical past with authors of books on New York and Manhattan particularly, and I do lectures for various organizations and native libraries.
One of many issues that impressed me most about New York’s response to the pandemic was how individuals within the skilled world that I’m in, which is generally historians, documentarians, archivists, folklorists, [was] how a lot they grasp that this was actually massive. The pandemic was going to be enormous and it will be vital for New York Metropolis and we’d need to perceive it sooner or later. They actually went to work and picked up every thing from oral historical past interviews, images of artworks, and archived them in all types of how in order that future generations may perceive and interpret [them].
We had been baffled that the 1918 flu epidemic had hit New York Metropolis and no one remembered it. I didn’t study it till I interviewed my grandmother. Once I was in faculty within the Seventies, I used to be interviewing her about her life in New York Metropolis and she or he simply stated it in passing. I used to be simply astonished to study concerning the 1918 flu and no one had talked about it. It was as if it had by no means occurred. It occurred in the course of World Conflict I and there have been tons of World Conflict I memorials everywhere however it’s important to look exhausting to determine that there was a flu epidemic in 1918. I resolved that I might do what I may to guarantee that what occurred through the COVID pandemic in New York Metropolis was not forgotten.
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AmNews: You could have a brand new ebook popping out known as When the Metropolis Stopped which tells the story of COVID-19 by the phrases of normal New Yorkers. Inform us about it.
A variety of the individuals interviewed within the ebook are first responders and medical professionals who labored through the pandemic, speaking about their expertise. What I found enhancing the interviews is that as tough because the spring of 2020 was, that was the place individuals had been discovering methods to be courageous, the place they had been summoning sources of solidarity that they weren’t totally conscious of beforehand. The place they had been studying to reinvent their jobs to be simpler well being care suppliers. We are able to study so much from that, I feel. We are able to discover inspiration within the solidarity of medical professionals and first responders and simply bizarre people who abruptly discovered their jobs as grocery store cashiers, as meals supply staff [dangerous]. . . dealing with dying so the remainder of us may go on with semi-normal lives.
AmNews: What are a few of the takeaways for you in writing the ebook?
One of many takeaways is that I knew that New York Metropolis had gotten increasingly unequal. In 2019 I revealed a ebook about immigration in New York Metropolis and that was one of many massive themes of financial inequality, the way in which that impacts the lives of immigrants and migrants, however to me the pandemic within the uneven distribution of deaths, simply confirmed how unequal town has grow to be.
One other takeaway is to acknowledge that every New Yorker’s well being and security is sure up with the well being and security of each different New Yorker. [During] the pandemic, all of us confronted a standard risk and we should come to acknowledge that defending ourselves additionally entails defending others. You already know we now have to grow to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.
