New York Historical Society

This trip to the New York Historical Society was much more exciting for me than the first one. Not only was it focused on WWII itself, but it showed it from a New Yorkers point of view. I think that’s what caught my attention the most because to me New York is so beautiful that learning some history behind it would was interesting. Overall, the museum was very interesting and I liked almost all the artifacts that they had describing post, during and after WWII.

An artifact that caught my attention right away when I first walked in was the artifact of the 1939 students of the new High School of Music & Art. Over 90,000 students marched for a “strike of peace” and created many drawings and poetry for their Peace Issue of their high school newspaper. Ben Brown was student who drew a picture and later served in the army. My favorite artifact was the story of an army soldier Sidney Diamond (1922-1944), who joined the army right after high school. He was in love with his high school sweetheart, Estelle Spen. During the time he was away, he wrote to her 525 letters, and she saved them all. He was killed in battlefield in the Philippine’s on January 24, 1944, at age 22. He received a silver star for serving the country. Another artifact was the ad that described how many New Yorkers contributed to the war. Over 900,000 New Yorkers joined the military, and 3,300,000 shipped out from The Great Harbor over to North Africa and Europe. Some information that I found interesting was that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, of that time, Mayor Fionella La Guardia, sent out protection for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and any Japanese, German or Italian that were non-citizens on Ellis Island, were interrogated by police for possible incarceration or deportation.

It was great to know that in 1942 New York City was made headquarters of the United Nations and in March of 1945, New York was the first state to pass the bill to forbid job discrimination on the basis of race, religion or creed.

MET Museum

Going to the exhibition of “Civil War”, in the MET, was new experience for me. First, I would like to mention that I had never been to the MET before, so being there for the first time was exciting already. The exhibition itself was somewhat different. The lights were much dimmed throughout the whole exhibition so it made it the feeling of it very “down”. The artifacts were somewhat depressing as well. The artifacts of the pictures of the Union and Confederate were my favorite, especially when the pictures were in gold covered and brass metal locks. To me, it was very nice to see because it was real people that we can look at pictures now, who fought and made history. A few artifacts though were not as pleasing. One artifact in particular was a picture that was attributed to McPherson and Oliver. The picture was called Gordon, a runaway Mississippi slave or “The Scourged Black Man”. This picture was taken in either March –April of 1863. It was a picture of a runaway slave named Gordon, who had whipping, scars on his back from the whips his owner would give him. His facial expression was very interesting as well. Even though he did seem upset, he had a look on his face like he didn’t care anymore. He was posing for the camera, his back towards the camera, but his head turned so you can see it. Maybe the look on his face wasn’t that he didn’t care, but maybe it was face of loss of hope. His “look” represented what it was like to be a slave: Hopelessness. This picture not only wasn’t pleasant to look at, but it made me feel kind of upset and wondered how many more slaves looked like this back when slavery was allowed. And also, it was so regular for the white owners to see slaves with scars and beatings on their bodies, how could they have walked around so nonchalant and look at them like that, and think it was fine. Overall, my trip experience was new and it was interesting to learn about a lot of artifacts that made history in our country.