Contemporary Struggles in the Mohawk Valley and Central New York

As promised, we’re delivering Part II of our history seniors’ “One Cool Source” from their individual projects, which they will present at the Utica College History Department's / Center for Historical Research's annual History Project Symposium. Each student is researching a project that connects with the theme “Superheroes” in the Mohawk Valley, which entails the reconstruction of events in the region's past that involved triumph over adversity, or struggles in power. Here’s a bit about the remaining topics from this year’s seniors.

Adam Tomblin

Fairies, Fury, and Freedom:  The Struggle for LGBT Equality in Central New York

Famous gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk once said: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” To understand Milk’s statement, one must understand the struggle for LGBT freedom and equality. My historical research paper, “Fairies, Fury, and Freedom: LGBT Rights Activism in Central New York.” This focuses on the activism in the LGBT community in Central New York and how localized movements sparked the beginning of the broader LGBT rights movement. My argument is that, without local grassroots movements, there would not have been a national or international movement to ensure the protection and equal treatment of LGBT persons. The grassroots are the reason for the success of the LGBT rights movement. Primary sources are critical to my research. The main primary sources I use are in-person interviews with local activists, who were instrumental in LGBT activism before it was more open and popular. The people I interviewed are incredible, both in resilience and just sheer gestalt. If someone asks me why I am doing this project, I will explain the importance of knowing where the struggle began, why it happened, where it has taken us, and what we still have left to do.

Amanda Backer  

Closed for Business:  Boonville and Globalization

  

I have wondered about a building in my town that is considered to be an eye sore. It is a reminder of the good old days in Boonville: the Ethan Allen furniture company building. My curiosity about the building led to many questions about Boonville’s past. Looking for answers led to two key newspaper articles. One is a 1999 article about Ethan Allen’s 7.6 million dollar expansion of its Boonville plant and the creation of almost fifty new jobs. In an interview, the CEO stated that Ethan Allen was about keeping jobs local, in America, and that the company respected its workers and was optimistic about the future. Just five years later, another newspaper article announced the sudden closure of the plant, which put 250 Boonville residents out of a job. What would cause the company to spend 7.6 million dollars on an expansion project, only to close its doors a few years later?  Like many companies, Ethan Allen was looking for a cheaper way to manufacture its products. It closed its American facilities and moved the jobs elsewhere. These two “cool sources” launched my research project and revealed how global economic competition could affect a small town in Central New York. [1]

Zach Handy

The Corporatization of Education: How Big Money Corporations are Destroying the Teaching Profession in Gloversville and New Hartford, New York

Becoming an educator has always been a dream of mine. I am currently enrolled in Utica College’s teacher certification tract. When it came time for me to choose my topic for my senior history research project, I had no idea what I wanted to do. However, when I really thought about the things that I am most passionate about, teaching was one of the first things that came to my mind. The history of education caught my eye because all of the controversy that the profession is facing lately. The teachers are upset with the Department of Education, and many students are opting out of almost all of the state tests. I decided to research the history of standardized tests, as well as education corporations to show how the history of these things can cause the controversy we are seeing today. One of the primary sources that I am excited about is an interview with a Utica College education professor. This professor has knowledge of local education, as well as its history. I am expecting this professor to give me many first hand examples of how he reacted to standardized testing, as well as his opinion on the matter to compare with other educators I plan on interviewing. This particular professor, however, has a lot to say about educational practices that could potentially be doing more harm than good. I believe interviewing him will provide “one cool source” because he has so much knowledge about the subject, as well as so much to say about it.

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[1] “Ethan Allen closing 2 plants,” Furniture Today, April 22, 2004.

Image Credits: Stonewall Inn https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Stonewall_Inn_1969.jpg / Boonville Herald http://www.boonvilleherald.com/photos/2004%20Photos/042704/ethan-allen-sign-0063.jpg / Digital Commonwealth https://fedora.digitalcommonwealth.org/fedora/objects/commonwealth:2v23vw03x/datastreams/access800/content

Little Known Stories of Mohawk Valley Immigration

Introduction by Professor Sherri Cash

This year, I asked my senior history research students to reflect on "One Cool Source" that inspired each of their projects, which they will present at the Utica College History Department's / Center for Historical Research's annual History Project Symposium. Each student is researching a project that connects with the theme “Superheroes” in the Mohawk Valley, which entails the reconstruction of events in the region's past that involved triumph over adversity, or struggles in power.  Some of the papers focus on aspects of the Mohawk Valley's rich immigration history. Here's a little about them.

Mike Belmont

The Italian Immigrant Experience in Frankfort

Have you ever thought about how you ended up where you lived? Or why your family ended up where they lived? Or how one group of people settled where they settled?   One of the cool things about my research is getting to explore how people got to Frankfort, a small town in Herkimer County.  One of my primary sources is an interview I had with an Italian immigrant who has lived most of her adult life in Frankfort. She grew up in Italy, under the rule of Benito Mussolini during the World War II, and moved to America after the war to join her father. In her teens and twenties, she lived in New York City, where she met her husband who is of Italian heritage and from Frankfort. Eventually, the two married and settled there.  What makes her interview historically “cool” and interesting to me is that it is giving me the opportunity to tell the authentic story of an Italian immigrant who was living in fear and poverty in her home country, who then moved across the world to start an “American” life. The life of this Italian immigrant woman and a town in the Mohawk Valley reveal so much about the immigrant experience and the development of Central New York, the state, and the nation. People like her came not just for themselves but for their future families. [1]

Alexis Holmer

Wanted: The History of Bosnian Women in Utica

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Men are what their mothers made them.” History has been more inclined to trace the history seen through men’s eyes, but what about our mothers? Immigrant women have no place to call home in history. Their history is fragmented in multiple disciplines of history, sociology, and anthropology. Locally, this is an issue. Institutions like Utica College, Hamilton College, and Colgate University all produced scholarly work on immigrant families and men. What about women? How about Bosnian women? Since the 1980s, over 4,000 Bosnian families immigrated to Utica. Possibly half of those people were women and mothers. What can Uticans say about our Bosnian majke (mothers)? Someone needs to prevent this historical goldmine from fading away. What did these women do to escape the war, how did they help their families through resettlement, did they work double jobs, how did they come out of a war and restart their families? We do not know because no one asked that question. By conducting interviews with these unknown but courageous women, a gap in history can be filled. Their stories are in our backyard, and we are letting them rust into nothing.

Patrick Garrett

Building the Coliseum

The Coliseum Soccer Club was founded in 1978 by John Fornino and other Italian immigrants. Their families left Italy after World War II in hopes of finding better opportunities for themselves and their children in America.  Even though they left their homeland, Mr. Fornino’s family and friends brought their passion for the game of soccer with them to America. Fornino said that being Italian meant that they had “soccer running through [their] blood.” The Coliseum Soccer Club was created to give Italian immigrants in the Mohawk Valley an identity while keeping a connection with their home country. The Roman Coliseum is the biggest landmark in Italy, which illustrates where their cultural roots are. In Fornino’s opinion, the Coliseum Soccer Club helps break down barriers by giving young athletes who are interested in the game a chance to play. “It does not matter what race, background, or religion that you practice as long as you treat everyone fairly and play the game the way it is meant to be played,” he says. Over the last forty years, Fornino has transformed the Coliseum Soccer Club from a men’s team into a soccer club that focuses on the younger generation of soccer players. His goal was to turn the club’s focus to producing homegrown players. The club places special emphasis on youngsters to help develop better game play and local talent.  John said that his “goal has been completed, and it [is] a dream come true to see where the Coliseum Soccer Club is today.” Not only has Fornino turned his attention to the young athletes, but he also extended the club to immigrant communities in Utica. With all of the immigrants who have moved to the area as refugees, Fornino wants to expand Coliseum and its influence to these communities to help bring cultures together through their shared passion for soccer. [2]

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[1] Theresa Belmont, interviewed by Michael Belmont, January 2016.

[2] John Fornino (Coliseum Soccer Club Founder), interviewed by Patrick Garrett, February 29, 2016.

Image Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Flag_map_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina.svg/2000px-Flag_map_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina.svg.png / Coliseum SC Logo courtesy of the Utica Coliseum Soccer League.

Steals and Seals: The Importance of Historical Context at the Local Level

Author: Nolan Cool (Utica College Alum)

Historians understand that interpretation is everything. In the village of Whitesboro in Central New York, we see the role of historical interpretation as a factor in a recent decision regarding Whitesboro’s controversial village seal. This past Monday, January 11, 2016, Whitesboro residents voted to keep the image in place. [1]

Two interpretations of the seal emerged in this long-running debate over Whitesboro’s seal. One views the seal as inflammatory and representative of an era of Native American dispossession and gradual removal. Another view claims that the image represents a friendly wrestling match between village founder, Hugh White, and a nameless local Oneida chief. The latter opinion won out.

Whitesboro's Village Seal

Adequately explaining the first claim means delving into the deeper context of the period before and after Andrew Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act. Historian Laurence Hauptman chronicles the Oneida Nation’s gradual degradation and dispossession in his 1999 study Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State. As a scholarly authority on the Iroquois and Upstate New York, Hauptman skillfully uses primary sources to detail the Oneida experience in Central New York following the Revolutionary War. Conspiracy of Interests offers a documented understanding of the scope of dispossession in Central New York, and more broadly, throughout the borderlands of the young United States. [2] However, this post seeks to weigh the value of the historical interpretation as it pertains to Oneida County’s early historical narratives.

During the nineteenth-century, America’s local historians penned scantly cited historical narratives that typically focused on pioneering individuals (usually individualist white men of local importance and status) who “settled” and “tamed” the “wild” frontier beyond the eastern seaboard. [3] In one instance, Oneida County author Pomroy Jones echoed this era’s sentiment in his 1851 work Annals and Recollections of Oneida County. Jones describes Hugh White’s journey from Middletown, Connecticut to the Upper Mohawk Valley in 1784, detailing that White and his family “found many of the farms in that vicinity unoccupied [emphasis mine], and the charred remains of dwelling houses and out-buildings [which] told a fearful tale of the ravages committed by the tories and savages.” Jones explains that a 51-year old White’s journey “was not, therefore, the ardor and restlessness of youth which induced him to emigrate, but that spirit of enterprise and perseverance which looked forward to the future prosperity of himself and family.” [4] Jones’s characterization of Hugh White supports the consistent focus on the sole experience of pre and post-Revolutionary entrepreneurs present in many nineteenth-century narratives.

The wrestling-match interpretation likely stems from a similar nineteenth-century narrative, William Tracy’s 1838 Notices of Men and Events Connected with the Early History of Oneida County. Tracy explains that White arrived with a “vigor of intellect, an ardent spirit of enterprise, and intrepidity and energy that is rarely to be met with, and a perseverance and devotion to his purpose that regarded no obstacle as insurmountable.” Tracy goes on to explain that White’s encounter with an “Oneida chief,” and soon after, the two “for amusement, commenced wrestling.” Tracy writes that White “took hold with the Indian, and by a fortunate trip, succeeded almost instantly in throwing him.” White then “contrived to fall with all his weight, he then constituting an avoirdupois of some 250 lbs., and as heavily as possible, upon the Indian, who then “slowly arose, shrugged his shoulders with an emphatic—“Ugh! you good fellow, too much!” [5]

Tracy’s secondhand account further promotes the story of the era of white self-made pioneers sweeping over “unoccupied” frontier lands. The piece reflects its era even further, as it purposely ignores a diverse and wide-ranging American Indian perspective on the other side of western expansion.

The seal’s continuity represents a clear example of how divergent historical interpretations exist and still bear weight in American society from the local level and even upward. This story also demonstrates the importance of historical truth – to establish legitimacy and critically analyze historical material. One must consider the multiple perspectives surrounding any historical narrative, but must also recognize the larger context. History cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Criticism remains important, as important as historical accuracy and the larger context. Through the lens of history, our action or inaction may bring us closer to a holistic truth.

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[1] Jolene Cleaver, “Whitesboro seal receives non-binding support, 'Daily Show' also present for poll,” Utica Observer-Dispatch, last modified January 12, 2016, http://www.uticaod.com/news/20160112/whitesboro-seal-receives-non-binding-support-daily-show-also-present-for-poll

[2] See Laurence M. Hauptman, Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State, 
      (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999).

[3] See Carol Kammen, On Doing Local History, 3^rd Edition, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

[4] Pomroy Jones, Annals and Recollections of Oneida County, (Rome, NY: Published by the author, 1851), 783.

[5] William Tracy, Notices of Men and Events Connected with the Early History of Oneida County: Two Lectures, Delivered Before the Young Men's Association of the City of Utica, (Utica, NY: Printer R. Northway Jr., 1838), 30, 34.

*Image: http://www.uticaod.com/storyimage/NY/20090104/NEWS/301049981/AR/0/AR-301049981.jpg