Many CBH Talks were recorded. To view, visit the Center for Brooklyn History Talks YouTube channel at bklynlib.org/CBH-Talks.
Past Events
Just Conversations | Reparations in New York City: A Path Toward Justice and Equity
Pictured: Slave Bill of Sale "for a Negro Wench Pegg" from George Van Brunt to Andrew Cropsey, 1797
In September 2024, four New York City elected officials introduced a series of groundbreaking bills aimed at advancing reparations for Black New Yorkers seeking to…
New York City History Day Virtual Drop-in Office Hour
Virtual drop-in to talk to the New York City History Day Coordinator about your History Day project. Get one-on-one help with registration, brainstorming, research, and more! Open to all students and teachers. Zoom link will be sent on the day of the office hour to those who've registered.
CBH Talk | Progress and Preservation: Atlantic Avenue End-to-End
This program is offered in partnership with the Municipal Art Society (MAS), as part of its Enduring Culture Initiative
Atlantic Avenue is one of the most critical corridors in our city. The sole east-west truck route through Brooklyn, it also bifurcates…
CBH Talk | David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan Discuss “City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island”
David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan both served sentences at Rikers. In their book City Time they offer an unvarnished account of the banality and brutality of incarceration at New York City’s notorious jail.
Campbell and Shanahan reconstruct the daily realities…
CBH Talk | The Battle for School Integration in the North
In 1974, two decades after Brown v. Board of Education, another Supreme Court decision – Milliken v. Bradley - effectively brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, shattering 20 years of progress towards equal education for all. The lawsuit, filed by the National…
CBH Talk | Glenn Adamson Discusses “A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present”
What’s next? For millennia, predicting the future was the province of priests, prophets, astrologers, and seers. Then in the twentieth century futurologists emerged claiming that data and design could make planning a rational certainty. Cultural historian Glenn Adamson writes about…
CBH Talk | Zinga Fraser and Jeanne Theoharis Discuss “Shirley Chisholm: In Her Own Words”
Join us for a discussion with Dr. Zinga A. Fraser, whose new book Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words, offers a long-overdue opportunity to read the congresswoman’s powerful words for ourselves. Chisholm’s speeches and writings on education, racism, women's rights, civil rights, and…
CBH Discussion | Reflections on the Religious Poetry of Jupiter Hammon
Jupiter Hammon was born into slavery in 1711 on the Long Island estate of Henry Lloyd. In 1760 he became one of the earliest if not the very first African-American to be published when his poem, An Evening Thought, appeared in print. Hammon was a devout Christian. His writings…
Center for Brooklyn History, Virtual Lunch and Learn-Exploring the Henry Lloyd Ledgers
Historical ledgers are often used in research and can provide information about accounts and financial transactions, including sales, purchases, amounts, names of account holders and even how the items were transported. Join us for a virtual lunch and learn, exploring historical ledgers, how to…
CBH Talk | Still Here, HIV/AIDS
December 1 is World AIDS Day, a time of solidarity for people around the world who are affected by Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV - and a time for all of us to reckon with its long legacy. Almost 40 million live with the virus, 1.3 million acquired it in 2023, and 630,000 people…
CBH Talk | Celebrating New York’s Ancestors of Latino Poetry: A Conversation and Performance
The work of New York poets José Martí, Salomón de la Selva, Julia de Burgos, Lourdes Casal, and Clemente Soto Vélez has shaped today’s thriving Latino Poetic tradition and our understanding of what it means to be American. These revolutionary voices represent a range of Latin American…
CBH Talk | Tommy Silk Discusses "Hidden Landmarks of New York" with Barry Bordelon of the Brownstone Boys
New York is a city of landmarks – more than 37,000 of them. Visitors and New Yorkers alike walk by hundreds of these landmarks daily, often never knowing the rich history behind them. One of these New Yorkers, Tommy Silk, has been photographing and chronicling one landmarked building…
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