For Immediate Release

March 16, 2010

Media Contact: Allison Auldridge

718-222-4111 x226

aauldridge@brooklynhistory.org

Brooklyn Historical Society’s Puerto Rican Oral History Project

Brooklyn, NY – Event Listing

WHAT:

Brown Bag Lecture: Stories from the Puerto Rican Oral History Project, 1973-1975

From 1973-1975, the Brooklyn Historical Society interviewed over 70 people who migrated to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico in the years between 1917-1940. These narrators, born between 1890-1940, tell wonderful stories in English and Spanish about their steamship journey, family life, work life and establishing Puerto Rican civic and cultural organizations in Brooklyn. This amazing collection of stories is now available to be listened to in BHS’s Othmer Library as well as at the archives of Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College.

Join BHS for a brown bag lecture as we introduce this important historical collection and play clips from the interviews with oral historian Sady Sullivan, archivist Chela Scott Weber, and Columbia University student Amna Ahmad, who worked with BHS for over a year to carefully digitize this collection.

Read more about this BHS collection here. And here. And as part of City Lore’s City of Memory.

This is event is part of the Mayor’s Immigrant Heritage Week celebrations, April 15 – 21, 2010.

WHEN:
Friday, April 16, 2010, 12:00 – 2:00 pm
Free

WHERE:

Brooklyn Historical Society

128 Pierrepont St.

Brooklyn, NY 11201

718-222-4111 www.brooklynhistory.org

The mission of the Brooklyn Historical Society is to connect the past to the present and make the vibrant history of Brooklyn tangible, relevant, and meaningful for today’s diverse communities, and for generations to come. Founded in 1863, BHS functions as a library, museum and urban education center dedicated to the people of Brooklyn, providing opportunities for civic dialogue and thoughtful engagement.

Peter J. Wosh
Director, Archives/Public History Program
History Department
New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York NY 10012
Phone: (212) 998-8601
Fax: (212) 995-4017
http://history.fas.nyu.edu/object/history.gradprog.archivespublichistory.html