Bella Abzug (née Savitsky) was born on July 24, 1920, in The Bronx to Russian Jewish immigrants who went on to become the first Jewish woman elected to Congress as well as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives on a platform of gender equality and women’s rights.
Bronx Heroes
Here’s a favorite tidbit of Bronx history we’re reposting in honor of Albert Einstein!
Happy π Day! Not only is this a day we celebrate the mathematical constant known as Pi (thus 3.14) but it is also the birthday of the late Albert Einstein…what a wonderful coincidence that he was born on this day!
One day after his 74th birthday, he agreed to attach his name to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine right here in the Bronx which opened its doors in 1955.
It was a wonderful moment for the Bronx to have the honor of becoming home to the first medical college to open in NYC since 1897 back at that time.
Since then, the institution is renowned for its excellence and leadership in several medical areas.
Celebrate the Bronx!
Born in 1904 in The Bronx and attended St Anselm’s Roman Catholic school on Tinton Avenue, Helen Clare Schroeder would eventually become the inspiration for one of the most iconic and lasting cartoon characters, Betty Boop.
Little did Helen Kane, a German-Irish Catholic woman from The Bronx (as she later became known), know that her likeness would set the globe ablaze as one of the first and most famous of all sex symbols in all the world of animation.
I generally don’t call women girls that I never personally but Doris Perlmutter was always proud to call herself a “Bronx Girl”.
Doris Perlmutter, a strong Bronx-born and raised woman through and through despite having moved to California where she lived for almost 40 years since the late 70s, passed away last month, January 20th, much to many of our surprise who knew her through Facebook.
It was a hot summer day on August 11, 1973 in the Bronx at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue as DJ Kool Herc and his sister held a party in what would become known as the birth of Hip Hop—a genre which has transcended cultural, national, and many other boundaries by leaps and bounds.
Now, the New York City Council, thanks to the leadership of Councilwoman Vanessa L. Gibson, has passed a resolution to co-name to stretch in front of 1520, ‘Hip Hop Boulevard’ further solidifying The Bronx’s importance in the creation of the genre as the birthplace of Hip Hop.
207 years ago today, one of The Bronx’s most notable residents was born—the poet Edgar Allan Poe who once lived in what was known as the Village of Fordham in what was once Westchester County.
The famed writer and poet, one of the most important in American history, moved to The Bronx when his wife Virginia became ill from tuberculosis and he thought the fresh country air would help her condition.
Watch Puerto Rican born, Bronx raised Rita Moreno talking about her legacy as she takes a walk through The Bronx with CBS News as she’s set to receive Kennedy Center Honors this Sunday, and a new express SBS bus service to speed up travel between The Bronx and Queens.
On Bronx AM Links we have stories on standing proud of being from the South Bronx, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and how she almost pulled away from the confirmation process, and Councilmember Ritchie Torres on controversial plans for New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) plans for infill at public housing to create market rate and “affordable” housing on its properties.
This morning Bronx AM Links brings you yummy delights off Jackson Avenue, 13 buildings sold for $90 million, a Bronx hero who saved a woman’s life, holiday fun in The Bronx, and why The Bronx isn’t The New Brooklyn.
NY1 reporter Erin Clark shares a heartwarming story about a Bronx woman from Country Club known as Aunt Cathy to thousands of soldiers stationed abroad who’ve received one of her almost 5,000 care packages.
Catherine Praino began sending care packages and adopting platoons overseas after her own nephew, Christian Engeldrum, was killed in Afghanistan in a roadside bombing attack.
“The first plant that changed my life was a tomato,” says Karen Washington, a black urban farmer in the Bronx. “It was the one fruit that I used to hate.” But after watching one that she’d grown shift in hue from green to yellow to red and taking a bite of it, she was instantly hooked. “When I tasted that tomato, when it was red and it was ripe, and I picked it off the vine, [it]…changed my world because I never tasted anything so good, so sweet. I wanted to grow everything.”
For a quarter century, all manner of trees and flowers, fruits and vegetables, have thrived across abandoned lots in the Bronx because of Washington. Deemed “the queen of urban farming,” she’s an African-American woman who’s dedicated her life to greening New York City’s poorest borough. Since 1985, Washington has assisted dozens of neighborhoods build their own community gardens, taught workshops on farming and promoted racial diversity in agriculture.”
Back on a cold Saturday evening in January of 2013, thousands of people returned home to the South Bronx at the Bronx Documentary Center for Seis del Sur’s first exhibition, ‘Dispatches From Home by Six Nuyorican Photographers which took us through an emotional photographic and multimedia journey into our darkest past—yet vibrant and full of life.
This Friday, October 23rd at 6:30PM at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, the collective returns with their third exhibition which not only brings back the original from 2013 but combines it with more contemporary work focusing on barrios throughout ‘Latino America’.
You must be logged in to post a comment.