Backlash is being directed at The Tenement Museum for changing the story about an Irish family living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during late 19th century and early 20th century to include a tale of a man of color who lived in New Jersey most of this time.
WBUR reports that the museum first opened on Orchard Street in 1988. It devoted 22 apartments to the Orchard Street Tenement Building to recreate the experiences of more than 71,000 immigrants living there during 19th- and 20th century.
The structure was home to Jewish, German-Irish, Irish, and Italian immigrants. It is not known if any blacks lived in the Orchard Street Building during this time.
The museum will be establishing an apartment at the tenement museum to recreate the life of Joseph Moore and Rachel. It is also revising its entire apartment tour in order to explore how racism and race influenced the chances of white immigrants.
Annie Polland said that the museum’s president stated, “Basically, we are taking everything apart and putting it back together again.”
The Tenement Museum opened in 1988 to tell the story of the more than 7,000 people who inhabited one of the five story building’s 22 apartments during the 19th and 20th centuries
Museum professionals work with residents to bring back their apartments
The former tenants then invite guests into the apartments, such as the one shown here.
In the beginning, the museum renovated the apartments that were home to Jewish, German, or Italian immigrants. They tell the stories and share their experiences with guests.
The idea to incorporate a black family’s history in the museum reportedly began in 2008, when a museum educator researching the story of Joseph Moore, a 19th-century Irish immigrant waiter, in 2008, a museum educator discovered there was another Joseph Moore listed in the 1989 New York City directory.
They were approximately the same age and worked as waiters. But one man was named ‘Col’d’, or Colored. The Times reports that museum officials began to investigate the lives of Joseph Moores.
Over the years, they discovered that Joseph Moore, a black man, was not born in Belvidere in New Jersey in 1836. He moved to New York City in the 1850s with Rachel Moore, his wife. In Manhattan’s SoHo district, they lived in a rear-tenement.
According to museum educators, he arrived in New York for opportunity and safety at a time that he was vulnerable to kidnapping as a result of the Fugitive Slave Act. According to them, waiters of color were highly in demand at the time.
In the 1880s however, Joseph Moore, a black man, returned to New Jersey. There are records that show Moore lived in Jersey City.
Many Jewish families lived in Manhattan’s Lower East Side tenements during the latter 1800s.
The tenement house was also home to Italian immigrants like this woman.
Many immigrant families were forced to live in cramped apartments as they tried to establish a new life here.
The museum’s educators are now arguing that Joseph Moore’s experience in black is part of Lower Manhattan’s wider history.
Lauren O’Brien (the lead researcher in the Joseph Moore research) discovered that the Tenement Building site was once six acres of farmland where an enslaved group of Africans had petitioned for land and partial freedom from the Dutch East India Company.
Lower Manhattan was also home to a colonial-era African cemetery. In the 1990s O’Brien found a letter written by Gina Manuel to Museum officials. She urged them to tell black stories.
She wrote that she begged of her to remember the victims when you were planning the museum. According to the Times. “Their spirit is alive in these halls. Their bones lie there. And we are reminded of them.”
A researcher from the museum discovered that Joseph Moore, another former tenant at Orchard Street Building, had also lived near him when researching the matter. Both men worked as waiters, and they were about the same age. But one of them was black.
In the 1850s, black Joseph Moore and Rachel Moore arrived in New York City. They were already living in SoHo’s rear tenement by 1869.
However, critics argue that the Museum’s latest ‘woken’ initiative is the Joseph Moore Story.
2017 saw the opening of the second museum on the block. This enabled educators to share the stories from a Chinese immigrant and a Puerto Rican family.
The museum added the ReclaimingBlackSpaces walking tour to its collection last spring. This allows visitors to visit important Lower East Side historical sites.
According to the Times, many museum staff protested the insufficient support for Black Lives Matter after George Floyd was shot and killed by police last year.
On Facebook, the museum stated that it was “The Tenement Museum” and gave voice to stories from outsiders who had to overcome indifference, prejudice hatred, racism, or other difficult situations.
Since the 1640s, ‘Black people lived in what we now call the Lower East Side. They raised their families and earned a living by building community.
“Their struggle reminds us that equality does not come easy. It requires dedication and vigilance.
“We tell their stories so that history may help us face injustice.
“Just as important, our history shows us that it is up to us to challenge social and racial injustices in our time.”
According to the Times, however, the museum immediately issued a second and more severe statement. This stated that it would’report the damaging ways in which we have educated immigrant, refugee, and migrant history’.
Numerous immigrant families were employed in New York City’s factories and then lived in small, tenement-style buildings around the turn of this century.
Photo of people hanging their clothes on the Lower East Side’s laundry line in 1900
Peter van Buren claims that the museum’s focus has changed after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, as a former educator.
He wrote before that: “Rule 1 for educators like myself was to keep it in the classroom,” which meant to focus on certain individuals and their lives in the space where they were standing.
“Imagine telling the story about an immigrant family trying to make a living from New York City’s factories while keeping their religion alive in their living rooms. It would be amazing,” he said. “You can literally feel the history.”
He said that the museum’s purpose changed from telling stories to fighting fascism, and dismantling patriarchy, once Trump became president.
He stated that stories were changed so the Irish immigrant went from experiencing anti-Catholic prejudice in Protestant New York, to killing innocent blacks during 1863 Draft Riots.
“Nevermind, that the Irish family featured by the museum was there in 1869 but had no connection with the riots.”
When white New Yorkers began attacking black coworkers, riots broke out at the draft for Civil War. According to Polland, president of the museum, questions regarding the riots were not resolved in earlier tours of Ireland.
After George Floyd died, the Tenement museum issued a statement stating that it tells stories of immigrant people ‘because we can confront injustice’, and ‘Just equally important, history assists us in realizing that we have to challenge racial or social injustices within our time.’ However, this statement was criticised because it did not support the Black Lives Matter movement.
On its website, the museum released a second statement quickly affirming their commitment to anti-racism. It also stated that it would ‘address the harmful ways we have taught about immigrant/migrant history while omitting Black history.
van Buren writes that the inclusion of the story about the black Joseph Moore in the museum, even though he has never been in the place, is “an insult to those who have real-life stories.”
According to him, the Irish tour was important because it supported a classist and not racial basis of discrimination in America.
“That narrative will be problematic for 2021, because it propagates victimhood widely and chip away at BLM’s meme that race is the reason of all things.”
Van Buren said that Van Buren’s inclusion of Joseph Moore’s tale in the Tenement Museum was a literal rewriting historical events.