(Re)connecting Brooklyn’s History: Brooklyn’s Homefront during World War II with Brooklyn Public Library

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

The history and legacy of the Second World War can be seen all around us in Brooklyn. Once home to hundreds of factories, shipyards, and warehouses, and responsible for sending millions of service members off to the front lines, Brooklyn was arguably one of the most important communities in waging and winning the war. Using locations from communities across Brooklyn—including famous sites like the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Brooklyn Army Terminal, and lesser-known sites that help tell stories about labor, housing, and culture—as well as primary source documents and oral histories, this program will help illuminate Brooklynites’ experience of World War II.

The (Re)connecting Brooklyn’s History series brings the fascinating work of historians to an audience of students and educators through online presentations and resources for sustained engagement with local history topics.

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Brooklyn and the Navy Armed Guard | Episode 247

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Celebrate Navy Day with a discussion of one of the least-known units of World War II, the Navy Armed Guard. Serving in the U-boat-infested waters of the Atlantic, these sailors served in small detachments aboard merchant ships manning the deck guns. This virtual program will be hosted from the Sunset Park waterfront, where many sailors departed from the docks of the Brooklyn Army Terminal and Bush Terminal, and where the largest Armed Guard Center in the country was located, the Second Battalion Naval Militia Armory that once stood on 1st Avenue and 52nd Street. We will discuss the creation and evolution of the service during World War II, listen to oral histories of Armed Guard sailors, and visit one of the few memorials to the sacrifices of these brave men.

Photo Credit: Official US Navy photograph, taken by Clarence F. Korker

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Hockey History of New York City | Episode 179

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

With the National Hockey League scheduled to resume play soon (pandemic permitting), we are looking at the history of hockey in the New York metro area with our resident hockey historian Andrew Gustafson. We will look at high, low, and curious moments in the histories of the Rangers, Islanders, and Devils, but also look the forgotten clubs like the Raiders, Wanderers, and Americans (and how the latter almost moved to Brooklyn), and the many amateur, minor-league, and college clubs that have competed in the region over the past 125 years.

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Immigrants Who Made the Brooklyn Navy Yard Great: Frederick Lois Riefkohl

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This post is part of our eight-part series profiling immigrants to the United States who made significant contributions to the Brooklyn Navy Yard from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Frederick Lois Riefkohl (1889–1969)

The histories of Puerto Rico and of the US military are deeply intertwined, and much of that history runs through the career of Frederick Lois Riefkohl, the first Puerto Rican to graduate from the US Naval Academy, to win the Navy Cross, and to achieve the rank of rear admiral. Normally we would not consider someone from Puerto Rico an immigrant – they are US citizens – but Reifkohl lived in a complicated time.>> Continue reading