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Blackouts and a City in Crisis
by Robert W. Snyder, Rutgers University at Newark
This series of suggested classroom or homework exercises uses The Blackout History Project, an online repository of timelines, articles, reports, surveys, interviews, and memories about the 1965, 1977, and now 2003 New York City power blackouts. The exercises direct students to various sections of the site and pose critical questions about the historical context, individual memories, and media depictions of these events. The activity also includes suggested readings on the 1977 blackout and postwar urban history generally. Blackouts and a City in Crisis was developed as part of the American Journeys Teaching American History program in New York City.
Goal
To develop a better understanding of how people interpreted the blackouts of 1965, 1977 and 2003 as a way of making sense of New York City’s crisis years in the 1970s, when a combination of a fiscal crisis, crime, political turmoil, economic changes and ethnic tensions made the city a troubled place. To many people, the different reactions to each of the blackouts were evidence for the depths of New York City’s problems in 1977 and comparatively better conditions in the City in 1965 and 2003. Some New Yorkers debated whether the 1977 blackout was a moment of crisis for the city’s liberal tradition. In this exercise, students will work with primary documents in the form of newspaper and magazine articles, reports, oral histories and survey questionnaires completed by people who lived through one or more of the blackouts.
Overview
What was the historical context for each of the blackouts? How did news media reports depict and interpret the blackouts? In oral history interviews and answers to survey questions, how did people remember make sense of the blackouts in their own lives and in the history of New York City?
This exercise asks students to place historical events in context, explore individual memories of events, and examine media interpretations of historical events, and compare the two. The exercise is broken down into five parts. Depending on the ages and abilities and Web access of students, the parts can be addressed in one long day, one or two days with homework, or five school days.
Resources
The Blackout History Project
Online repository of timelines, articles, reports, surveys and interviews emphasizing the 1965 and 1977 blackouts but now being updated to include the 2003 blackout. The site welcomes contributions from the public. Visitors can fill out and submit survey questionnaires about their blackout experiences.
The entire exercise can be completed using The Blackout History Project Website. If you want to read further, these three books are valuable.
James Goodman, Blackout, (North Point, 2003)
A book about the 1977 New York City blackout based largely on interview with participants that explores the breadth, variety and intensity of reactions to the event.
Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New Press, 2000)
A survey of the lives and struggles of working New Yorkers since 1945, the years when the city’s old manufacturing economy declined and its political culture, shaped by the traditions of New Deal liberalism and the labor movement, was transformed by a rising conservative movement.
Robert A. Beauregard, Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities (Johns Hopkins, 2002)
A general history of representations of American cities since the 1940s, when there was a widespread sense that American cities were in decline. Includes new material on the boom years of some cities in the 1990s.
Exercise
1) Begin by going to the "Events" section of the site. Read the essays on the 1965 and 1977 blackouts for a general introduction to the power failures and the contexts that surrounded them. For additional thoughts on the New York City of 1977, go to the "Perspectives" section and read an excerpt from Joshua Freeman’s Working-Class New York. What were the sources of stability and disorder, equality and inequality, in the New York of 1965 and 1977. How might these factors contribute or not contribute to different reactions to the blackout?
2) The readings in “Events” and “Perspectives” have given you broad overviews of the 1965 and 1977 blackouts. Now, go to the "Highlights" section of the site and look at excerpts from reports and news media accounts of the 1965 and 1977 blackouts. Select at least two accounts from each year. What do the reports emphasize? What do they leave out? What lessons do they draw from the blackout and surrounding events? How are they similar and different? Did news reports attempt to make sense of each blackout’s place in history? Compare reports on one blackout. Then, compare reports on different blackouts to each other. What are the similarities and differences?
3) How do individuals remember events like the blackouts of 1965 and 1977? Go to the "Events" section of the site and visit the "Stories" subheading to find individual reminiscences of the blackout. Each short reminiscence is linked to a full transcript of the speaker’s response to a questionnaire on the blackouts. For transcripts and recordings of oral history interviews on blackout experiences, visit the "Forum" section of the site and enter the "Interviews" section. What do people’s memories emphasize? What do they omit? What lessons do they draw from their experiences? How do the surveys, or interviewers' questions, shape people’s recollections?
4)
If comparisons between the blackouts of 1965 and 1977
suggested that New York City was in a state of crisis, comparisons between the
blackout of 1977 and 2003 suggested that the city had recovered from difficult
years. For stories from the 2003 blackout, visit
http://blackout.gmu.edu/tools/surveys/responses/173/. What kinds of comparisons
appear in the 2003 stories? What comparisons of 1977 and 2003 are valid? Which
ones are invalid? Why?
5) Historians, journalists, ordinary people and scientific analysts on the Web site all interpret the blackouts in different ways. Select one example of each and compare what they have to say about one blackout. What are the characteristics of each account? Their strengths and limits?