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In the Name of the Great Jehovah…

…And the Continental Congress.

THE PEEKSKILL RIOTS

ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

On August 27th, 2025, at 6 PM, we will be screening the 3rd Episode of the Peekskill Riots, 76 years to the day and hour of the first of the two riots, at the Mahopac Public Library. I’ll be honest, I don’t normally care for anniversary events, since I feel they reduce the year-round importance/relevance of stories like these to something that folks only take notice of very briefly for a single day. However, it happened to work out for us to hold a screening of the very film that covers the first riot, on the exact same day, at nearly the exact same time it occurred. Even for me, I had to acknowledge the significance of this.

Please come out to Mahopac and join us as we observe and discuss this important history, but also how it relates to what is occurring today in our country. History doesn’t stop, and neither should we.

Register for the event here: https://mahopaclibrary.org/peekskill-riots-part-3/

The Old Road

On the border of Putnam Valley and Phillipstown is a narrow, steep, winding path on Canopus Hill, which has no earthly business being open for two-way traffic. If you are going west toward the river, you will be led to another road that, while wider and flatter, is not even paved. There will often be potholes and runoff rills that make navigating it a hassle. This road goes by a different name: The Old Albany Post Road.

Originally a series of foot paths created by the Wiccoppe and Wappinger tribes, the provincial government of New York used them to form a postal route from the tip of Manhattan to Albany. U.S. Route 9 roughly follows this road today, with only slight deviations to avoid rough terrain, like that which I previously described. This is how the Old Albany Post Road became trapped in time.

It is, quite frankly, on the way to nowhere. I only take it to avoid traffic on the Goat Trail. Yet every time I turn onto it, I feel I’ve crossed through a barrier into a different world. The same humble path traveled on by the Lenape, colonists, postmen, soldiers, and even George Washington himself, is now being met with the tires of my 2011 Ford Crown Vic. How utterly bizarre, yet uniquely magical. There is a loud silence here; the modern world feels as though it is being peeled back, just enough for me to get a glimpse of times I’ll never know.

The romanticization of history is dangerous; make no mistake about that. What I feel is a frank fascination with learning how we have come to be who we are now. I feel that the closer I can get to the source of those stories, the more I will understand them. Usually, this would come from a primary source document, an artifact, or even a historic landmark such as a battlefield. I could never expect it to take the form of an unforgiving, unappealing, unpaved road. Yet that is what the Old Albany Post Road is for me now. It is a reminder that wherever you go, we are always on top of someone else’s footprints.

(“Old Albany Post Road,” photo by Daniel Case, 2008. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

Book of the Month…in my opinion.

“A People's History of the United States” by Howard Zinn

Search your local library’s catalog or your favorite bookstore with the title, author, or ISBN of this book.

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062397346

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062397348

What is this? 9th Grade History Class?

Much has been said about Howard Zinn and A People’s History. Anyone who went to school between 2000-2020 likely read this book for summer reading or during the school year for homework. Now that I am an adult—and a historian/presenter myself—I decided to reread A People’s History to study Zinn’s ability to make a recontextualization of history accessible to a wide range of demographics.

I can’t personally speak to how his book was received by the public upon its release, but I believe it holds up extraordinarily well in 2025. His framing of American history through class struggle in particular feels very timely now that we are living through the chaos of late-stage capitalism. For anyone who has ever asked “how did we get here?”, Zinn’s work presents a concise timeline based on an impressive collection of primary sources and superb analysis, while communicating on a level equal to the reader, rather than above them. This is especially important, as there are many fantastic investigations of history that fall short by failing to make themselves accessible to most readers. Howard Zinn, on the other hand, was just as masterful a communicator as he was a historian.

One historical event he shares—within a larger discussion on labor and feminist movements around the turn of the century—struck me as a noteworthy, local example of organized resistance from union workers. During the winter of 1884, a group of women carpet weavers was fired for joining the Knights of Labor, the largest American union movement of the 19th century. In response, 2,500 women picketed the mill that fired them. Police proceeded to attack the picket line and arrest them, but a jury fortunately found them not guilty of any charges. The overall strike lasted 6 months, with many workers getting their jobs back, but without any recognition of their union. Zinn put it best when he said, “What was astonishing in so many of these struggles was not that the strikers did not win all that they wanted, but that, against such great odds, they dared to resist, and were not destroyed.”

Put simply, Howard Zinn’s book is a superb primer for an overview of American history. While no single work can ever be described as “perfect”, no one else has been able to concisely present a thorough investigation of the past half-millennia. Many of you have probably read it before, but I encourage you to read it again. If you haven’t read it, I implore you to. You will not regret it.

Humbled and honored to be able to do what I do…all thanks to you.

-Jon Scott Bennett