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The Lively Morgue is a daily photo blog from the New York Times in which an original photo from the newspaper's archives is reposted along with tidbits of information gleaned from the historical article it accompanied. Along with a rescan of the original photograph, the backs of each photo are also scanned, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the editorial process of one of the world's best newspapers.
This recent post shows elephants from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus visiting Bellevue Hospital in 1946 for an annual visit.
May 2, 1946: On its annual visit to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus drew record-breaking crowds — a “throng of 6,000, including outgoing patients, and more than a generous sprinkling of neighborhood youngsters” The Times reported. “For many, it was their first circus,” The Times explained, “such as tiny Oscar Turner, 5, wrapped in a pink bathrobe several sizes too large, who gave his nurse a most busy time. Oscar kept up a frequent charge to the red arena. He dared the elephants, he challenged the clowns, he laughed and pranced. ‘Great medicine,’ said Pat Valdo, the Big Show’s Ringmaster.”
The original article from 1946 has more.
A new book from author Sujatha Gidla titled Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India is a fascinating memoir that tells her story of growing up as an "untouchable" in India's caste system, to becoming a New York City subway conductor for the MTA.
Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary―and yet how typical―her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.
Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India is available for purchase in hardcover and digital formats on Amazon.
