“Cit­i­zen­ship of this city in itself made for a bond beyond class,” writes the redoubtable Welsh writer of place Jan Mor­ris in Man­hat­tan ’45, her book-length love let­ter to New York City in the imme­di­ate after­math of the Sec­ond World War. “To be a cit­i­zen of Man­hat­tan was an achieve­ment in itself — it had tak­en guts and enter­prise, if not on your own part, at least on your fore­bears.’ The pres­sures of the place, its com­pe­ti­tion, its pace, its haz­ards, even the fun of it, demand­ed spe­cial qual­i­ties of its peo­ple, and gave them a par­tic­u­lar affin­i­ty for one anoth­er. They were all an elite!”

Four years into the time of which Mor­ris so rap­tur­ous­ly writes, out came Metro Gold­wyn May­er’s Mighty Man­hat­tan – New York’s Won­der City, a fine Tech­ni­col­or accom­pa­ni­ment to her tex­tu­al appre­ci­a­tion. The clip at the top of the post, nar­rat­ed by “Voice of the Globe” James Patrick, shifts straight into full mid­cen­tu­ry tri­umphal gear, extolling such clas­sic works of Man­hat­tan Man as Wall Street, the Flat­iron Build­ing, the ele­vat­ed train, the Brook­lyn Bridge, the New York Pub­lic Library, and of course, the Empire State Build­ing. (It also shows a sight that, for all the gee-whizzing it must have elicit­ed at the time, we all hope will nev­er return: Cen­tral Park with cars in it.)

“Not so long ago Chicagoans were con­vinced that their city would soon be the great­est and most famous on Earth, out­rank­ing New York, Lon­don, and Paris, the cen­tre of a new world, the boss city of the uni­verse,” Mor­ris writes else­where. Today, “the blind­est lover of Chica­go would not claim for the place the sta­tus of a uni­ver­sal metrop­o­lis. Too much of the old grand assertive­ness has been lost. Nobody pre­tends Chica­go has over­tak­en New York; instead there is a provin­cial accep­tance of infe­ri­or­i­ty, a res­ig­na­tion, cou­pled with a mild regret for the old days of brag and beef.”

For a sense of that brag and beef — and giv­en the footage of the stock­yards, take the lat­ter lit­er­al­ly — have a look at the half-hour film above: Chica­go, pro­duced by the Chica­go board of edu­ca­tion in 1945 or 1946. After Chicagoan Jeff Alt­man, who works in film post-pro­duc­tion, found it at a south side estate sale, he did a bit of a restora­tion on it and post­ed it to the inter­net. “It’s hard to say the pur­pose of the film,” Alt­man writes. “It could be geared towards tourism or to entice com­pa­nies to come to Chica­go. This film could have just been used in the class­room. I’m not entire­ly sure. The great thing is all the dif­fer­ent views of the city they give.”

“Los Ange­les is the know-how city,” Mor­ris writes in anoth­er essay. “Remem­ber know-how? It was one of the vogue words of the for­ties and fifties, now rather out of fash­ion. It reflect­ed a whole cli­mate and tone of Amer­i­can opti­mism. It stood for skill and expe­ri­ence indeed, but it also expressed the cer­tain­ty that Amer­i­ca’s par­tic­u­lar genius, the genius for applied log­ic, for sys­tems, was inex­orably the her­ald of progress.” At that time, Los Ange­les did­n’t need so much boos­t­er­ism — it was boos­t­er­ism. The South­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis began boom­ing in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, and that boom would­n’t end until well after the war, if indeed it has end­ed yet.

Many of its new arrivals, the vast major­i­ty of whom came from else­where in the Unit­ed States until the late 1960s, could­n’t have helped but felt enticed by scenes like the ones in the clip just above, which shows off the Sun­set Strip in the late 40s or ear­ly 50s. Los Ange­les has changed, as has every Amer­i­can city: build­ings have grown taller, pop­u­la­tions have den­si­fied, and you see a wider vari­ety of faces and hear a wider vari­ety of lan­guages on the streets than ever before. Some, espe­cial­ly Youtube com­menters, bemoan this, but to my mind, things have got con­sid­er­ably more inter­est­ing as a result. Vin­tage footage like this — and espe­cial­ly vin­tage footage in unusu­al­ly vivid col­or like this — reminds us that, as fas­ci­nat­ing a past as our cities have, their future looks rich­er still.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

Paris Through Pen­tax: Short Film Lets You See a Great City Through a Dif­fer­ent Lens

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

A Drone’s Eye View of Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks took her fate­ful bus ride in Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma.

As the sto­ry is often told, Parks was a diminu­tive African-Amer­i­can seam­stress who was weary from a long day of work at a down­town depart­ment store. Her feet ached, so when the dri­ver ordered her to give up her seat to a white man who had just got­ten on the bus, Parks refused, acci­dent­ly set­ting into motion a series of events that led to the mod­ern Civ­il Rights Move­ment.

The prob­lem with the sto­ry, told in that way, is that it is gross­ly mis­lead­ing.

Besides being a seam­stress, Parks was a polit­i­cal orga­niz­er and activist, a mem­ber of the Mont­gomery Vot­ers League and sec­re­tary of the local chap­ter of the NAACP. And while it’s true that Parks did­n’t know when she board­ed the bus that day that she would com­mit an act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, when the moment arose she knew what she was doing, and why. As Parks lat­er wrote in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

Peo­ple always say that I did­n’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired phys­i­cal­ly, or no more tired than I usu­al­ly was at the end of a work­ing day. I was not old, although some peo­ple have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giv­ing in.

Parks was not the first black per­son to be arrest­ed in 1955 for refus­ing to give up a seat on Mont­gomery’s racial­ly seg­re­gat­ed bus­es. There was a grow­ing sense in the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty that the time was ripe for change. The pre­vi­ous year, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its land­mark deci­sion in Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion, declar­ing that seg­re­ga­tion in pub­lic schools was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The Wom­en’s Polit­i­cal Coun­cil in Mont­gomery was already lay­ing the ground­work for a boy­cott of the city bus sys­tem when it learned of Parks’ arrest. Giv­en the respect and sup­port Parks had with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, the group decid­ed it was an oppor­tune moment to take action. A one-day boy­cott was held on the day of Park­s’s tri­al (she was con­vict­ed of vio­lat­ing Chap­ter 6, Sec­tion 11 of the Mont­gomery City Code and ordered to pay a $10 fine plus $4 in court costs) and a longer one was launched short­ly after­ward, crip­pling the finances of the com­pa­ny that ran the bus sys­tem, which typ­i­cal­ly derived over 75 per­cent of its fare rev­enue from African-Amer­i­can pas­sen­gers. That boy­cott last­ed more than a year, until late Decem­ber of 1956, when the Supreme Court upheld a low­er court rul­ing in Brow­der, et al v. Gayle that the seg­re­ga­tion of Mont­gomery’s bus sys­tem was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The doc­u­ments shown here were sub­mit­ted as evi­dence in Brow­der v. Gayle. The arrest report (above) states that Parks was sit­ting in the white sec­tion of the bus. Actu­al­ly, she had com­plied with the law when she first entered, sit­ting down behind the first 10 seats which were per­ma­nent­ly reserved for whites. (See the chart below; the front of the bus is at the top of the chart, with the dri­ver’s seat des­ig­nat­ed by an “X.”) Under Mont­gomery law, the bus dri­ver had the dis­cre­tion to move blacks far­ther back when the white sec­tion filled up. Black peo­ple paid the same fare as whites, but were often ordered to exit the bus after pay­ing the fare and re-enter through the back door. In stand­ing-room-only con­di­tions, they were not allowed even to stand next to white peo­ple.

At rush hour on Dec. 1, 1955, the bus was fill­ing up as Parks and three oth­er African-Amer­i­cans sat in the first row behind the white sec­tion. When a white man entered the bus, the dri­ver James F. Blake ordered Parks and the oth­er three to leave their seats and move back, where they would all have to stand. After hes­i­tat­ing, the oth­ers got up but Parks stayed seat­ed. In The Rebel­lious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theo­haris recon­structs the scene:

Blake want­ed the seats. “I had police pow­ers — any dri­ver did.”  The bus was crowd­ed and the ten­sion height­ened as Blake walked back to her. Refus­ing to assume a def­er­en­tial posi­tion, Parks looked him straight in the eye.

Blake asked, “Are you going to stand up?”

Parks replied, “No.” She then told him she was not going to move  “because I got on first and paid the same fare, and I did­n’t think it was right for me to stand so some­one else who got on lat­er could sit down.”

“Well, I’m going to have you arrest­ed.”

“You may do that,” Parks replied.

via: Nation­al Archives