A People’s History of New York City reclaims the city’s past from the top-down narratives that celebrate wealth, whiteness, and empire. Instead, it centers the lives, struggles, and contributions of immigrant and Black communities whose labor, resistance, and solidarities have shaped New York from the ground up. Created by Samuel Finesurrey, Professor of History at Guttman Community College, City University of New York, and hosted on the CUNY Commons, this public history series invites audiences to see the city not as a monument to power, but as a living archive of struggle and possibility.

Spanning from the 17th century to the present, the series unfolds in two major arcs: Immigrant NYC and Black New Yorkers’ Struggle for Liberation. Together, they trace the city’s transformation from a Dutch outpost built on Native removal and African slavery into a global metropolis continuously reshaped by waves of migration, systemic oppression, and popular resistance.

Immigrant NYC is a growing resource that follows the emergence of diasporic communities seeking dignity and belonging in New York. These episodes explore the systemic barriers immigrants faced—xenophobia, racial exclusion, and exploitative labor systems—while highlighting the creative strategies they used to organize, adapt, and assert their place in the city. The process of becoming hyphenated Americans is never automatic or benign; it is and was contested terrain shaped by U.S. policy, capitalist demands, racial hierarchies, and sustained struggle.

Black New Yorkers’ Struggle for Liberation offers a sweeping view of African diasporic life and resistance over four centuries. Each episode maps the violence of state authority alongside the ingenuity of Black organizing, from the fight against slavery to battles over segregation, policing, and cultural erasure. New York was never immune to the national sins of white supremacy—but it has also been home to generations of Black leaders, movements, and cultural innovators who reimagined the city from within.

The series is complemented by an original oral history archive, Voices from the Heart of Gotham: The Undergraduate Scholars Oral History Collection at Guttman Community College. Built from testimonies conducted by student researchers at Guttman, the archive features testimonies from over 100 immigrant and activist New Yorkers whose lived experiences echo the broader themes of the series—stories of inequality, resilience, solidarity, and community-building in contemporary NYC.

Both A People’s History of New York City and Voices from the Heart of Gotham are rooted in critical pedagogy and bottom-up history. They challenge sanitized versions of the past that erase patterns of xenophobia and racism, while uplifting the movements that fought—and often won—a more just present. By making these histories freely available, the project invites viewers to interrogate the past, see themselves in the city’s ongoing struggles, and join in shaping a more equitable future.