Category Archives: History

You remember when Eduardo Villacis pitched for the KC Royals, right?

And you recall his 2004 season, dont you, with the one game he pitched to help the club out in a pinch and the three days he spent in the majors?

Its forgivable if his career has slipped your mind, but lets refresh your memory of the righthanded pitcher from Venezuela.

Villacis was signed in 1998 as an amateur free agent by Colorado. After he didnt advance above A-ball in the Rockies system, they dealt him to Kansas City in May 2002 for veteran Bryan Rekar, who had made two starts with the Royals and posted a 15.43 ERA. Rekar, who started his career with the Rockies, didnt make another big league appearance and was out of baseball after that season.

Villacis was assigned to Class A Wilmington and posted a 2.25 ERA before being sidelined with a shoulder injury in July.

Back with Wilmington in 2003, Villacis made four starts among his 42 appearances and posted a 2.82 ERA.

The 2004 season appeared to be the year Villacis would start moving up the ladder when he started the season with Double-A Wichita. He pitched well enough early in the early season that when the Royals needed an emergency starter in May against the Yankees in New York, they called him up. (The Yankees won 101 games and the American League East that season, but lost the American League Championship Series despite leading Boston three games to none).

A Juan Gonzalez RBI groundout gave Kansas City a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning at Yankee Stadium. Gonzalez is one of several players who were stars with other teams and had brief stints with the Royals.

The bottom of the inning started with singles by Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to put runners at first and second with one out. In a sign of things to come, Villacis had Jeter picked off at second base with Jason Giambi at the plate, but his own throwing error sent Jeter to third. Giambi worked a walk to load the bases and an infield single by Gary Sheffield and a force-out by Hideki Matsui put the home team ahead 2-0 before Villacis settled down and escaped the inning despite surrendering another walk.

Despite a single by Jeter, Villacis was able to hold the Yankees scoreless in the second, but the Royals went down in order that inning and again in the third against New York starter Jon Lieber.

Wildness got the best of Villacis in the Yankee third. Giambi walked to lead off the inning before he was forced out on a grounder by Sheffield. A wild pitch moved Sheffield to second and Matsui followed with a walk. Ruben Sierra made Villacis pay with a home run that put the Yankees ahead 5-1 before a fly ball and a groundout ended the inning.

The Royals went down quietly in the fourth and Villacis came out to start the bottom of the inning. He retired Jeter on a fly to deep right, but after a single by Bernie Williams, Villacis was done for the day. Reliever Shawn Camp retired the Yankees in the fourth with no more damage. Villacis ended his big league debut with 3.1 innings, giving up five runs on six hits and four walks. He didnt get any strikeouts and threw 66 pitches to 20 hitters. (The bullpen didnt fare much better as Camp gave up two runs and Curtis Leskanic allowed five more. The Royals fell 12-4).

Two days later, Villacis was sent back to Wichita. He compiled a2-0 record with a 2.67 ERA in 30.1 innings with 21 strikeouts and just six walks into May. Nevertheless, Kansas City placed him on waivers and the Chicago White Sox claimed him late in the month. The Sox assigned him to Double-A Birmingham, where he went 6-4 with a 3.28 ERA.

Splitting time between Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte, Villacis went 3-7 with a 7.96 ERA in 2005 before the White Sox organization released him in late July. After a year of independent ball, Villacis was out of baseball for good with a major league career spanning three days and one memorable start at Yankee Stadium.

Eduardo Villacis had a short but interesting career with the Royals.

Read the rest here:

KC Royals History: The short career of Eduardo Villacis - Kings of Kauffman

TikTok is testing a new watch history feature with some users to allow them to find videos that appeared on their For You page that they didnt have a chance to save. Given the constant stream of content on TikTok, accidentally refreshing your For You page and losing a video before youve had a chance to like it is a common problem for users. It seems that TikTok is looking to solve this problem with the addition of this possible feature.

When asked if the company plans to expand the test and roll out the feature to more users, TikTok told TechCrunch in an email that it doesnt have more to share on the test at this time.

Were always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience, a TikTok spokesperson told TechCrunch, when reached for comment.

Twitter user Hammod Oh, who often uncovers features that are currently being tested by social media platforms, first spotted the feature, which was then highlighted by social media consultant Matt Navarra. Screenshots posted by Hammod Oh and other users indicate that a TikTok users watch history will be accessible in the content and activity section in the apps settings.

The test comes as some TikTok users have found workarounds to help find lost videos. Earlier this year, TikTok user rachforaday posted a video that walks users through the process of uncovering a lost video on the platform. The video instructs users to go to the Discover page, click search, enter an asterisk, go to the search filters tab and toggle the watched videos button. Once you click apply, youll get a list of videos youve seen in the past seven days. The video has since gained immense traction and has been viewed more than 32 million times and has more than 5.5 million likes.

This method isnt the only way that users have uncovered lost TikTok videos. Another workaround walks users through the process of downloading their entire data from the app to access a zip file that shows their video browsing history.

TikToks watch history feature should make the process of finding lost videos a lot simpler and get rid of the need for these workarounds.

Read more here:

TikTok is testing a watch history feature to make it easier to uncover lost videos - TechCrunch

FESTOONED WITH patches, the varsity jacket has, for decades, announced its wearers as members of a team. But the nature of that team has changed over time. Elite male athletes at Ivy League schools wore early versions in the 1920s, said Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian and the author of Dress Casual: How College Students Redefined American Style. The wool jacketsa love child of English rowing blazers and letterman sweatershad snap buttons, leather sleeves and patches and pins denoting your college and team. They conferred status and swagger and said Im a big man on campus quicker than a privileged glare.

Fifties and 60s high-school jocks turned varsities into emblems of youth culture, but the 80s brought a twist: Michael Jackson donned a red-and-gold one in his Thriller video, and hip-hop stars like Run-DMC wore versions of the arguably elitist jackets with bravado and a wink. These musicians instilled squeaky collegiate style with cool.

Link:

The History of the Varsity Jacket, From Harvard to Hip-Hop - The Wall Street Journal

A 19th century U.S. Supreme Court case involving a railroad strike still has ripple effects today on federal power and the courts, Professor Aditya Bamzai says on Common Law, a podcast of the University of Virginia School of Law.

The case, In re Debs, concerned the 1894 Pullman strike led by Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union and later a leader of the Socialist Party. A federal injunction ordered the strikers to resume work, but Debs refused to end the protest. After being held in contempt of court, Debs appealed the decision all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost unanimously, with justices ruling that the U.S. government had a sovereign interest in regulating interstate commerce and ensuring Postal Service operations.

As Bamzai explains to hosts Risa Goluboff and John C. Harrison, the variety of arguments the federal government used to assert its sovereign interest remain relevant today, as recently seen in U.S. Texas, which came to the Supreme Court on certiorari to the Fifth Circuit. In that case, the justices considered whether the federal government could stop the implementation of a Texas law making abortions illegal as early as six weeks into pregnancy. In December, the court dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, and so ultimately did not review the Fifth Circuits decision on the merits.

The Texas law is enforced through civil lawsuits rather than by state or local officials, making it difficult for opponents to sue, which prompted the federal government to step in and file suit.

Bamzai, who teaches and writes about civil procedure, administrative law and federal courts, explores In re Debs in a new paper with Samuel L. Bray of Notre Dame Law School, Debs and the Federal Equity Power.

On the episode, Bamzai and the hosts also discuss Bamzais oral argument before the Supreme Court as an independent amicus in 2018, in Ortiz v. U.S.

This season, called Co-Counsel features a rotating set of co-hosts: Harrison, Danielle K. Citron, Cathy Hwang and Gregory Mitchell. Each is joining Goluboff to discuss cutting-edge research on law topics of their choice.

Common Law is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, YouTube, Spotify and other popular places you can listen to podcasts. The show is produced by Emily Richardson-Lorente.

Past seasons have focused on The Future of Law, When Law Changed the World and Law and Equity.

You can follow the show on the websiteCommonLawPodcast.comor Twitter at@CommonLawUVA.

Link:

'Common Law': The Railroad Strike Case That Made History on Federal Injunctions - UVA Law

History, rise in popularity and World Cup connection of FIFA originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington

Whats the first thing that comes to mind when you think of soccer? FIFA and the World Cup, right?

Established over a century ago, FIFA is and has always been a universal sports phenomenon engrossed across television screens despite its crooked reputation.

The World Cup, which showcased its inaugural year back in 1930, averaged 517 million live audience viewers and 1.1 billion viewers throughout the 90-minute contest in 2018 when France took on Croatia. Just imagine the audience the 2022 competition will receive.

But before we consider the future, lets take a look back at the history of the football association when it was created, who is part of it and how it relates to the World Cup.

FIFA stands for Fdration Internationale de Football Association in French; or International Federation of Association Football in English.

The association was founded on May 21, 1904 in Paris, France and is made up of 211 members. FIFAs intent was to create a sports governance that would oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The headquarters lie in Zrich, Switzerland and have a council of 37 individuals.

At the start of the 20th century, demand for international soccer games skyrocketed. Soccer leaders in Europe decided to create and diversify an organized and collaborative system to expand competition.

FIFA is composed of 211 national associations. This year Russia has been suspended for the 2022 season, therefore 210 national associations will be involved. Thirty-wo of these national associations compete in the final competition the World Cup.

These national associations also have to belong to one of the six regional confederations that divide the world including Africa, Asia, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean, Oceania and South America.

French journalist Robert Guerin was the first president of FIFA from 1904 to 1906.

The longest running FIFA president was Jules Rimet, who served from 1921 to 1954. The World Cup trophy is actually named after Rimet.

The current president is Gianni Infantino, who was elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2019.

FIFA introduced the World Cup in 1930 and invited every country to participate, but only 13 chose to make the journey to Uruguay. Now featuring 32 teams, the World Cup is known as the worlds largest sporting event, broadcasted in more than 200 countries and viewed by billions of fans across the globe. The event is quadrennial, meaning it occurs every four years, and it involves 32 teams total.

This will be the U.S. mens national teams first time competing in the World Cup since 2014. All eyes are on the screen and anticipating this fall faceoff.

Originally posted here:

All About FIFA: History, Rise in Popularity and World Cup Connection - NBC4 Washington

TAHLEQUAH Northeastern State Universitys College of Liberal Arts and Department of Geography and Political Science will host theMapping Tahlequah Historyworkshop on April 4.

The event is open and free to the public. Sessions will take place in room 614 of the Webb Building on the Tahlequah campus from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Attendees are welcome to attend all sessions or individual ones. Advance registration is required. To register, visithttps://bit.ly/MTHApr4.

Dr. Farina King, NSU associate professor of history, said the workshop will bring together different partners, collaborators and community members together to consider past, current and future developments of theMapping Tahlequah Historyproject.

Led by King and Dr. John McIntosh, associate professor of geography at NSU, the project traces historic sites of Tahlequah and contiguous regions in Green Country to underscore the significance of their intricate histories, relying on reading place and research with the Special Collections and Archives at NSU.

The immersive learning project enables students to apply their studies in historical interpretation and design to a digital mapping history project and also serves the public by contributing to accessible analysis of local histories, while featuring NSU studentsoriginal research on historic sites in the area.

The workshop will begin at 9 a.m. with a welcome session and recognition of the winners of theMapping Tahlequah HistoryLogo 2022 contest. First-place winner Makiya Deerinwater will briefly address attendees at the start of the workshop. Second- and third-place recipients were Sarah Johnson and Rene Martin respectively. All of the winners are currently NSU students.

At 9:30 a.m., attendees will hear more about the project as part of the Introduction to Mapping Tahlequah History presentation.

Dr. Brenden W. Rensink will deliver the keynote presentation, Reconnecting the Public with their Pasts through Digital History, at 10:30 a.m. Rensink serves as associate director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, associate professor in the Department of History at Brigham Young University and as general editor and project manager of Intermountain Histories. This discussion will take place in person and virtually.

A student research poster session and walking tour will be offered during the workshops noon to 1:30 p.m. lunch break. A light breakfast and deli lunch buffet will be available to NSU student attendees in the Webb Tower.

The workshop will resume at 1:40 p.m. with a panel about Cherokee landscapes and language that will take place both in person and virtually. The panel will include Dr. Justin McBride, associate professor of English, Ia Bull, and Whitney Warrior.

The workshop will conclude with a Learning and Looking Forward with MTH session starting at 2:40 p.m.

TheMapping Tahlequah HistoryProject is sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy Demands Wisdom. For more information, visit mappingtahlequahhistory.org or contact King at king64@nsuok.edu.

See original here:

NSU to host 'Mapping Tahlequah History' workshop | Education | cherokeephoenix.org - Cherokee Phoenix

La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz holds up the winner card reading actual Best Picture winner Moonlight with actor Warren Beatty and host Jimmy Kimmel onstage during the Academy Awards in 2017. Kevin Winter/Getty Images hide caption

La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz holds up the winner card reading actual Best Picture winner Moonlight with actor Warren Beatty and host Jimmy Kimmel onstage during the Academy Awards in 2017.

This year's face slap of Chris Rock by Will Smith was just the latest bizarre moment in the history of the Academy Awards.

From Roberto Benigni climbing across the theater's chairs between him and his statuette to Bjrk laying eggs on the red carpet, Oscar ceremonies often go off script, sometimes spectacularly so.

We look back to five cases of the best-laid plans going awry, in ways serious, slapstick and slapdash.

That the Oscars ran too short might seem improbable as we now regularly approach a three-and-a-half-hour run time, but that is exactly what happened during the 31st Academy Awards in 1959. In an ultimately overzealous effort to make sure the show ran on time, the show's producer Jerry Wald began cutting numbers from the show, leading the ceremony to end 20 minutes short of its intended two-hour run. Host Jerry Lewis and several other celebrities were left to improvise before NBC cut to a rerun of a sports broadcast.

The Academy Awards on YouTube

While politically charged speeches may be par for the course nowadays, that was not the case in 1973, when Sacheen Littlefeather endured taunts and jeers as she took the stage to reject an Oscar on behalf of best actor winner Marlon Brando. Littlefeather, an Apache actress, said Brando "very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry ... and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will in the future, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity."

To make the event even more surreal, Western star John Wayne who spent a large portion of his career pretending to slaughter Native Americans on-screen was backstage wanting to remove Littlefeather before she spoke, according to an interview she gave in later years.

After the ceremony, Littlefeather read to journalists the full 15-page speech Brando had prepared. The speech is credited with bringing more attention to the Wounded Knee standoff between the Oglala and the United States government.

The Academy Awards on YouTube

Gay rights activist Robert Opel didn't worry too much about what he was going to wear to the 1974 Academy Awards, opting instead to streak the stage wearing nothing more than his mustache just before the award ceremony announced the winner for best picture. Opel, no stranger to public nudity, would later bare it all at a Los Angeles City Council meeting interrupting a debate on outlawing nudity on public beaches and even run for president as a nudist under the slogan "Nothing to Hide."

After Opel's brief performance, host David Niven offered the devastating quip, "Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?"

In the 1989 Academy Awards show, Rob Lowe and Snow White singing and dancing during a bizarre Coconut Grove opening production number. Randy Leffingwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images hide caption

The most alarming part of this incident might be that it was planned. The 61st Academy Awards opened with an 11-minute song and dance number starring Rob Lowe and Eileen Bowman as Snow White and featured lavish costumes, plenty of sparkles, and little to no relevance to the rest of the show.

The Academy Awards on YouTube

In the 2017 ceremonies, a photo of the still very alive film producer Jan Chapman was incorrectly included in the In Memoriam segment. That was the same year Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced that La La Land had won best picture. The cast and crew of the film, which had already won 12 other awards, were ecstatic as they crowded the stage. But after thanking his family and the Academy, producer Jordan Horowitz quickly returned to the microphone and announced that there had been a mistake: Moonlight had won best picture. Amid the chaos that ensued Beatty explained that he and Dunaway had been given the card from the previous award: Emma Stone, in La La Land.

Read the rest here:

5 most unexpected moments in Oscars' history - NPR

I grew up in Mystic and lived there for 25 years, since 1944. Needless to say, in those years downtown Mystic was a different place. There is no need to explain how and why it was different. But, fortunately Gravel and Pearl Streets still appear as they did in 1950s with charming New England homes that reflect the era of Mystic's shipbuilding history. Do we want that to change by allowing a mega mansion to be built on Gravel Street overlooking the Mystic River?

Frankly, I am appalled that the Groton Historic Commission would even consider to allow the destruction of Downing Cottage, a lovely little piece of history, to replace it with what is proposed.

Shame on you!

Is this direction we want our little town to go?

Joan Burrows Hill

Ivoryton

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The Day - Destroying 'a lovely little piece of history' - News from southeastern Connecticut - theday.com

As the Soviet Union's primary secret intelligence agency during the Cold War, the KGB gained notoriety for its widespread global espionage. But the organizationand its communist-era predecessorsalso played a key role inside the Soviet Union: quashing political dissent.

Protecting the homeland from internal enemies has concerned Russian leaders for centuries, spawning a long series of repressive secret police agencies. During Russias imperial era, the Okhrana worked to identify and destroy enemies of the tsars. After the 1917 communist revolution, the Cheka served the same role for the Bolsheviks. An alphabet soup of agencies (OGPU, NKVD, GRU, MVD) followed until 1954, when the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti) was established. Soviet bloc satellite states, such as Hungary, Poland and East Germany, supported their own version of these agencies.

Here are some of the ways that Soviet-era secret police discharged their internal security duties, responding to the demands of different leaders and changing historical circumstances.

READ MORE: When Soviet-Led Forces Crushed the 1968 'Prague Spring'

Man being held and executed during the Russian revolution, c. 1918.

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

After the October Revolution of 1917 placed the Bolsheviks in power, a civil war raged, with the communist Red Army being fought by a loose coalition of counterrevolutionaries: monarchists, social democrats, foreign powers and others. To help root out enemies and protect their fragile new regime, the Bolsheviks formed the Cheka (All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combatting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage). When Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik party, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in 1918, the agency quickly undertook a program of state violence known as Red Terror.

Cheka leader Feliks Dzerzhinsky (whose statue stood outside KGB headquarters in Moscow until after the fall of the Soviet Union) proclaimed that anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the Soviet regime will be arrested immediately and sent to a concentration camp. In practice, however, mass shootings and hangings without trial began almost immediately. Being the wrong kind of person (a priest, a hungry food hoarder) or being in the wrong place at the wrong time or simply possessing a firearm was enough to earn someone a death sentence from newly formed revolutionary tribunals.Estimates of total dead range upward of 100,000.

These tribunals sanctioned purges of everyone from surviving members of Russias imperial family to land-owning peasants,setting the tone for decades to come. Even during periods of relative domestic tranquility, the shadow of state terror hung over the Soviet population.

READ MORE: How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine

The 1938 Trial of the Twenty-One was the last of a series of show trials of prominent Bolsheviks during Stalin's Great Purge.

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

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The Red Terror and the civil war ended in the early 1920s, but after a brief easing, repression continuedand worsened. When Joseph Stalin took over the communist party after Lenin died, he focused on cementing his control of both party and country by any means necessary. The NKVD, which had replaced the Cheka in 1922, played a key role in supporting the dictators draconian toe-the-line-or-pay-the-price culture.

Whereas the Cheka had persecuted enemies of the Bolshevik party, the NKVD targeted well-positioned party members whom Stalin perceived as potential rivals, including government officials, army officers and the Soviet partys older guard, such as Trotskyites. The secret police used torture and manufactured evidence to elicit confessions. Highly public show trials, whose verdicts were never in doubt, provoked widespread terroras did Stalins decree allowing families of suspected traitors to be executed, including children as young as 12.

After the 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov, a veteran Bolshevik and potential rival to Stalin, the Soviet dictator used the killingwhich some historians say he himself ordered the NKVD to carry outas an excuse to undertake purges, deportations and murders that became known as The Great Purge. In 1937 and 1938, according to a Moscow-based researcher,an estimated 40,000 NKVD agents oversaw the arrest of about 1.5 million Soviet citizens and the murders of nearly half of that number. Those not killed by the NKVD were sentenced to forced labor in one of the many brutal gulags proliferating around the USSR.

The terror of the 1930s decimated the Soviet military force, leaving it unprepared to push back a Nazi invasion in 1941. During World War II, the NKVDs role was to fight not just the Germans but any signs of defeatism among Red Army troops.

When propaganda didnt work, blocking detachments of NKVD troops used force to stop unauthorized Red Army retreats, often from certain-death battlefield scenarios. Suspected deserters were summarily shot, sent to prison camps or punishment battalions. A 1941 NKVD report listed more than 650,000 desertion arrests among Red Army personnel.

Soviet authors Yuli M. Daniel (left) and Andrei D. Sinyavsky sit in prisoners' dock at the opening of their trial, c. 1966. The writers faced charges of conducting a propaganda campaign designed to undermine and weaken the Soviet Union by the dissemination of "slanderous concoctions smearing the Soviet State." Both men pleaded "not guilty, totally or in part," to the charges.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

After the war and Stalins 1953 death, the NKVDrechristened in 1954 as the KGBretained much of its power over Soviet citizens lives. For the first time, dissidence became possible in the 1960s, following Stalin successor Nikita Khrushchevs famous 1956 speech attacking the dictators cult of personality and the excesses that produced. But dissent still had consequences, even if not a firing squad or hangmans noose.

The KGB sought to silence writers like Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, sentencing them to forced labor in gulag camps for the crime of maliciously slandering Russia in stories that had been smuggled to the West and published under pseudonyms. Decades after Boris Pasternaks iconic Doctor Zhivago was first published abroad, Russians could still only buy it on the black market, and anyone who broke the law and read it ran the risk of losing a job, a place at universityor their freedom. The KGB forced Pasternak himself out of the Soviet writers union and demanded that he refuse to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following Pasternaks death in 1960, theyarrested his lover and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, sending her to the gulag.

The KGB found other ways to muzzle internal critics. Writers and dissidents like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn were arrested, imprisoned and later stripped of their citizenship and forced into exile abroad. When physicist Andrei Sakharov began arguing for human rights in the USSR, the KGB kidnapped him and confined him to a hospital, where he was tied to a bed, drugged, brutally force-fed and subjected to other tortures. When the KGB couldnt dissuade critics from speaking out, even with arrest, they sought to discredit them by sending them to psychiatric hospitals for treatment.

In August 1991, after Russians under Boris Yeltsins leadership foiled a coup attempt led by the KGB, the statue of the intelligence agencys notorious founderFeliks Dzerzhinsky wasfinally removed from the plinth outside the Lubyanka secret police headquarters in central Moscow. But just as the statue remains intactalbeit in an open-air museum of Soviet-era sculptureso does the KGBs legacy. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB gave way to the FSB (Federal Security Service), which may not send dissident Russians to Stalinist-style Siberian labor camps. But it still draws on intelligence tools honed during the Soviet era to silence its critics.

More here:

How the KGB Silenced Dissent Across the Soviet Union - History

NEW YORK - The Hispanic Society Museum and Library in Washington Heights is bringing some long-hidden art pieces to the forefront, under the leadership of the museum's first Black curator.

In theNuestra Casaexhibit, the neighborhood is welcomed home to the iconic institution of culture, which closed five years ago for renovations. This time, guest curator Madeleine Haddon is reframing history.

"Narratives that are told through art, and through paint in particular, are really critical in thinking about how we think about our cultural and racial identity today," said Haddon.

Famous works collected since the museum opened in 1904 took a tour to share their impact on the world, but in the vaults, more than 700,000 works lay waiting for their turn in the spotlight. One such painting was Young Man From The Coast by Jos Augustn Arrieta, which is now the centerpiece for the exhibit.

"It was absolutely important to me that this Black man is the first thing that you see when you walk into this show, to counter so much of that," Haddon said.

The young man's portrait overshadows Diego Velsquez's Portrait Of A Little Girlto his side. This is a deliberate and personal mission for Haddon, which started when she started studying art.

"I painted photographs of my family," Haddon recalled. "There were not many Black people in my school that I could paint. It was hard to find models."

Haddon saw the bigger picture in her first art history class.

"When we stereotypically think about art from this period, people of color are not represented, Haddon said. "Doesn't mean that they weren't there."

One pair of paintings by Miguel Viladrich show people of African descent in their home environments in 1920s Montevideo, Uruguay.

"Once slavery ended there, the population really flourished," Haddon explained.

Other displays explore the value of slaves over the value of the silver they mined, with a hand-drawn map of a Peruvian mine in Potos placed next to a silver tray from the same era.

"Something that's akin to genocide has not always been acknowledged," pointed out Haddon.

Igniting these conversations, Haddon invites other young art lovers of color to follow in her footsteps.

"I hope they're coming to shows like this and will see that this is a home for them," she said. "This is a place for them. And really, we really need them."

The Nuestra Casa exhibit is open to the public Thursdays through Sundays until April 17. The Hispanic Society is located on West 155th Street and Broadway.

Jessi Mitchell joined the CBS2 team as a multi-skilled journalist in October 2021, focusing her reporting in Harlem.

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New Hispanic Society exhibit aims to change the art landscape - CBS New York