The Seven Muses of Elmira

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director 

Traveling west on Church Street, drivers pass a large welcome sign with larger-than-life images of seven people connected with Elmira’s history.

The slogan “Welcome to Elmira: Honoring the Past and Building the Future” is at the bottom, and behind the figures is an image of Samuel Clemens’s distinctive octagon study now located on the Elmira College campus. This slogan was selected from a contest that had over 600 entries, and is a combination of three of those submissions. They were sent in by Marlin B. Stewart from Elmira, Alan and Barbara Hutchinson from Elmira, and James M. Lloyd of Horseheads.

Installed in February 2004, the $40,000 sign replaced a more generic welcome sign. That sign had a stylized glider, road and hills. It had been originally installed in 1986, and refurbished in 1994.

The current sign puts a face on Elmira by honoring famous people in the city’s history. They’re not identified on the sign, and today not all visitors, newcomers, or children know who they are, and what they represent.

In the back row, left to right:

• Brian Williams-TV Journalist Williams arrived in Elmira as a young boy. He made a name for himself in broadcast news.

• Ernie Davis-Athlete and scholar Davis arrived in Elmira as a youngster. His local athletic accomplishments earned him a football scholarship to Syracuse where he excelled at football and graduated with an Economics degree. Elected as the first African American Heisman Trophy winner, his career was cut short by illness. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

• John W. Jones-Civil War hero Jones arrived in Elmira and became a key leader in the local Underground Railroad and at Woodlawn National Cemetery. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

In the front row, left to right:

• Hal Roach-Movie producer Roach was born in Elmira. He is best known for popular films featuring comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. He is buried in nearby Woodlawn Cemetery.

• Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain-Writer and humorist Twain married an Elmira native and for twenty years spent summers in the area, writing many of his well-known stories.

• Eileen Collins-Astronaut Collins was born and grew up in Elmira. Collins was the first female pilot and first female commander of a space shuttle.

•  Tommy Hilfiger-Fashion Designer Hilfiger was born and grew up in Elmira. He opened a clothing store here in 1969 called “The People’s Place.” When it closed, he moved operations to New York City.

In 2015, a controversy arose around the sign when newscaster Brian Williams, the figure on the far left, was discovered to have fabricated some of his own history. People in the area questioned his suitability on the sign as a person Elmira would or should be proud of.

NBC suspended Williams without pay for six months, relieving him from his position as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBS’s Nightly News. In June of that year, he was demoted to breaking news anchor for MSNBC. Two months later he was promoted to be MSNBC’s chief anchor, and today he set to co-anchor the network’s coverage of the upcoming 2020 United States Presidential election.

It was determined that editing Williams off the sign would just damage it. Addressing the controversy, Elmira’s mayor in 2015 responded "After examining our sign in its entirety, I find that it is showing its age. So it is possible that the whole sign may come down for that reason only." Five years later, the 3,000 lb. sign remains as it was originally installed. 

In August 2019, local news reported that Elmira’s City Manager was aware the sign was showing signs of wear.

Our Gang

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

One of the latest additions to our collection in 2016 is the book Our Gang: A Racial History of the Little Rascals by Julia Lee.  In it, Lee places the Our Gang series in its historical racial context and explores how it helped to change that context.  The book is interesting and well-written, using research conducted all over the country, including right here in at the Chemung County Historical Society.

The book in question.

The story Hal Roach (1892-1992) liked to tell was that he came up with the Little Rascals in 1921 after watching a group of kids play in a lumber yard, but the idea could have just as easily come from his own youth.  Growing up on Elmira’s near-Westside at the turn of the 20^th century, Roach was a scamp of the Tom Sawyer variety.  He and his friends ran around the neighborhood, paying games, staging photoplays, and scandalized old ladies by skinny dipping in the Chemung.  He took a series of odd jobs throughout his childhood, including one delivering groceries to the Reformatory.  Roach got sacked after he was caught smuggling tobacco to the inmates.  He was a cut-up at school too.  By the time he quit schooling altogether after being expelled from EFA, he had already been thrown out of half-dozen public and private schools throughout the city.

Hal Roach's brother Jack and little rascals Allen "Farina" Hoskins and Joe Cobb, ca. 1928

In the same way Roach’s youthful exploits informed the series’ plot, his childhood experiences with race likely influenced his choice to have a diverse cast.  By the time Roach was ten, Elmira had a population of approximately 35,000, including a moderately-sized black community.  The core of the community was centered around Fourth and Dickinson Streets on the Eastside, but there was also a cluster of black families living on Elmira’s Southside and many of those employed as domestic servants lived with their employers throughout the city.  Although few blacks lived in Roach’s neighborhood on Columbia Street, he almost certainly attended classes with black students.  He was also probably familiar with the Industrial School, which offered integrated recreational spaces and vocational training to the city’s poorer children.

Elmira Public School No. 1, class of 1895

When the first Our Gang shorts with their racially integrated cast came out, the public reaction was decidedly mixed.  Many blacks, including influential members of the press and the head of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), felt that it might be a vehicle for racial uplift and help to wear down old prejudice.  Others felt that the shorts simply recycled old minstrel show tropes and that the characters were, in effect, black children in blackface.  Whites too had mixed reactions.  In the Jim Crow South, where separate-but-equal kept black and white kids in different schools, theatres and theater-goers praised the series’ minstrel-like characterization even as they protested the integrated gang.  Northern whites also expressed certain racial anxieties over the films, but held no protests against them, unlike their southern brethren.

Lantern slide used to advertise "School Begins" (1928) in a local theater.  Note the integrated classroom with a side order of racism. 

 Of course, I’ve only discussed America’s initial reaction to the Our Gang films.  There were over 200 Our Gang films made between 1922 and 1944, and then those shorts were later re-cut and re-released for television syndication from the 1950s through the 1980s.  As American’s views about race and race relations changed, so too did their views on the series.  If you’re interested in learning more about this, I suggest you do what I did:  read Julia Lee’s book.   

Label for an "Our Gang" doll of George "Freckles" Warde, ca. 1922