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event that echoes more recent instances of tensions between the police and the community in central Brooklyn.


Letter from Lucille Gewirtz Kolkin to Alfred Kolkin, August 16, 1945, Arc 048, Folder 11, Alfred Kolkin and Lucille Gewirtz Kolkin Papers, Brooklyn Historical Society.


ELIZABETH GAFFNEY’s project for Artist & Artifact: Re|Visioning Brooklyn’s Past is a novel set in Brooklyn Heights between the end of World War II and the Vietnam War. She explores the lives of two families, black and white, who con- front issues of race, class, and personal and social trauma. Gaffney turned to an array of documents in the Brooklyn Historical Society’s library to craft a work of fiction that ac- curately evokes the more quotidian realities of life in New York City at mid-cen- tury—newspaper clippings, photos, and even such seemingly inconsequen- tial items as public swim- ming pool schedules and bus line maps. She studied documents like manuals of the Mortgage Brokers Association, which once charted the racial makeup of Brooklyn blocks. Gaffney also looked at handwritten letters between World War II Navy Radio Technician Alfred Kolkin and his wife,


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