Today’s Photo of the Week features a photogenic protest against the curtailment of postal service. The previous year the Post Office ran a deficit of $550, 000. On April 18, 1950 the Postmaster General, Jesse M. Donaldson, acting on advice of the House Appropriations Committee, cut postal services and drew the ire of residents and the National Association of Letter Carriers. One service residents enjoyed at the time was mail delivery twice a day. The NALC’s president, William C. Doherty, declared Donaldson’s action “ill-timed, ill-advised, unnecessary, unwarranted and obnoxious.” To highlight the point, Mickey Henriques traveled on horseback from Oceantide Beach Club in Coney Island to the General Post Office near Borough Hall to carry mail from Coney Island residents. She hands off her cargo to letter carrier Joseph Miranda.
On May 9th the Senate Post Office Committee rescinded the Postmaster General's cost-cutting measures without, however, allocating financial support for full service.
Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
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