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Jacob Riis

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   Jacob Riis in 1906
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   Jacob Riis in 1906

   Jacob August Riis ( May 3, 1849 - May 26, 1914), a Danish-American
   muckraker journalist, photographer, and social reformer, was born in
   Ribe, Denmark. He is known for his dedication to using his photographic
   and journalistic talents to help the less fortunate in New York City,
   which was the subject of most of his prolific writings and photographic
   essays. As one of the first photographers to use flash, he is
   considered a pioneer in photography.

Early life

   Jacob Riis was the fourth of fifteen children born to Niels Riis,
   schoolteacher and editor of the local Ribe newspaper, and Carolina
   Riis, a homemaker. Riis was influenced both by his stern father, whose
   school Riis took delight in disrupting, and by the authors he read,
   among whom Charles Dickens and James Fenimore Cooper were his
   favorites. At age eleven, Riis's younger brother drowned. Riis would be
   haunted for the rest of his life by the images of his drowning brother
   and of his mother staring at his brother's empty chair at the dinner
   table. At twelve, Riis amazed all who knew him when he donated all the
   money he received for Christmas to a poor Ribe family, at a time when
   money was scarce for anyone. When Riis was sixteen, he fell in love
   with Elisabeth Gortz, a girl from a wealthy local family, but his
   marriage suit was rejected because the family thought Riis too common.
   Riis moved to Copenhagen in dismay, seeking work as a carpenter.

Immigration to the United States

   From How the Other Half Lives.

   Riis came to the United States by steamer in 1870, when he was 21,
   seeking employment as a carpenter. He arrived during an era of social
   turmoil. Large groups of migrants and immigrants flooded urban areas in
   the years following the Civil War seeking prosperity in a more
   industrialized environment. Twenty-four million people moved to urban
   centers, causing a population increase of over 700%. The demographics
   of American urban centers grew significantly more heterogeneous as
   immigrant groups arrived in waves, creating ethnic enclaves often more
   populous than even the largest cities in the homelands. Riis found
   himself just another poor immigrant in New York. His only companion was
   a stray dog he met shortly after his arrival. The dog brought him
   inspiration and when a police officer mercilessly beat it to death,
   Riis was devastated. One of his personal victories, he later confessed,
   was not using his eventual fame to ruin the career of the offending
   officer. Riis spent most of his nights in police-run poor houses, whose
   conditions were so ghastly that Riis dedicated himself to having them
   shut down.

Journalism career

   Bandit's Roost by Jacob Riis, 1888, from How the Other Half Lives. This
   image is Bandit's Roost at 59½ Mulberry Street, considered the most
   crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City.
   Enlarge
   Bandit's Roost by Jacob Riis, 1888, from How the Other Half Lives. This
   image is Bandit's Roost at 59½ Mulberry Street, considered the most
   crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City.

   Riis held various jobs before he landed a position as a police reporter
   in 1873 with the New York Evening Sun newspaper. In 1874, he joined the
   news bureau of the Brooklyn News. In 1877 he served as police reporter,
   this time for the New York Tribune. During these stints as a police
   reporter, Riis worked the most crime-ridden and impoverished slums of
   the city. Through his own experiences in the poor houses, and
   witnessing the conditions of the poor in the city slums, he decided to
   make a difference for those who had no voice. He was one of the first
   Americans to use flash powder, allowing his documentation of New York
   City slums to penetrate the dark of night, and helping him capture the
   hardships faced by the poor and criminal along his police beats,
   especially on the notorious Mulberry Street. In 1889, Scribner's
   Magazine published Riis's photographic essay on city life, which Riis
   later expanded to create his magnum opus How the Other Half Lives. This
   work was directly responsible for convincing then-Commissioner of
   Police Theodore Roosevelt to close the police-run poor houses in which
   Riis suffered during his first months as an American. After reading it,
   Roosevelt was so deeply moved by Riis's sense of justice that he met
   Riis and befriended him for life, calling him "the best American I ever
   knew." Roosevelt himself coined the term " muckraking journalism", of
   which Riis is a recognized protagonist, in 1906.

Marriages and later life

   At age 25, Riis wrote to Elisabeth Gortz to propose a second time. This
   time Gortz accepted, and joined Riis in New York City, saying "We will
   strive together for all that is noble and good". Indeed, Gortz did
   support Riis in his work, and he spent the next 25 years using his
   artistic medium to advance the concerns of the poor. During this time,
   Riis wrote another twelve works, including his autobiography The Making
   of an American in 1901. In 1905, his wife grew ill and died. In 1907,
   Riis remarried, and with his new wife Mary Phillips, moved to a farm in
   Barre, Massachusetts. Riis's children came from this marriage, but Riis
   died on May 26, 1914, at his Massachusetts farm. His second wife would
   live until 1967, continuing work on the farm, working on Wall Street
   and teaching classes at Columbia University.

Criticism

   Contemporary critics have noted that, despite Riis's sense of populist
   justice, he had a deprecating attitude towards women and people of
   certain ethnic and racial groups, as was common in his time. In his
   autobiography, The Making of an American, Riis decided to allow his
   wife to add a chapter examining her own life. After letting her begin
   an honest and evocative biographical sketch over several pages titled
   "Elisabeth Tells Her Story", Riis decided his wife had had enough of
   the stage: "I cut the rest of it off, because I am the editor and want
   to begin again here myself, and what is the use of being an editor
   unless you can cut 'copy'? Also, it is not good for woman to allow her
   to say too much."

   Furthermore, Riis's writings revealed his prejudices against certain
   ethnic groups, cataloguing unrealistic stereotypes of those with whom
   he had less in common ethnically. Riis’ middle class and Protestant
   backgrounds weighed heavily in his presentation of How the Other Half
   Lives. Both instilled a strong capitalist idealism; while he pitied
   certain poor examined as worthy, many others he viewed with contempt.
   According to Riis, certain races were doomed to failure, as certain
   lifestyles caused families’ hardships. An example of Riis's ubiquitous
   ethnic stereotyping is seen in his analysis of how various immigrant
   groups master the English language: "Unlike the German, who begins
   learning English the day he lands as a matter of duty, or the Polish
   Jew, who takes it up as soon as he is able as an investment, the
   Italian learns slowly, if at all."

Memorial

   Jacob Riis Park, located on Rockaway Peninsula in the Gateway National
   Recreation Area, Queens, is named after Riis.
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