[1] The project is part of Hoboken's efforts, through recollections of "longtime residents" to remember "the working-class identity and tradition of multi-ethnic living that has been disappearing as the city has gentrified.
"[3] The interviewers for the oral histories, Bob Foster and Holly Metz, explain that interviewees are carefully chosen and, when the chapbook is finished, the Museum hosts an event to celebrate the "honoree.
"[6] In 2018 McNeil, along with fellow Hoboken celebrities photographer Dorothea Lange and sportswoman Maria Pepe, was honored by her home town with a large (150’ by 35’) mural on a commercial building's exterior wall.
When she was six weeks old, a fire broke out in the rental property where her family lived and she was "thrown out the window" to be "caught by a homeless person" who claimed her as his own after that.
African American performers included Wilson Pickett, Millie Jackson, Rufus Thomas, The Coasters, Kool and the Gang,[8] and The Drifters.
As McNeil herself explained, the Club Zanzibar, which held 220 people, "was unique to the African-American community for two reasons": It stayed open one hour later than bars in nearby cities, so promoters wanting to get the most out of their acts would book them into the Zanzibar for that last hour, with patrons from elsewhere coming to Hoboken to enjoy the performances that often included stars from Harlem's Apollo Theater.
[1] Charles McNeil regularly cashed payroll checks for workers coming in from nearby employers such as Maxwell House, the Post Office, and local truckers.