The Black Panther Party’s Harlem Branch, founded in 1966, defined Black Power as “having the right to self-determination or the power to decide what should go down in our community,” and “being the decision makers, the policy makers.
On March 12, 1964 - between the first 1964 pro-integration boycott and the second - a group of white parents calling themselves “Parents and Taxpayers” led a march from the Board of Education building in Brooklyn to City Hall in Manhattan.
Benjamin Franklin High School students came together in clubs that celebrated their cultural identities, like Club Borinquen and clubs focused on Italian American culture.
On April 16, 1937, Lucile Spence and the Teachers Union of New York organized a conference at the Hotel Pennsylvania in downtown Manhattan to discuss schools in Harlem.
On March 19, 1935, rumors spread through Harlem that police had beaten a young man to death after they arrested him for allegedly stealing a knife from a local store.
A school for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities opened on Randall’s Island in the East River in the 1860s - alongside the city’s almshouse, hospitals, and prisons.
Many blind people lived in dire conditions in the city almshouse for the poor, because they were not able to support themselves and had no other place to go.
