Milton Galamison Oral History, excerpt
Reverend Milton Galamison was the pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and a key figure in the struggle to desegregate New York City’s schools.
Black people
Malcolm X Comments on the Boycotts
The second school boycott took place on March 16, 1964.
School Boycott!
The Citywide Committee for Integrated Schools included several New York City civil rights organizations.
Why the School Boycott?
The flier designed by two Queens civil rights organizing groups - the Congress of Racial Equality and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - calls for a boycott to protest segregation in New York City’s public schools.
Claim Teachers Used Pupils as Shoe Shine Boys: DA Calls Charges “Serious”
In late 1963, The Amsterdam News reported on allegations that teachers and administrators at P.
“We’d Rather Go to Jail.”
In 1958, one year after nine Black students made national and international news when they desegregated Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, desegregation activists in Harlem organized their own protest.
Jim Crow School Kids as Mentally Unfit
By the 1940s, New York City schools frequently used intelligence tests to decide which kind of schooling a child needed.
Club Borinquen
Italian immigrant Leonard Covello was the principal of East Harlem’s Benjamin Franklin High School, an all-boys school.
Children Participating in a Public Campaign
In the 1930s and 1940s, Benjamin Franklin High School was a dynamic place.
The Role of the School in a Housing Program for the Community
Benjamin Franklin High School students came together in clubs that celebrated their cultural identities, like Club Borinquen and clubs focused on Italian American culture.
Hotel Pennsylvania Meeting Learns of Harlem School Ills
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.
Mayor LaGuardia’s Commission on the Harlem Riot, excerpt
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.
Wadleigh’s School Zone
School zones establish where students go to school, often on the basis of where they live.
Two Public School Teachers
In March 1925, The Survey Graphic published a special issue.
Race Intelligence, excerpt
Scholar W.E.B. DuBois was an editor of The Crisis, a magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (or NAACP).
The Brownies’ Book, April 1920, letters from readers
The Brownies’ Book included different kinds of writing, visual art, and photography by adults.
The Brownies’ Book, February 1920, cover
The NAACP and W.E.B. Du Bois created The Brownies’ Book to speak directly to Black children about the world and their lives.
The Brownies’ Book, January 1920, excerpts
Here are a few pages from the first issue of the magazine.
Albany Evening Journal
Mrs. Elizabeth Cisco worked for more than five years, with her husband and on her own, to fight for educational equality and desegregation.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cisco
Photography has an important place in African American history.