Preston Wilcox was a human rights activist and professor at Columbia University who supported Black studies on college campuses and community control for K-12 schools. Wilcox became deeply involved with East Harlem’s community control district.
Like many Puerto Rican parents in the South Bronx, Evelina López Antonetty was frustrated that so many Spanish-speaking children were not learning to read. Many were being placed in classes intended for students with disabilities because they spoke Spanish. “I began to see the schools as an island,” Antonetty recalled, “After 3 o’clock, the school officials closed the doors and left the community. They made no input into the community. There were no teachers in the school from the community.”1
In 1969, parents in the South Bronx were concerned about what their children ate at school. A group of parents, mostly mothers, came to Evelina López Antonetty for help in addressing the issue. Antonetty and her organization, United Bronx Parents, agreed to help.1
In the East Harlem community control district, teachers emphasized subjects that connected to their students’ African heritage. They also made use of the school’s physical spaces to recognize Black history, including in programs that welcomed members of the community around the school.1
New York State’s 1969 decentralization law drew strong opposition from many Black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers who had been advocating for community control. United Bronx Parents was based in the South Bronx and had been founded in 1965 by Puerto Rican organizer Evelina López Antonetty. United Bronx Parents had worked for years to support Puerto Rican mothers in pushing for better education for their children. Community control fit within this agenda.
During the 1968 teacher strike, community control advocates continued to participate in leading local school districts and arguing for self-determination in education. UFT teachers protested during the strike in public spaces like in front of City Hall. Here, community control advocates walk across the Brooklyn bridge to show their support for local democratic power in education. One of the figures in the front is Rhody McCoy, who was the superintendent of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville community control district in Brooklyn, where a controversy over whether local districts could fire teachers prompted the strike.
This video captures New York City parents speaking of their desires for community control of their children’s schools. They wanted to have a voice in public schools in their local community, and to ensure that students achieved the equal education that was their right. They were motivated, as one parent pointed out, by their experience with poor conditions in their children’s schools.
Over 1 million new Black Southern migrants and Puerto Rican immigrants had settled in New York City by the 1950s. Most resided in Harlem, the South Bronx, and Central Brooklyn. They faced many barriers, including poverty and discrimination in employment and housing discrimination, and often attended schools that the Board of Education had long neglected. The city’s centralized school system had often ignored Black residents’ demands while prioritizing the needs and wants of white students and their families.1
Civil rights organizers in Lowndes County, Mississippi, chose the image of a black panther as their symbol. They were fighting for voting rights and democratic power as part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. For decades, although Black voters were the majority of the population there, they had been locked out of voting by racist restrictions.
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.”1
No single civil rights organization represents all Black Americans. That was true in the 1960s and is true today. Different organizations have had different political visions, strategies, and styles.
The Black press provided a space for Black thinkers to challenge ideas that were getting attention in white newspapers and other media. James Farmer, an accomplished civil rights activist and National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality, used his column in the Amsterdam News, New York’s main Black newspaper, to share his critique of the Moynihan Report.
In the fall of 1964, months after the massive February 1964 boycott, Reverend Milton Galamison and the Citywide Committee on Integration launched another boycott. Galamison and the Citywide Committee - which included CORE (Congress On Racial Equality), Parents’ Workshop for Equality in New York Schools, Harlem Parents’ Committee, EQUAL, and the Negro Teachers Association - focused on the city’s junior high schools and the “600” schools, which had inadequate facilities, no curriculum, untrained teachers, and improperly screened students. The groups’ demands included promoting many more Black and Puerto Rican teachers to leadership positions like school principal, desegregating junior high schools, and improving the “600” schools. Reverend Galamison was arrested for violating state education laws by “encouraging truancy” when young people stayed out of school to boycott.
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. As a religious and civic leader, he was the chair of the Education Committee for the Brooklyn branch of the NAACP, founded the Parents’ Workshop for Equality in New York Schools, and organized the Citywide Committee for Integrated Schools. The Citywide Committee was a collaboration between the Parents’ Workshop, the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Urban League, and the Harlem Parents’ Committee to organize the 1964 boycott.
In this op-ed, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes about the “school boycott concept” and its application across the country, particularly in the North. He is writing more than two months after the February 1964 boycott, and nearly a month after the March one in New York City. There had been other large-scale school boycotts in other cities, too, as in Chicago in 1963.
During the February 3, 1964 boycott, there was a rally at City Hall. Students, teachers, and parents who were participating in the boycott gathered together to send a message to the mayor that they wanted action on desegregation. Simultaneously, small and large gatherings took place at schools around the city. Jimmy Brooks, a reporter from one of New York’s Black newspapers, the Amsterdam News, interviewed many participants. Their comments help us hear why people chose to participate in the boycott.
On February 3, 1964, an estimated 464,400 students - almost half the city’s enrollment - boycotted New York City’s segregated school system. Getting that many people to stay out of school and walk on picket lines in front of schools, all peacefully, required a great deal of work. So did organizing Freedom Schools, where children who were out of school could be safe, have meals, and learn.
Here a black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, reflects on how others spoke about the February 3 boycott both before and after it happened. They comment on how a white newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune, had covered the boycott. Other white newspapers, including The New York Times, had been very critical of the boycott before it happened.
On the day of the February 3 boycott, some participants gathered at the headquarters of the New York City Board of Education at 110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn, where they marched and picketed. Later they decided to march across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall. This silent film footage, an excerpt of one of several reels taken that day by the New York Police Department, captures the participants and their posters and slogans. Although the footage doesn’t have sound, it still captures the atmosphere of the day.
The second school boycott took place on March 16, 1964. Although fewer people participated in the second boycott than the first, protests against the city’s segregated and unequal school systems remained strong. Black New Yorkers held different opinions on the source of oppression and how to respond to it. The organizers of the boycotts, for instance, believed that school integration provided a way to move towards a more equal society. Some, like Malcolm X, supported Black nationalism, which promoted economic self-sufficiency, pride in Black identity, and the formation of an independent nation. However, despite these differing views, Malcolm X took part in the second boycott, and he describes why he participated in this interview.
