Children Participating in a Public Campaign
Date: undated, c. 1941-1945
Caption: Benjamin Franklin High School students participating in a World War II effort to save paper.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Benjamin Franklin High School was a dynamic place. Its students came from all over the world to the East Harlem campus. Many were Italian American immigrants; others had migrated from Puerto Rico or were Black migrants from the Jim Crow South. The high school’s principal was interested in ways to connect community and school, and political action was one activity he encouraged to this end.1 Students participated in war-related campaigns to gather or save resources, including paper, during the war.
Benjamin Franklin’s diverse student population didn’t all experience the war in the same way. During World War II, many Black Americans spoke of the “Double V” - the goal to have victory in the war, and victory over racism at home. Black soldiers returning home, including to Harlem, experienced racism in spite of their great risk and sacrifice for their country.2
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Michael C. Johanek and John Puckett, Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education as If Citizenship Mattered (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007). ↩︎
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Kimberly Atkins Stohr and John Ringer, “In ‘Half American,’ historian Matthew Delmont tells the story of World War II from the Black perspective,” WBUR On Point, October 24, 2022, https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/10/24/how-black-americans-fought-world-war-ii-at-home-and-abroad. ↩︎
Categories: student activism, K-12 organizing, Manhattan
Tags: multiracial organizing, Harlem, bilingual education, Latinx people, Black people, joy, photography, imagery, and visual representation, Spanish language, immigrants and migrants
This item is part of "Benjamin Franklin High School" in "Joyful Struggle"
Item Details
Date: undated, c. 1941-1945
Source: Balch Historical Institute, Historical Society of Philadelphia
Copyright: Under copyright. Used with permission. Courtesy of the Balch Historical Institute, Historical Society of Philadelphia
How to cite: “Children Participating in a Public Campaign,” in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Accessed: [Month Day, Year], https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/gallery/children-campaign.
Questions to Consider
- What do you notice about this photograph? What do you wonder about it?
- Who do you think took these photographs and why? How does that affect how we perceive them?
- In what ways do students at your school work together to connect to your community outside of your school and to make change?
- If you were to work with fellow students to make change, what issue would you work on? What goal would you set?
- How can joy be part of how communities work together to make change?
References
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