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White Queens Mothers Protest Desegregation

White Queens Mothers Protest Desegregation

A group of white women walk in the rain and hold signs protesting desegregation.

Date: Jun 25, 1959

Caption: A black and white photograph captures a protest by Queens mothers against desegregation. The image shows about 10 white women, some wearing raincoats or holding umbrellas. Others hold signs that read “Bussing Creates Fussing,” “We Have Just Begun to Fight,” and “Neighborhood Schools for All.”

A group of white women walk in the rain and hold signs protesting desegregation.

Five years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the New York City Board of Education announced a plan to desegregate a few schools in Brooklyn and Queens. Black and Puerto Rican students who lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn, would be bused to a few schools in the Glendale-Ridgewood area of Queens, where the schools were all-white. Parents, and particularly white mothers, organized this protest.

Categories: Queens, parent activism, K-12 organizing

Tags: racist segregation, women's activism, protest, white people, photography, imagery, and visual representation

This item is part of "Before the Boycotts: White Liberal Resistance" in "Boycotting New York’s Segregated Schools"

Item Details

Date: Jun 25, 1959

Creator: Associated Press

Source: AP Photo. Retrieved from: http://whybusingfailed.com/

Copyright: Under copyright.

How to cite: “White Queens Mothers Protest Desegregation,” Associated Press, in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Accessed: [Month Day, Year], https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/gallery/white-queens-mothers-protest-desegregation.

Questions to Consider
  • Why do you think it was white mothers who organized and were most visible in this anti-desegregation protest?
References
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