Willie Mae Goodman decided to send her daughter Marguerite to the Willowbrook State School when Marguerite was four years old. Marguerite was born with developmental disabilities, and doctors argued that Willowbrook was an appropriate place for her.
Conditions for Marguerite, and other children and adults at Willowbrook, were horrible. The facility drew criticism from Senator Robert Kennedy, who described it as “not fit for animals,” as Mrs. Goodman recalls.
Transcript: At school, when we interacted, initially, signing was not allowed, that we’d be punished if we used signing. We only signed when we knew the teachers weren’t looking. We hid our signs. But when we were outside of school, we used sign freely. When groups of us went on trips, we signed. So, for me, I didn’t sleep at the school. I commuted back and forth between home and school on the train and it was a lot of fun. When class was over, at 2:30, we couldn’t wait to get together and get on the train. You know, in New York City, we had an area where we would all meet that was well known, under the 14th Street train. We’d gather and converse and just have a great time. I enjoyed that so much. We didn’t have student clubs or groups, so that time at 14th Street was what we did. We met as a group and had a good time together. Also, we did have sports teams. They were run by Deaf clubs. So, interacting and spending time in that setting exposed me to many great things.
When she was growing up in Harlem in the 1940s, Reverend Malika Leigh Whitney played a lot of street games, like hopscotch, jacks, stick ball, and stoop ball. But she loved jumping Double Dutch the most.
The historical documents found on this website are primary sources: historical records produced in one moment in time, that help us understand that moment in time. This podcast is a primary source that shows how two people living today - the podcast producers - understand how and why schools are changing in their neighborhood. Their work also includes other primary sources, including historical recordings and interviews with people who reflect on their personal experience with schools in their community. They share their perspectives on charter schools, district public schools, and their impact on children and communities in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
As Denise Oliver describes in this video, women involved in the civil rights movement faced sexism within their organizations, even when those organizations said they were committed to liberation and freedom. In addition to Oliver’s community organizing, she also challenged the misogyny within the ranks of the Young Lords Party. In collaboration with Iris Morales and other women in the party, Oliver pushed against masculinist ideas and for more complete ideas of liberation. As a result of this work, the Young Lords withdrew its idea of “Revolutionary Machismo” as necessary for liberation. They elected women to the Central Committee and pushed for representation of women in all levels of leadership. The party instituted punishments for sexist behavior within the party, formed a gay caucus as well as men and women’s caucuses for addressing sexism; and committed to ensuring equal participation between men and women as writers and public speakers.1
Puerto Ricans became citizens of the United States in 1917, as part of the US’s claiming control of the island. As US citizens, those who wanted to come to the mainland faced fewer barriers than immigrants from other countries. In the 1930s and 1940s, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans made the choice to migrate. Many came to New York City. Racial segregation in housing meant that they often lived alongside Black families like Toni Cade Bambara’s in Harlem. They also lived alongside Italian-American and Black families in East Harlem and the Lower East Side.
Please note: This is work in progress. Please keep that in mind as you read. We are sharing this work in progress because these materials are relevant to discussions of school governance underway right now in New York. Please share your feedback at [email protected] and check back for updated versions soon.
Two Black Harlem police officers, Mike Walker and Ulysses Williams, founded the first Annual World International Double Dutch competition in 1974. Having grown up watching Black girls play the two-jump-rope game throughout their neighborhood, Walker and Williams wanted to encourage more girls to play. They created a rule book for the game, and incorporated aspects of other sports (like compulsory tricks, speed testing, and freestyle). They also established the international tournament and a citywide league. Walker and Williams lobbied physical education teachers in the city’s intermediate schools to incorporate the sport into their classes, and encourage girls to join the league where they could enjoy the low-cost sports pastime.
The Eighth Annual World International Double Dutch competition took place at Lincoln Center in 1981. It had grown dramatically since two New York City police officers began the tournament in 1974.
By the 1980s, Audre Lorde was working full-time as a writer. She had published essays and poetry. She had also been fighting cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 1978.
In the 1970s and 1980s in New York City, many Black and Latinx neighborhoods were impoverished and their residents were struggling. Some landlords decided they could make more money by burning down their buildings—where people had been living—than by renting them out to individuals and families. This led to many dangerous fires, especially in the South Bronx. Once the fires were put out, they left behind damaged buildings and piles of rubble. Nonetheless, there were families and children living, growing, and playing in these areas.1
Mrs. Willie Mae Goodman heard many people speak of her daughter’s death. When she was an infant and a toddler, doctors encouraged Mrs. Goodman and her husband to place Marguerite in an institution. Her doctors predicted that Marguerite would not live beyond two years, and they told her parents that they could send her away.
Under decentralized school governance, each community school district had its own school board, and members of that board were elected by parents and voters who lived within the community school district’s boundaries. (It’s important to specify parents and voters because parents who were not citizens, and therefore could not vote in most elections, could vote in community school board elections where their children attended school.)
According to New York’s Black newspaper the Amsterdam News, Double Dutch is “a skip-rope activity in which two ropes are turned in eggbeater fashion by two rope turners while a third person jumps within the moving ropes.”1 Double Dutch was a joyful form of exercise and in some cases competition. This image likely came from a Double Dutch tournament at Lincoln Center in New York.
Marguerite Goodman lived at the Gouverneur Hospital in lower Manhattan. Her mother, Willie Mae Goodman, organized to improve Marguerite’s life at Gouverneur. This article by the New York Daily News identifies the many ways she and other family members of residents worked to change Gouverneur.
Jeffrey Hart was a student at Mark Twain Junior High School in Brooklyn. Hart’s mother and her attorneys brought a suit against the local school board, arguing that the school was unconstitutionally segregated.
In this segment of a 1974 news program, journalist Richard Kotuk introduces Mark Twain Junior High School. He records Black, Puerto Rican, and white students and families sharing how they feel about a judge’s recent order to desegregate the school. White students and parents express racist ideas about children at the school and its neighborhood.
In this video excerpt, reporter Richard Kotuk attempts to explain how what he calls “central Coney Island” has become predominantly “poor, Puerto Rican, and black.”
In 1970, about one quarter of all New York City public school students were Puerto Rican. And in some parts of the city, like the South Bronx, that proportion was much higher, around 65 percent.1 Many Puerto Rican students spoke Spanish at home, but the local public schools operated almost exclusively in English.
Palante was a self-published newspaper in which the various branches of the Young Lords Party highlighted important issues in their communities. They examined social issues through a critical lens that unearthed how colonialism, capitalism, and racism created problems for Puerto Rican communities.
