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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.
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
Italian immigrant Leonard Covello was the principal of East Harlem’s Benjamin Franklin High School, an all-boys school. Drawing on his own experience immigrating to the US, Covello wanted to create a school where students’ home cultures could connect to the school’s. Early in the 20th century, most of Franklin’s students were Italian American. Covello created spaces within the school to welcome parents and community members, including through specific Italian American clubs, and extended the school out into the community. He opened a multilingual library and a job placement center on a street close to the school, and welcomed students and parents there.
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.
