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government reports

Statement by Martin H. Gerry, Director, Office for Civil Rights, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, excerpts

In 1977, the New York City Board of Education was the focus of the “largest civil rights investigation of a public educational institution ever undertaken.” The Office of Civil Rights in the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare studied the New York schools and found that the school system had “violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin; Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex; and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against physically or mentally handicapped individuals.”

Real Message of the Moynihan Report

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 Controversial Moynihan Report

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.

The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, excerpt

The Negro Family: A Case for National Action (excerpt)

Daniel Patrick Moynihan Office of Policy Planning and Research United States Department of Labor March 1965