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 video excerpt, reporter Richard Kotuk attempts to explain how what he calls “central Coney Island” has become predominantly “poor, Puerto Rican, and black.”
This map illustrates the boundaries of Community District 21, which includes the Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Gravesend neighborhoods of Brooklyn, among others. The map also shows the junior high (or intermediate) schools within the district. Each dot on the map represents 50 people. Using 1970 Census data, the map on the left uses pink dots to represent the reported white population of the area, and the black dots represent the reported “black” population of the area. The map on the right uses red dots to represent the “Spanish Origin or Descent” population. Those identifying on the Census as “Spanish Origin or Descent” may have also identified as “white” or “black” on the Census.
As part of the New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Housing Act of 1934. Many Americans were living in unsafe or low-quality housing, while the economic downturn caused by the Great Depression threatened the banking and construction industries. Congress passed the National Housing Act to “encourage improvement in housing standards and conditions, to provide a system of mutual mortgage [or home loan] insurance, and for other purposes.”1 Lawmakers hoped to reinvigorate the banking industry and encourage banks to make more housing loans by guaranteeing that home loans, or mortgages, would be paid back. If potential homeowners could no longer afford their mortgage payments, the federal government agreed to pay the remaining principal balance.
In the US election of 1932, voters chose Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, as president, and elected overwhelming Democratic majorities in the United States House and Senate. Democrats promised to enact a “New Deal”—a package of social and economic legislation designed to bring the United States out of the Great Depression, which had begun three years earlier.
