The historical documents found on this website are primary sources: historical records produced in one moment in time, that help us understand that moment in time.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.
Gallaudet University in Washington, DC was one of the earliest US schools for the Deaf and the world’s only university for the Deaf and hard of hearing. Thomas Gallaudet was an educator who founded the American School for the Deaf after he took an interest in trying to teach a neighbor’s deaf daughter. His son, Edward, went on to found Gallaudet University in 1864.
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.
As institutions became more widespread, more parents sent their children with intellectual and developmental disabilities away, hoping they would be rehabilitated and come home. Many of them never did. New York built five institutions for Disabled people, starting in 1855 with a state school in Syracuse, and followed by schools in Rome, Newark, and Letchworth Village. The city also operated an “Idiot School” or “Asylum” on Randall’s Island.
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.
Preston Wilcox was a human rights activist and professor at Columbia University who supported Black studies on college campuses and community control for K-12 schools. Wilcox became deeply involved with East Harlem’s community control district.
New York State’s 1969 decentralization law drew strong opposition from many Black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers who had been advocating for community control. United Bronx Parents was based in the South Bronx and had been founded in 1965 by Puerto Rican organizer Evelina López Antonetty. United Bronx Parents had worked for years to support Puerto Rican mothers in pushing for better education for their children. Community control fit within this agenda.
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.
During the 1968 teacher strike, community control advocates continued to participate in leading local school districts and arguing for self-determination in education. UFT teachers protested during the strike in public spaces like in front of City Hall. Here, community control advocates walk across the Brooklyn bridge to show their support for local democratic power in education. One of the figures in the front is Rhody McCoy, who was the superintendent of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville community control district in Brooklyn, where a controversy over whether local districts could fire teachers prompted the strike.
This video captures New York City parents speaking of their desires for community control of their children’s schools. They wanted to have a voice in public schools in their local community, and to ensure that students achieved the equal education that was their right. They were motivated, as one parent pointed out, by their experience with poor conditions in their children’s schools.
Over 1 million new Black Southern migrants and Puerto Rican immigrants had settled in New York City by the 1950s. Most resided in Harlem, the South Bronx, and Central Brooklyn. They faced many barriers, including poverty and discrimination in employment and housing discrimination, and often attended schools that the Board of Education had long neglected. The city’s centralized school system had often ignored Black residents’ demands while prioritizing the needs and wants of white students and their families.1
Civil rights organizers in Lowndes County, Mississippi, chose the image of a black panther as their symbol. They were fighting for voting rights and democratic power as part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. For decades, although Black voters were the majority of the population there, they had been locked out of voting by racist restrictions.
The Black Panther Party’s Harlem Branch, founded in 1966, defined Black Power as “having the right to self-determination or the power to decide what should go down in our community,” and “being the decision makers, the policy makers.”1
Raised type was first invented in France in 1824, by Louis Braille. He became blind after an injury as a young child. He later learned of a cryptography system developed by an army officer for communication at night. He used that knowledge to develop a raised type system for blind readers. His system later became the official standard for publishing for the blind in France, and was also adopted and modified for English by British educators.
Sign language is believed to have been in use by different peoples, including Native Americans, for many centuries.1 Systems for signing the alphabet were used by monks in the Middle Ages,2 and formal Deaf education started in Europe as early as the 16th century, when the first hearing aids were invented.3 The first private school for the Deaf was founded by a British man, Thomas Braidwood, in the late 1700s. Braidwood is believed to have used a combination of sign language and oral techniques like lip reading and training in “articulation”—working on making speech sounds, even if they are difficult or impossible for a deaf person to hear.4 An early American educator of the deaf, Thomas Gallaudet, wanted to learn these teaching methods to bring them back to the US, but Braidwood was secretive about his techniques.5 Gallaudet learned “manualism” from French educators and became an advocate for educating Deaf people only in sign language. Because there are many causes and varying degrees of deafness or hearing loss, different students needed different educational methods.
