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The Less-Known 1965 Boycott
New York City’s “600” schools were established in the 1940s to educate young people who were, in the opinion of educators or the courts, “defiant, disruptive, disrespectful, and hostile to all authority.”1 These schools got their name from New York’s school numbering system. They had school numbers, like P.S. 617, in the six hundreds.
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By the 1960s the “600” schools began labeling students as “socially maladjusted” and/or “emotionally disturbed”— which in some cases referred to what we would call emotional or mental health disabilities today. But in other cases this label was applied to Black and Puerto Rican boys who, for a variety of reasons, educators thought could not conform to school expectations and rules. Some of the “600” schools were housed in institutions like jails and hospitals, where students may have been sent by the courts, and others were called “day schools,” where students attended during the day after being excluded from other New York City schools.2
Despite their stated purpose, the “600” schools segregated students by race and class. They targeted and excluded from mainstream schools those who the city had given the very least educational opportunity and who faced challenges from poverty at home. In the 1960s, the majority of “600” day school students were Black and Puerto Rican and most came from poor neighborhoods. Some students were referred to the “600” schools by school personnel, most of whom were white, and these decisions were often influenced by racism. Some students had learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities that were not identified, and they were not getting get the kind of educational and mental health support they needed.3
In November 1964, Reverend Milton Galamison and several parents and teachers began organizing for a new boycott, to be called “Operation Shutdown.” Organizers wanted to target segregated Black and Latinx junior high schools, with more than 85 percent Black and Puerto Rican student populations. They also included fifteen of the “600” schools in their organizing, as Galamison and others recognized that these, too, were racially segregated schools. In these schools there was no clear curriculum and staff mistreated some students.4 By highlighting the “600” schools in the 1965 boycott, Galamison made students labeled as disabled more visible than they had been in previous boycotts. Doing so produced reactions and new tensions within the organizing movement.
When “Operation Shutdown” began on January 19, 1965, students from three junior high schools and one “600” school were participating. As noted by historian Francine Almash, the white press depicted students in the “600” schools as violent and aggressive, and those schools as the only places that such students would be welcomed.5 New York City schools head James Donovan accused Galamison of using “sick” kids for his political agenda.6 Black community members also questioned whether the desegregation efforts should focus on the “600” schools. Should Disabled students, or those labeled as disabled, be the face of school desegregation advocacy? they seemed to ask. Were the “600” schools appropriate for these students? an Amsterdam News opinion piece pondered.7 Galamison continued the boycott for seven weeks, but then called an end to it with no clear victory.8
There are no “600” schools today. But the legacy of schools segregated both by race and disability label continues. For decades, New York City assigned students labeled “emotionally disturbed” to a separate school district - District 75 - with its own buildings and classrooms around the city. The Department of Education stopped using the term “emotionally disturbed” in 2022, replacing it with the label of “emotional disability.”9 Emotionally disabled students, and especially Black and Latinx students and poor students with this label, still struggle to receive just schooling in New York City.10
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This section draws on the scholarship of Francine Almash and her original dissertation research which will appear as a chapter in the book Cripping the Archive: Disability, Power, and History (currently under contract with University of Illinois Press). Quotation from New York City Board of Education, “The 600 Schools, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/teaching-collections/boycotting-ny-schools/1965-boycott/600-schools-yesterday-today-tomorrow. ↩︎
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New York City Board of Education, “The 600 Schools, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” On the racialization of the category of “emotional disturbance,” see Keith A. Mayes, The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023). ↩︎
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Francine Almash, “New York City ‘600’ Schools and the Legacy of Segregation in Special Education,” The Gotham Center for New York City History, June 21, 2022, https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/new-york-city-600-schools-and-the-legacy-of-segregation-in-special-education. ↩︎
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Almash, “New York City ‘600’ Schools.” ↩︎
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Almash, “New York City ‘600’ Schools.” ↩︎
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Almash, “New York City ‘600’ Schools.” ↩︎
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Almash, “New York City ‘600’ Schools”; Jackie Robinson, “There Must be a Better Way,” Amsterdam News, January 30, 1965. ↩︎
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Almash, “New York City ‘600’ Schools.” ↩︎
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Reema Amin, “To Reduce Stigma, New York Moves to Change ‘Emotional Disturbance’ Label to ‘Emotional Disability,’" Chalkbeat, March 14, 2022, https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/3/14/22978080/ny-emotional-disturbance-regents-state-students-with-disabilities ↩︎
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Cheri Fancsali, “Special Education in New York City: Understanding the Landscape” (New York: Research Alliance for NYC Schools at NYU Steinhardt, 2019), https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/research-alliance/research/publications/special-education-new-york-city ↩︎
