Before the Boycotts: Organizing and Direct Action

The New York City school boycotts were part of a long tradition of mass protest in the US, including labor strikes and civil rights actions in the South like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the lunch counter sit-ins. Such major actions required extensive work in advance and behind the scenes.¹ Leaders helped build solidarity, at times building relationships across groups who had different interests or had not previously worked together. They also had to figure out how major events with tens or even hundreds of thousands of people would work. Who would go where, what would they do, who would speak, and how would everyone stay safe? The networks, strategies, and knowledge that earlier organizers cultivated helped make the New York City school boycotts possible.

Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018); Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton Galamison and the Struggle for School Integration in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). ↩︎