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“Parents and Taxpayers” Protest and Counter-Protest
Caption: This film footage shows a Parents and Taxpayers protest at City Hall Park against desegregation, and a counter-protest across the street.
In the summer of 1964, the New York City Board of Education issued a very modest plan for desegregation. The plan would pair eight schools in segregated Black areas of Brooklyn and Queens with a few segregated white schools, also in Brooklyn and Queens. This “pairing” was a common approach to desegregation at the time. White parents opposed the desegregation plan, and rallied against “busing” or “forced transfers” of their white students to new and desegregating schools - or the transfer of Black students to their local white schools.1 They claimed they were fighting for “neighborhood schools” and that their opposition to “busing” was about their children’s safety, not maintaining segregated schools.
At the beginning of the school year, Parents and Taxpayers organized their own boycott of schools, in which 275,000 students stayed out of school. And a few weeks later, on September 24, 1964, they organized a demonstration at City Hall Park. The event was recorded on film, without sound, by the New York City Police Department’s Surveillance Unit. The signs that protesters hold include a variety of slogans, including:
- Parents and Taxpayers. Neighborhood Schools for Neighborhood Children
- Love thy Neighborhood school
- Involuntary busing equals legal kidnapping
- More Books Less Busses
- Support Neighborhood Schools
- No Cross Busing
- Oppose Involuntary Transfers
- Where are Our Rights?
- My children stay home
- Education not Transportation
- Neighborhood schools are conceived in liberty
Across the street, a multiracial group of counter-protesters gathered. They appeared to be singing, and held signs that referred to Parents and Taxpayers as PAT. The signs read:
- PAT = Bigotry
- Keep America White if you join PAT
- Busing or Racism?
- We shall overcome
- Hypocracy! Let’s hear the real issue
- Only in white America
This footage helps us see this moment in history. But it was not created for this purpose. According to the New York City Municipal Archives, this footage was recorded as part of the New York City Police Department’s surveillance program. “Throughout the 20th century, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) conducted overt [or visible] and covert [or hidden] surveillance on groups and individuals identified as potential security threats to the City… The subjects include a broad range of political activist groups and events from 1960 to 1980."2 That “broad range” includes many activists of color who were challenging racism and other kinds of injustice. The NYPD filmed protests against police brutality, against the Vietnam War, against racism in hiring construction workers, and more. The police perceived these activists, including the school boycotters, as “potential security threats.” That is one example of how Black and Latinx people, and those white people in solidarity with them, have been “criminalized” - or understood as criminals - in the US.3 In the NYPD surveillance films, it is unusual to see white people, and especially white women, engaged in political protest as they are here. While the footage includes women passing quickly in front of the camera during the “Parents and Taxpayers” protest, the camera is much closer to, and records the faces of, the counter-protesters as they walk in a small circle.
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Matthew Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). ↩︎
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NYPD Surveillance Films, NYC Municipal Archives Collection, New York City Departments of Records and Information Services, accessed February 7, 2023, https://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~3~3. ↩︎
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Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). ↩︎
Categories: Manhattan, K-12-education,
Tags: segregation, women's organizing, policing & the criminal legal system, protest, white people, multiracial organizing, photography & imagery,
Date: Sep 24, 1964
Creator: Municipal Archives of the City of New York, NYPD Surveillance Films
Source: Municipal Archives of the City of New York, NYPD Surveillance Films
Copyright: Courtesy of the Municipal Archives, City of New York
How to cite: “‘Parents and Taxpayers’ Protest and Counter-Protest,” in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Accessed: [Month Day, Year], https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/topics/boycotting-ny-schools/responding-to-the-boycott/parents-and-taxpayers-protest.
- What do you notice about the video and image? What do you wonder?
- What strategies did groups like Parents and Taxpayers use to maintain segregation?
- What terms do you see in the protesters’ signs? Where have you seen references to “neighborhood schools” in other documents? What does it mean to talk about “neighborhood schools” when many neighborhoods were racially segregated through policies like redlining?
- Do you see similar activism today, from the protesters or counter-protesters? How? Or Why not?
- What difference does it make, to you as a viewer, to know that this footage was recorded by the New York Police Department? Why do you think it was recorded? How does that affect what we can learn from it? How do you think the participating students and adults would have felt, if they knew they were being recorded by the police?