P.S. 11: The Persistence of NYC School Segregation
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“Whites who shed tears of anguish over the Negro’s struggle for equality in the South... now find themselves confronted with the need to remedy an inequity they pretended did not exist in the North.”
It’s February 3, 1964, in New York City, and time is up. An umbrella of civil rights organizations — the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, the New York Urban League and the NAACP — have patiently negotiated and waited… and waited for the Board of Education to submit a thorough plan to integrate the city’s segregated schools. But the plan that comes forward in the 11th hour is weak: no timetable, no serious commitment to change the status quo.
So, close to half a million students stage a one-day school boycott. They call it Freedom Day. It’s the largest single demonstration of the Civil Rights era, almost twice the size of the March on Washington.
What prompted the protest? How was northern integration activism received in that era? Hear about it from the boycott’s lead organizer, Reverend Milton Galamison. This episode includes excerpts of a speech he delivered a month after the boycott, on March 5, 1964. Listen to the full speech at The New School Archives and Special Collections.
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