Segregation and Desegregation in Harlem
Chapters that reference this topic include:
Chapter 2: "'A Serious Pedagogical Situation': Diverging School Reform Priorities in Depression Era Harlem" by Thomas Harbison
Chapter 3: "Wadleigh High School: The Price of Segregation" by Kimberly Johnson
Chapter 6: "Harlem Schools and the New York City Teachers Union" by Clarence Taylor
Chapter 8: "Intermediate School 201: Race, Space, and Modern Architecture in Harlem" by Marta Gutman
This website explores the creation of residential discrimination and segregation through “redlining,” which helped make Harlem’s demographic transition in the 1930s and beyond. Readers can view the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation redlining maps for Harlem and other neighborhoods across the United States.
This website explores how the federal government perpetuated racial and spatial inequalities through public and private redevelopment. It maps urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s, depicting changes to Harlem during this period as residents were displaced by redevelopment.
Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series (1941)
Between 1910 and 1970, more than six million African Americans migrated from the South to Northern and Midwestern cities like New York City. Artist Jacob Lawrence documented the Great Migration in a series of sixty paintings, presented with explanations and context in this exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art. The “Visualizing the Great Migration” page includes graphs and maps of the population change that occurred.
“The Complete Report of Mayor LaGuardia’s Commission on the Harlem Riot of March 19, 1935”
The 1935 Harlem uprising occurred in response to the rumored killing of a young man by a police officer. Mayor LaGuardia formed a commission to explore the events and the underlying conditions in Harlem that led to them. The results of the investigation were not published, but they were leaked to the Amsterdam News and printed in 1936. Chapter 6 of the report discusses the lack of educational and recreational resources in Harlem.
Wadleigh Junior High School Oral Histories and Yearbooks
These oral histories describe students’ experiences at a segregated school in Harlem in the 1960s and beyond, and they contain both similarities and differences from the discussion of Harlem schooling in the book. Many of them center on strong relationships with teachers. School yearbooks from the 1930s-1980s contain students’ creative writing and art, as well as photographs of students and staff. For more on Wadleigh High School and Junior High School see exhibits from the Harlem Education History Project.
Introduction to Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (Parts III and IV)
For an introduction to Brown v. Board of Education, school desegregation in the 1950s, and the civil rights movement, see parts III and IV in this chapter from American Yawp, an online open American history textbook.
“Mae Mallory: Forgotten Black Power Intellectual” (2016)
Ashley Farmer’s article in Black Perspectives tells the story of Mae Mallory, one of the “Harlem Nine,” a group of mothers who brought a lawsuit against the Board of Education for zoning policies that enforced segregated, inferior schools for Black children. They also held a 162-day boycott of three junior high schools. Farmer includes this event alongside Mallory’s long history of militant, radical activism.
This Board of Education report describes progress made on the 1954 Committee on Integration’s recommendations. The introduction and table of contents help to characterize the Board’s policies on integration in this period. Chapter V discusses the teacher transfer policies meant to address racial disparities in access to qualified teachers, which the Teachers Guild opposed.
In February of 1964, more than 460,000 children participated in a city-wide school boycott to demand an end to New York City’s segregated, inferior schools for Black children. The boycott was the largest civil rights protest in United States history. This lesson plan by Adam Sanchez for Rethinking Schools explores the boycott and the civil rights movement in New York City.
Video of School Boycott (1964)
This video from a Georgia television station shows a march on the day of the second school boycott in March, 1964. It includes interviews with Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell on their thoughts about the protest.
“‘A Series Of Blunders And Broken Promises’: IS 201 As A Turning Point” (2016)
Like chapter 8 author Marta Gutman, this Gotham Center blog post by Michael Glass examines the conflict at I.S. 201 in the context of the history of integration fights in New York City since 1954. Glass discusses the Harlem Nine’s boycott, the institution of open enrollment, and the 1964 school boycott. He argues that all these struggles shared a commitment to integration as a means for achieving equity in education.
“Reconnection for Learning: A Community School System for New York City Schools,” pages i-iv (1967)
This report, edited by McGeorge Bundy, proposed a plan for a community system in New York City that led to the city’s experiment with decentralization in three districts in 1967. This came after years of activism pushing for community control of New York City public schools. Pages i-iv contain the preface and a summary of the report’s recommendations (please refer to the page numbers on the bottom right of each page, as some pages are scanned out of order).
Eyes on the Prize: Power! (1966–1968) (1990)
The PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize explores the civil rights movement, with a piece on community control of the schools and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teacher strike at 36:12.
The School Colors podcast from Brooklyn Deep explores “how race, class, and power shape American cities and schools.” It focuses on Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, combining a historical investigation of education in Bed-Stuy with reporting on current impacts of charter schools and gentrification.
Teens Take Charge is led by students from New York City high schools who address educational inequity through advocacy, policy, and historical research. This page of testimonials shares students’ experience of New York City public schools in the late 2010s, addressing segregation, immigration, school choice and other issues discussed Educating Harlem.