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Black Women As Activist Intellectuals: Ella Baker and Mae Mallory Combat Northern Jim Crow in New York City's Public Schools During the 1950S

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Black Women As Activist Intellectuals: Ella Baker and Mae Mallory Combat Northern Jim Crow in New York City's Public Schools During the 1950S City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research Hostos Community College 2019 Black Women as Activist Intellectuals: Ella Baker and Mae Mallory Combat Northern Jim Crow in New York City's Public Schools during the 1950s Kristopher B. Burrell CUNY Hostos Community College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ho_pubs/93 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] £,\.PYoo~ ~ L ~oto' l'l CILOM ~t~ ~~:t '!Nll\O lit.ti t~ THESTRANGE CAREERS OfTHE JIMCROW NORTH Segregation and Struggle outside of the South EDITEDBY Brian Purnell ANOJeanne Theoharis, WITHKomozi Woodard CONTENTS '• ~I') Introduction. Histories of Racism and Resistance, Seen and Unseen: How and Why to Think about the Jim Crow North 1 Brian Purnelland Jeanne Theoharis 1. A Murder in Central Park: Racial Violence and the Crime NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS Wave in New York during the 1930s and 1940s ~ 43 New York www.nyupress.org Shannon King © 2019 by New York University 2. In the "Fabled Land of Make-Believe": Charlotta Bass and All rights reserved Jim Crow Los Angeles 67 References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or John S. Portlock changed since the manuscript was prepared. 3. Black Women as Activist Intellectuals: Ella Baker and Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mae Mallory Combat Northern Jim Crow in Names: Purnell, Brian, 1978- editor. I Theoharis, Jeanne, editor. I Woodard, Komozi, editor. 89 Title: The strange careers of the Jim Crow North : segregation and struggle outside of the New York City's Public Schools during the 1950s South / edited by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis, with Komozi Woodard. KristopherBryan Burrell Description: New York: New York University Press, [2019] I Includes bibliographical references and index. 4. Brown Girl, Red Lines, and Brownstones: Paule Marshall's Identifiers: LCCN 2018037657jISBN 9781479801312(cl: alk. paper) I Brown Girl,Brownstones, and the Jim Crow North 113 ISBN 9781479820337(pb: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: African Americans-Civil rights-History-20th century. I Civil rights BalthazarI. Beckett movements-United States-History-20th century. I African Americans-Segregation­ 5. "Let Those Negroes Have Their Whiskey": White Backtalk History-2oth century. I Racism-United States-History-20th century. I United States-Race relations-History-20th century. I Northeastern States-Race relations­ and Jim Crow Discourse in the Era of Black Rebellion 139 History-2oth century. I Middle West-Race relations-History-20th century. IWest Laura WarrenHill (U.S.)-Race relations-History-20th century. Classification: Lee E185.61.s9143 2019 j nnc 323.1196/0730904-dc23 6. Segregation without Segregationists: How a White LC record available at https:/ /urldefense.proo(pointcom/V2/url?u=https-3A_lccn.loc.gov _ Community Avoided Integration 163 2018037657&d=DwIFAg&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeOog-IQ&r=gT953V 3c8BdcJV 4pugGa Wue Y1IXCnXKbUfECBSmo3jI&m=OM6f_RGB6AFJbX7ZQnlKZG-viPbauFZSSFMX8oxJF_ Mary Barr k&s=1_CPUgRHQfc_lwTdHSq9NQfCfj7TRZdbfxoBevJEW8M&e= 7. "You Are Running a de Facto Segregated University": Racial . Segregation and the City University of New York, 1961-1968 187 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials TahirH. Butt are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppli­ ers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. 8. A Forgotten Community, a Forgotten History: Manufactured in the United States of America San Francisco's 1966 Urban Uprising 211 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin V ilding Peace;' Daily Worker,September 3 Tireless Leadership;' CE, October 26, Black Women as Activist Intellectuals th · e Campaign Committee, October 27, Records, University oflowa Special Col- Ella Baker and Mae Mallory Combat Northern Jim Crow in New York City'sPublic Schoolsduring the l 950s ·_,., I, 173. 1efor Both Major Parties:' New York KRISTOPHER BRYAN BURRELL Alliance;" PC, April 5, 1952, 29_ :' LAS, March 13, 1952,A1; Bass, «I Ac- Dinner, April 18, 1952;' Additions- Box • Southern California Library for Social , Introduction - 14, 1952, 2. The year is 1955. Imagine a city where, in 70 percent of public schools, ,s;' July 5, 1950, Box 12, Folder 50, over 85 percent of the students belonged to one racial group. 1 Zoning :owa Special Collection and University policies funneled children from racially homogenous neighborhoods into racially homogenous public schools. Residential patterns, brought ~48, 1. on by racial segregation in housing, created a system whereby an Folder 50, Progressive Party Records, University Archives. overwhelming majority of underutilized public schools were in pre­ dominantly white areas, and the most overcrowded, overutilized schools were in predominantly black areas. The city's racial and ethnic minori­ ties lived concentrated and clustered in a handful of neighborhoods. Thus, the demographics of public schools in those areas exhibited high levels of racial and ethnic concentrations clustered into specific schools. Imagine that this racial isolation, concentration, and clustering occurred outside of the city's central commercial, manufacturing, and industrial districts. Such an urban sc)lool system would, by definition, exhibit elements of what the sociologists Nancy Denton and Douglas Massey called "hyper-segregation:' 2 One year prior, the Supreme Court had unanimously declared that such a public school system was unconstitu­ tional, and that it must racially desegregate. The above scenario of hyper-segregation described public schools not in the Deep South but in ground zero of the Jim Crow North: liberal, cosmopolitan New York City. In 1954, despite laws that forbade racially segregated schools, New York City had racially hyper-segregated public schools to the same degree as Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, Tallahas- 90 I KRISTOPHER BRYAN BURRELL see, St. Louis, and cities in the seventeen states that legally mandated Jim Crow public schools. As Tahir Butt shows in his essay in this book, racial a segregation in Jim Crow New York's education system followed African Americans all the way up through the public university. 3 In Jim Crow New York, hyper-segregated black public schools were housed in old buildings, had staffs with fewer licensed and full-time teachers, and had larger class sizes. Overcrowding mandated that stu­ dents typically only attended school on half-day schedules to accom­ modate two differnet cohorts. As a result of all these inequities, black students usually scored lower on standardized te_sts.4 In fact, at the con­ clusion of their high school careers, less than 0.2 percent of black gradu­ ates were prepared to attend college. 5 Activist-intellectuals in New York knew these facts. Through an array n of organizations and social movements, they worked to ameliorate the dis­ parities produced by the city's history ofJim Crow racism. During the de­ tJ cade after Brown,the Reverend Milton A. Galamison waged a decade-long struggle for racial integration in New York City's public schools. For years, f the radical activist Annie Stein worked with Galamison's Parents Work­ l, shop for Equality and the Public Education Association, and investigated s how hyper-racial segregation of New York'sneighborhoods caused gross \ inequities in predominantly black public schools. During the early 1960s, r the Brooklyn chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality staged a one­ family sit-in at a predominantly white school to highlight the racial in­ equalities in all-black and Puerto Rican schools throughout the borough. During a city-wide school boycott in 1964, over four hundred thousand students were absent to protest the city's Jim Crow education system. Dur­ ing the mid- to late 1960s, city-wide movements for community control advanced earlier movements for equity and justice in New York'sJim Crow education system. These were movements initiated and led by, for the most part, unsung "local'' people. 6 "Grassroots activists not only acted:' Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard argue, but they also "theorized for them­ selves and tailored global ideas to suit their local circumstances:' 1 Black women were central to this struggle to desegregate New York City's Jim Crow education system as theorists, organizers, advocates, and mothers. 8 During the 1950s, Ella Baker and Mae Mallory, two black women activist-intellectuals, crossed paths around education inequity. Baker, who later helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commit- BLACK WOMEN AS ACTIVIST INTELLECTUALS j 91 ttes that legally mandated Jim -. tee, emerged as a key activist and theorist in New York City's battles n his essay in this book, racial against Jim Crow in schools. She organized conferences, served on tion system followed African city committees, and led key organizations. 9 Mallory exercised a more 3 lie university. •; direct-action form of protest. She sued the New York City Board of ~d black public schools were Education (BOE) for maintaining a Jim Crow education system. Both ewer licensed and full-time women wrote letters, made public statements, and marched. Like other rowding mandated that stu­ black women activist-intellectuals
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