Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings by Brian Purnell

Author:Brian Purnell [Purnell, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies
ISBN: 9780813141831
Google: qbgBSeRV8EAC
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2013-05-01T03:33:47+00:00

“Fighting … for All Children Who Attend Segregated Schools”

Members of Brooklyn CORE’s newly formed Education Committee developed a three-part plan that would help the Bibulds, but members also agreed they wanted to use this protest to press for larger changes in the public education system. First, Brooklyn CORE planned to form strong alliances with other grassroots civil rights organizations. CORE members who were also a part of other local organizations and churches would influence those groups to support the Bibulds’ campaign. Second, Brooklyn CORE would collect and review data on the level of segregation in Brooklyn’s public schools. The last component, a large-scale direct-action campaign, would publicize the city’s racially segregated school system.

Marjorie Leeds and Mary Ellen Phifer, who were both involved in the Parents’ Workshop for Equality in New York City Schools, petitioned its members and leaders for support. Brooklyn CORE members had learned from past campaigns the importance of building and maintaining strong alliances with other activist groups. By the end of 1962 public education had emerged as the single most important political issue among African American New Yorkers, and Brooklyn CORE’s success in this area would depend on outside help.

Brooklyn CORE’s campaign received an endorsement from the Parents’ Workshop on November 8, 1962. A group of fifty parents met at Siloam Presbyterian Church. After sharing in a potluck dinner, Leeds and Phifer presented the facts of the Bibulds’ case, and the Parents’ Workshop voted to support them and any other families that withheld their children from attending public school because of substandard conditions. The Parents’ Workshop declared it would help the Bibulds’ campaign with “legal and social action,” and it would also “recruit parents with children in substandard schools who will be prepared to withdraw them.” Galamison, president of the Parents’ Workshop, said the organization would press for a meeting with the BOE and request a specific program for integration. He also affirmed that the grassroots organization would prepare to strike at specific problems such as overcrowding, low standards in black and Puerto Rican schools, and part-time education programs, which split a full school day in half to accommodate overcrowded schools. Brooklyn CORE’s small membership welcomed this added participation.21

The very next day members from the Parents’ Workshop and Brooklyn CORE accompanied Elaine and Jerome Bibuld to a meeting with Dr. Bernard Donovan, the superintendent of schools. Donovan “expressed shock” at P.S. 282’s low standards and “promised to investigate,” but in the meantime he firmly stated that the children must return to school. The Bibulds refused to send their children back to P.S. 282. They gave the superintendent a copy of a telegram they had sent to the mayor and the governor that listed their reasons for protesting the school and their demands. The Bibulds withdrew their children “because the standards are so low that Douglass [who was] in … the most advanced class in the 5th grade was getting third grade work!” They refused to send their children to any school designated by the BOE until they received written assurance that the school had median reading and arithmetic levels of 6.

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