When Tenants Claimed the City by Roberta Gold

Author:Roberta Gold [Gold, Roberta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, Sociology, Urban, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780252095986
Google: C7kPBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2014-02-15T05:42:33+00:00

Figure 11. Cooper Square Committee disrupts planners’ presentation at Cooper Union. Frances Goldin center foreground, with arm raised. Courtesy of Frances Goldin.

More fights lay ahead, but the Cooper Square Committee had learned from its early struggles. Moreover, the city’s slick handling of the predesignation statement had pushed moderate committee members—those who trusted officials to act in good faith—toward the left. Not only Thabit but Burdick, a “perfectly coiffed” churchwoman, found out that public officials sometimes lied, and “just developed over the years into an incredible fighter in her sweet little white-gloved way.” Asked about the reasons for Cooper Square’s eventual success, Goldin said, “I think it had a good number of either Communists or committed radicals in the leadership that were unbuyable. I think we had a combination of technicians, radicals and troops. We made the technicians do what we wanted.” Technicians meant Thabit, architects, and lawyers. “We’d get arrested. And [the lawyers] would say, ‘Cop a plea.’ And we would say, ‘Fuck you. We are innocent. And you’re defending us as innocent.’ . . . We never once pleaded guilty, and we never once lost.”92

Equally important, the Cooper Square Committee’s vision drew neighbors together. Organizers were conscious of the need to build unity among the area’s ethnic groups, and they cultivated support among Jewish, Italian, Latino, and Asian groups and individuals.93 At the winter rally featuring musical lampoons, people also sang serious lyrics about interracial community: “I’m dreaming that by next Christmas / I’ll see my new home on that site / We’re all kinds of neighbors, and through our labors / We’ll live like brothers, black and white.”94 Here, as in the published plan, the committee held up Cooper Square’s integration as desirable and viable. In December 1964—just months after the Harlem–Bed-Stuy riots—that was no small thing. The inclusiveness of both the plan and the process also solidified the local movement politically, binding leftists to more mainstream supporters. “We didn’t do it alone,” said Goldin. “We had the community support. People who went to church regularly got arrested with us. They had dumped the garbage.”95

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