43 min listen
S1 E4: "Agitate! Educate! Organize!"
FromSchool Colors
ratings:
Length:
57 minutes
Released:
Oct 11, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In the wake of the 1968 teachers’ strikes, Black people in Central Brooklyn continued to fight for self-determination in education -- both inside and outside of the public school system.Some veterans of the community control movement started an independent school called Uhuru Sasa Shule, or "Freedom Now School," part of a pan-African cultural center called The East. Other Black educators tried to work within the new system of local school boards, despite serious flaws baked into the design.Both of these experiments in self-government struggled to thrive in a city that was literally crumbling all around them. But they have left a lasting mark on this community.CREDITSProducers / Hosts: Mark Winston Griffith and Max FreedmanEditing & Sound Design: Elyse BlennerhassettProduction Associate: Jaya SundareshOriginal Music: avery r. young and de deacon boardAdditional Music: Pharaoh Sanders, Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation, Brother D with Collective Effort, the Black Eagles, Chris Zabriskie, Tynus, Blue Dot SessionsFeatured in this episode: Beth Fertig, Jitu Weusi, Fela Barclift, Lumumba Bandele, Cleaster Cotton, Dr. Lester Young, Al Vann, Annette Robinson, Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Heather Lewis, Dr. Segun Shabaka, Michael Bloomberg.School Colors is a production of Brooklyn Deep, the citizen journalism project of the Brooklyn Movement Center. Made possible by support from the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Released:
Oct 11, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (25)
Episode 1: Old School: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn is one of the most iconic historically Black neighborhoods in the United States. But Bed-Stuy is changing. Fifty years ago, schools in Bed-Stuy's District 16 were so overcrowded that students went to school in shifts. Today, they're half-empty. Why? In trying to answer that question, we discovered that the biggest, oldest questions we have as a country about race, class, and power have been tested in the schools of Central Brooklyn for as long as there have been Black children here. And that's a long, long time. In this episode, we visit the site of a free Black settlement in Brooklyn founded in 1838; speak to one of the first Black principals in New York City; and find out why half a million students mobilized in support of school integration couldn’t force the Board of Education to produce a citywide plan. by School Colors