Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City

Notes

189 NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. New York Daily Globe, Oct. 17, 1917, 17 [hereafter Globe]; New York Amsterdam News, July 20, 1957, 1, 32 [hereafter Amsterdam News]. 2. While not a uniform practice, based on Richard B. Moore’s (1992) argument, and an apparent preference among African Americans (Wilkerson 1989; though considerable debate continues), I refer to Blacks throughout the book as African Americans (see also Collier-Thomas & Turner 1994). However, I transcribe verbatim the words African Americans used (“Negroes,” “Afro-Americans,” “African Americans,” etc.) during social protests. AJHS, BJE, Box 1, Folder 1, Jewish Education to the Fore (1937); Amsterdam News, Oct.10, 1959, 38. 3. Upon arriving in America, each group encounters a racialized social system embedded in social institutions that either facilitates or inhibits their opportunities (Bonilla-Silva 1995; Feagin 2005). Scholars often highlight European immigrants’ constructed and adaptable nature of ethnic identities (Conzen et al. 1992; Sollors 1989; Vecoli 1964, 1990; Zunz 1985). Segmented assimilation among post-1965 immigrant groups results in a variety of self-identification that varies depending on social, political, and economic conditions encountered in America (Alba 1999; Alba & Nee 1997; Portes & Zhou 1993; Rumbaut 1994, 1997). Though debates persist (Barkan 1995; Brubaker 2001; Gans 1997; Glazer 1993), scholars continue to frame contemporary and historical immigrant incorporation experiences as assimilation studies wherein groups seek to enter mainstream American society and leave behind their group cultures (Kazal 1995). These theories often ignore the deeply embedded racial meanings and relationships that shape racial minorities’ ability to access important social resources (Steinberg 2007). 4. Ongoing debates over bilingual, multicultural, and other curricula- and personnelrelated issues highlight the degree to which control over the content of education is highly contested on multiple sides of each issue (Alexander 2001; Taylor 1994; Willett 1998). 5. Hall (1996) and Hartmann (2000) describe subordinated groups’ use of different social institutions to challenge identities and meanings. 6. These methods are informed by Connolly and Troyna’s (1998), and Parker, Deyle and Villenas’s (1999) edited volumes exploring marginalized groups’ racialization in the context of education. 7. Multicultural rhetoric has become so common that, in 1997, Nathan Glazer argued, “We are All Multiculturalists Now.” Banks (2002), Bush (1999), Collins (2000), Kelley (1996), Kosak (2000), and Morris and Mansbridge (2001) document oppositional consciousness and transformative knowledge in Jewish and African American social movements. 8. Critical education theorists such as Apple (1979, 1995), Bourdieu (1977), Freire (2000), Giroux (1980, 1988), Morrow & Torres (1995), Popkewitz & Fendler (1999), and Trend (1995) document how structural racism plays out in the educational arena. CHAPTER 1 NEW YORK CITY’S RACIAL AND EDUCATIONAL TERRAIN 1. Scott (1990) discusses these dual perceptions of African Americans’ success and failure in America and its effect on racial attitudes and policies. 2. In 1644, twenty years after they had been brought to Manhattan, eleven African American slaves brought from the West Indies successfully petitioned the Dutch government for their freedom. For race relations in colonial NYC see Foote (2004), Gronowicz (1998), Harris (2003), Hodges (1999), Scheiner (1965), and Wilder (2001). For broad Jewish history from 1654 until World War I, see Dwork (1986), Goren (1999), Grinstein (1947), Howe (1976), Kosak (2000), and Rischin (1978). 3. Longstanding tensions between working-class Irish and African Americans erupted in NYC during the Draft Riots, which were precipitated by Lincoln’s declaration of the Conscription Act, exempting from military service citizens rich enough to pay $300. As the perceived cause of the war, African Americans bore the brunt of Irish workers’ resentment, particularly prevalent in the dock districts where African Americans and whites fiercely competed for jobs. For days, flames engulfed NYC as the Irish set fire first to the fully occupied Colored Orphan Asylum, then African Americans’ homes, businesses, and, finally, bodies, after they had been lynched from lampposts. Rioters assaulted African Americans in the streets and dragged them from their homes at night. Much of the remaining population fled NYC. “With these actions,” according to Harris (2003), “white workers enacted their desires to eradicate the working-class black male from the city” (284). 4. Jews arriving from Germany prior to this were often skilled but poor (Rohrbacher 1997). 5. Welcomed by Polish King Stephen Batory, Jews arrived in Eastern Europe during the “golden age” of the 1500s. As moneylenders and traders, Jews found their social position plummet with the decline of the feudal system. After Russia annexed Poland in the 1700s, laws confined Jews to the Pale. The 1874 military reform, requiring all men, at the age...