In the fall of 1968, New York City teachers went on strike three times, in reaction to an experiment in community control of schools in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn. The third strike was the longest, and the ugliest.

The movement for community control tapped into a powerful desire among Black and brown people across New York City to educate their own. But the backlash was ferocious. The confrontation at Ocean Hill-Brownsville fractured the connection between teachers and families, between the labor movement and the civil rights movement, between Black and Jewish New Yorkers. Some of these wounds have never really healed.

But as the strike dragged on for seven weeks, schools in Ocean Hill-Brownsville were open for business. And for many students there, the experience was life-changing.

CREDITS

Producers / Hosts: Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman

Editing & Sound Design: Elyse Blennerhassett

Production Associate: Jaya Sundaresh

Music: avery r. young, Chris Zabriskie, Blue Dot Sessions

Featured in this episode: Dolores Torres, Rhody McCoy, Al Shanker, Father John Powis, Leslie Campbell, Lisa Donlan, Charlie Isaacs, Sandra Feldman, Cleaster Cotton, Veronica Gee, Monifa Edwards, Sufia De Silva, Steve Brier, Paul Chandler, Rev. C. Herbert Oliver, Neilson Griffith, Jay Eskin, John Lindsay, Al Vann, Natasha Capers, Dr. Lester Young.

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.