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Friday, February 5, 2016

Alexander Russo: School Segregation In The North — Then & Now | The Grade | The Washington Monthly

WNYC: School Segregation In The North — Then & Now | The Grade | The Washington Monthly:

WNYC: School Segregation In The North — Then & Now


 


Kudos to education reporter Yasmeen Khan and the education team at WNYC (NYC public radio) for Demand for School Integration Leads to Massive 1964 Boycott — In New York City, which finds a refreshing new way to tell a very old but very important story and helps remind us that widely-accepted ideas like “neighborhood school” and “local control” have more complicated histories than we may know.
On the air, digitally and via social media, Khan tells us the story of how, exactly 52 years ago, nearly 500,000 NYC schoolkids staged a one-day protest against segregation of the schools — one of the largest such protests in American history — and how it led to almost no major changes in the system:
“The school boycott was the largest civil rights protest in U.S. history… Yet, little came of the boycott, and the activists’ demands resonate still.”
The piece is full of great voices, and the digital versions of the story include some amazing posters and images. So far, there’s been the original seven minute broadcast piece (above), a digital version, an appearance on the Brian Lehrer show, and a local NBC news segment. The story hasn’t appeared on NPR nationally - yet (it should be).
This isn’t the first time that Khan’s work has appeared here. Over the summer, you may recall, she had a piece about a student who was transitioning from male to female in a Brooklyn school. Since then, Khan has been all over the place, covering among other things the school integration fight in Brooklyn (see below):WNYC: School Segregation In The North — Then & Now | The Grade | The Washington Monthly: