Story
WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED: New York and Civil Rights 1945-1964
A new chapter in the long Black freedom struggle took shape in New York and elsewhere following World War II. African-American New Yorkers and their allies mobilized against a range of discriminatory policies and practices, including exclusion by employers and banks, whites-only housing, segregated and unequal public schools, and controversial uses of force by police. By the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, New York had passed anti-discrimination laws in employment and housing, and activists had staged an enormous school boycott protesting segregated schools. Yet racial discrimination remained, and that year, rioting broke out in Harlem after a white policeman fatally shot African-American teenager James Powell. Activists have continued to mobilize in response to police conduct in communities of color, as well as against city schools and housing that remain divided along racial lines.
StuyTown-Peter Cooper Village
The first apartment building in Stuyvesant Town—a sprawling complex of residential buildings located along lower Manhattan’s East River between 14th and 20th Streets intended for white New York veterans and their families—opened for occupancy in 1947. When Joseph R. Dorsey and two other African-American veterans tried to obtain apartments in this neighborhood, they were excluded from consideration as tenants due to their skin color. In response, the three men sued the Stuyvesant Town Corporation on the basis of racial exclusion. Although their case was unsuccessful, it sparked a movement to push for housing reform.
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Central Presbyterian Church
Milton Galamison was the Reverend of the Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Siloam Presbyterian Church and a prominent civil rights activist. He was also a member of the Brooklyn Branch of the NAACP and rallied against education inequality in New York City. In 1964, Galamison helped lead two school boycotts that called for a desegregation plan for New York public schools. Between each boycott, over 600,000 students participated and stayed out of school.
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Bayard Rustin Residence at Penn South (Building 7)
Bayard Rustin was an influential activist in the civil rights movement from the 1940s through the 1960s. From Harlem, Rustin planned the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 and became a close advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. He was also a strong advocate for socialism and openly gay, which marginalized him within the leadership of the movement. In 2003, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rustin lived in this apartment complex from 1963 until his death in 1987.
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Empire City Savings Bank
In 1946, activists picketed in front of the Empire City Savings Bank location in Harlem. This was one of many mortgage discrimination protests aimed at banks that refused to lend money to African American homebuyers seeking to move into white neighborhoods.
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Apollo Theater
The Apollo Theatre was an important site of the long Black freedom struggle, as it was the first theatre in New York City that allowed African Americans to perform. In 1963, the theatre hosted a midnight benefit show in support of the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The funds raised allowed jobless workers to travel to Washington D.C. and listen to speeches made by social justice activists, including Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
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70 Fifth Avenue
The building at 70 Fifth Avenue was the former headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NCAAP). The NCAAP was founded in New York City in 1909 in response to violence towards African Americans across the country. As the largest and most prominent civil rights organization, the NCAAP organized and supported numerous conferences and campaigns addressing segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, including the 1953 Fight for Freedom Campaign, the 1955 Emmett Till Lynching and Trial Protest, and Brown v. Board of Education legal case heard by the Supreme Court.
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New York City Hall
In 1943 voters elected lawyer and civil rights activist Benjamin J. Davis as Harlem's representative for the New York City Council, to fill the seat of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. While he ran on the American Labor Party ticket, Davis was openly a member of the Communist Party. In 1951, he was convicted under the anti-Communist federal Smith Act; he spent five years in prison.
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West 124th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was Pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and New York congressman representing Harlem. As the first African American Congressperson from New York upon his election in 1945, he focused on a broad civil rights agenda, from limiting discrimination in housing, and employment, to passing laws that banned poll taxes and outlawed lynching. Powell also encountered financial scrutiny and charges of absenteeism from House colleagues, who tried to bar him from Congress despite continuing popularity in his district. In 1947, Seventh Avenue in Harlem was renamed Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard to honor Powell’s contributions to the neighborhood and city.
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