Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn

by Brian Purnell

Overview

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) established a reputation as one of the most important civil rights organizations of the early 1960s. In the wake of the southern student sit-ins, CORE created new chapters all over the country, including one in Brooklyn, New York, which quickly established itself as one of the most audacious and dynamic chapters in the nation.

In Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings, historian Brian Purnell explores the chapter's numerous direct-action protest campaigns for economic justice and social equality. The group's tactics evolved from pickets and sit-ins for jobs and housing to more dramatic action, such as dumping trash on the steps of Borough Hall to protest inadequate garbage collection. The Brooklyn chapter's lengthy record of activism, however, yielded only modest progress. Its members eventually resorted to desperate measures, such as targeting the opening day of the 1964 World's Fair with a traffic-snarling "stall-in." After that moment, its interracial, nonviolent phase was effectively over. By 1966, the group was more aligned with the black power movement, and a new Brooklyn CORE emerged.

Drawing from archival sources and interviews with individuals directly involved in the chapter, Purnell explores how people from diverse backgrounds joined together, solved internal problems, and earned one another's trust before eventually becoming disillusioned and frustrated. Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings adds to our understanding of the broader civil rights movement by examining how it was implemented in an iconic northern city, where interracial activists mounted a heroic struggle against powerful local forms of racism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813165585
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	06/23/2015
Series:	Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,113,572
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Brian Purnell is assistant professor of Africana studies at Bowdoin College.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Tables ix

1 Nostalgia, Narrative, and Northern Civil Rights Movement History 1

2 "Pass Them By! Support Your Brothers and Sisters in the South!": The Origins of Brooklyn CORE 31

3 Why Not Next Door? Battling Housing Discrimination, Case by Case 59

4 Operation Unemployment: Breaking through the Color Line in Local Industries 97

5 Operation Clean Sweep: The Movement to Create a "First-Class Bedford-Stuyvesant" 125

6 "A War for the Minds and Futures of Our Negro and Puerto Rican Children": The Bibuld Family's Fight to Desegregate Brooklyn's Public Schools 163

7 "We Had Struggled in Vain": Protest for Construction Jobs and Specters of Violence 201

8 "A Gun at the Heart of the City": The World's Fair Stall-in and the Decline of Brooklyn CORE 237

Conclusion: "Brooklyn Stands with Selma" 267

Acknowledgments 285

Notes 287

Bibliography 321

Index 335

Editorial Reviews

Purnell's analysis of Northern racism and segregation helps to fill the present void in the discussion of the national Civil Rights Movement. Anyone hoping to engender a full discussion of the legacy of the movement needs to focus beyond the Southern fight against Jim Crow to encompass the Northern struggle and the many divergent philosophies and voices present therein. Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings provides an accessible entry point into several historical fields—urban, race, politics—and humanizes a struggle, which at its heart, is about humanity.

New York History

The author [...] captures the reader's attention, looking at the ups and downs of [the Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn] with an emphasis on its structural highs and lows, triumphs and areas of weakness, while introducing us to leaders and activists who were prominently fighting for social justice in the heart of Brooklyn, New York.

Spectrum

"The author [...] captures the reader's attention, looking at the ups and downs of [the Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn] with an emphasis on its structural highs and lows, triumphs and areas of weakness, while introducing us to leaders and activists who were prominently fighting for social justice in the heart of Brooklyn, New York." -- Spectrum

" Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings is a major contribution to the field of modern American history and the history of the civil rights movement. Purnell does a wonderful job highlighting the role that the Brooklyn branch of the Congress of Racial Equality played in New York's civil rights movement, from housing, employment, garbage services, school integration, the construction industry, and the protest at the 1964 World's Fair." -- Clarence Taylor, author of Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights and the New York City Teaches Union

"A major contribution to our understanding of the black freedom movement." -- Law and History Review

"If you are going to read one book of American history this year, read this. Brian Purnell shows us the racial caste system of Jim Crow New York and demonstrates how a movement grew in Brooklyn around jobs, housing, schools and public services at the same time as the much more well-covered Southern civil rights struggle. Based on years of careful research, Purnell demonstrates that New York liberalism wasn't so very liberal when it came to movements in its own backyard. Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings will fundamentally change how we understand the civil rights movement as born not just in the voting denials, exploitative sharecropping and segregated buses of the South but in the segregated hiring, racial steering and unequal sanitation services of the North." -- Jeanne Theoharis, author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

"Purnell's analysis of Northern racism and segregation helps to fill the present void in the discussion of the national Civil Rights Movement. Anyone hoping to engender a full discussion of the legacy of the movement needs to focus beyond the Southern fight against Jim Crow to encompass the Northern struggle and the many divergent philosophies and voices present therein. Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings provides an accessible entry point into several historical fields -- urban, race, politics -- and humanizes a struggle, which at its heart, is about humanity." -- New York History

From the Publisher

The author [...] captures the reader's attention, looking at the ups and downs of [the Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn] with an emphasis on its structural highs and lows, triumphs and areas of weakness, while introducing us to leaders and activists who were prominently fighting for social justice in the heart of Brooklyn, New York.

Spectrum

If you are going to read one book of American history this year, read this. Brian Purnell shows us the racial caste system of Jim Crow New York and demonstrates how a movement grew in Brooklyn around jobs, housing, schools and public services at the same time as the much more well-covered Southern civil rights struggle. Based on years of careful research, Purnell demonstrates that New York liberalism wasn't so very liberal when it came to movements in its own backyard. Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings will fundamentally change how we understand the civil rights movement as born not just in the voting denials, exploitative sharecropping and segregated buses of the South but in the segregated hiring, racial steering and unequal sanitation services of the North.

Jeanne Theoharis

A major contribution to our understanding of the black freedom movement.

Law and History Review

Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings is a major contribution to the field of modern American history and the history of the civil rights movement. Purnell does a wonderful job highlighting the role that the Brooklyn branch of the Congress of Racial Equality played in New York's civil rights movement, from housing, employment, garbage services, school integration, the construction industry, and the protest at the 1964 World's Fair.

Clarence Taylor