A reader, Joel Schwartz, sent this article as a comment.
It is based on Karen Ferguson’s book Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism.
Ferguson tells the remarkable story of the Ford Foundation’s decision to become a funder of the community control movement in the battle over the future of the New York City public schools in 1967-1969. As she explains, Ford was The Establishment; it was the Gates Foundation of its time. Yet it decided to align with the Black Power movement and to cast itself as anti-establishment and anti-professional.
The events she describes were the start of my professional life.
I was an unofficial advisor to Preston Wilcox, a black social worker who was one of the leaders of the community control movement in Harlem (his organization was called Afram). Tagging along with him, I attended many of the meetings with community activists concerned about the new I.S. 201 in Harlem. I later worked for the Carnegie Corporation as an hourly employee, writing about the three demonstration districts at the heart of the teachers’ strike, which lasted for two full months in 1968.
It was during these tumultuous events that I began to write about the New York City schools. One of my first articles was about the role of the elitist Ford Foundation; the article was titled “Playing God in the Ghetto.”
I won’t go into all the details here, but the teachers’ strikes of 1967-68 inspired me to write my first book, which was published in 1974, called The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973. Many others have been written since then about those crisis-ridden years. They left a deep imprint on me.
Those events continue to resonate today for many people, for different reasons.
Ferguson’s focus on the Ford Foundation’s role is refreshing. I haven’t read the book yet, but intend to do so.
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