Education as Activism

Education is a powerful form of resistance.

Black New Yorkers resisted racism when, in Kings County in the late 1830s, they founded the community of Weeksville. They pooled money, purchased land, and established churches, schools, and a newspaper, The Freedman’s Torchlight. The paper included lessons on the alphabet and reading, part of the residents’ commitment to education as activism.

More than a century later, Black Brooklynites still saw education as activism, and public schools as sites for protest. The borough’s schools were separate and unequal, with public schools in Black communities overcrowded and under-resourced. In 1964, the Brooklyn-based Rev. Milton Galamison led a citywide boycott of New York’s racially segregated schools. More than 400,000 students participated and demanded racial integration. Three years later, Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood became an epicenter of the movement for community control of public schools. The teachers’ union protested and a city-wide teacher strike began. During the strike, dedicated students, teachers, and community members continued the legacy of education as activism. 

In 2020, the nation declared that Black Lives Matter. Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch at Grand Army Plaza used its main doors to join the call for Black Lives to Matter when it posted “BLM” on its façade. 

To learn more about education as activism, visit our More Resources page.