Meet Ruth Goring

Meet Ruth Goring: Brooklynite, healthcare worker, assembly district leader, and co-founder of the Unity Democratic Club, a progressive, interracial political club based in Crown Heights in the early 1960s.

At the Center for Brooklyn History, we have an interview with Ruth Goring conducted on April 28, 1988 in the Jeffrey Gerson Brooklyn politics research collection (2013.021). This collection includes interviews Jeffrey Gerson, a PhD student at the time, conducted with Brooklyn-based political and community leaders active in the 1960s and before. Gerson's interviews conducted between 1984 and 1989 culminated in his dissertation Building the Brooklyn Machine: Irish, Jewish and Black Political Succession in Central Brooklyn, 1919-1964, published in 1990. The interview with Goring is on two cassette tapes, over two hours long, and is accompanied by a typewritten transcript.

Transcripts of interviews and oral histories are important for access and useful for researchers looking to reference something more quickly, but they do not convey tone, pauses, or the speaker's unique voice. The interview presents Ruth Goring in the middle of her busy day; the audio is punctuated by a ringing telephone and what sounds like the clicks of a lighter (perhaps a couple of cigarettes were smoked). Goring's generous interview ends quickly when she interrupts Gerson's next question to say "We've got to get going, it's 12 o'clock."

Gerson begins the interview with questions about Ruth Goring's early life before politics. Ms. Goring was born on July 19, 1919 in Manhattan and grew up in Harlem. Her parents were from Barbados; her father worked as a contractor and her mother was a homemaker. She was their second daughter and she had two younger brothers. Goring said her mother was "mother of the block," everyone came to her for advice; and her father knew all the "would-be Black politicians in Harlem."

Ruth Goring moved from Queens to Crown Heights in Brooklyn in 1947. As the wife of a World War II serviceman, Goring had received an apartment in the Queensbridge Houses, but found that the damp from the East River made her daughter sick. Her sister and mother's family already lived in Brooklyn, so she moved there, too. Goring worked as a public health nurse for the Visiting Nurse Association and lived on St. Marks Avenue across from the Brooklyn Children's Museum.

Goring described her community in Crown Heights as a mixed area of young Black families, many of whom were veterans, and white Jewish middle class people. There were active block and tenants' associations; parents worked together to get school crossing guards and libraries (the Brower Park Library opened in 1963) for the community. At this point in the interview, Gerson asks if Goring witnessed any major disagreements between white and Black residents. She responds: 

By the time I moved in that had all simmered down. People had learned to work together. And even though the big apartment buildings on St. Marks Avenue between Brooklyn and New York, they were gradually getting Black tenants in them. As one woman said to me 'But the people that are moving in are our kind of people.' And I said 'That's why they moved into your building, because you're their kind of people.' You know turn it around.

So how did Ruth Goring get involved in politics? Initially, it was through her family's own political involvement. Goring's sister and husband were already involved in Bertram Baker's Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League and brought Goring's daughter, Lois, to several meetings while the League was working on Judge Lewis Flagg's campaign. She was only 5 or 6 years old at the time, but Lois was invited to Judge Flagg's swearing-in because as Ruth Goring said: "I wasn't invited, but she was an honored guest because she had licked the envelopes to send out all the mail and everything."

After Judge Flagg was elected, Goring described a schism in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League. Women were expected to take a back seat even after they had been so active in getting Judge Flagg elected. In 1958 or 1959, Goring's sister invited her to a meeting with Thomas Russell Jones, a lawyer and family friend. Ruth Goring balked at the invitation; she worked full-time and was attending school, when would she have the time to be involved in a political club? But she agreed to attend.

Out of this fateful meeting, the Unity Democratic Club was formed. Something must have convinced Goring in these early meetings because not only was she a founding member, but also the first president. What's more, the club immediately went to work on a campaign to elect Goring and Thomas Russell Jones to positions in district leadership. They lost in 1960, but beat white politicians Samuel Berman and Carrie Lark in 1962.

Other members of the Unity Democratic Club included Ruth Brooks, Patrick Carter, Shirley Chisholm, Andrew Cooper, Jocelyn Cooper, Ernest Crichlow, Marshall Dubin, Etheline Dubin, Narcissus Frett-Moses, Walter Linder, Joan Maynard, Murray Rosenberg, and Mary Woods.

Goring saw Unity as "extending the opportunity of Blacks to get into political office and to fight locally for the kind of things that you thought needed to be done." So what were the things that needed to be done that the Unity Democratic Club did? Unity held regular meetings that attracted 30-50 people and their office was regularly open for people in the community to walk in. They also published a newspaper and position papers regarding their stance on political issues. 

Goring describes going to the Board of Elections for their election inspectors trainings and then holding more accessible trainings at the local level. Unity supported a Youth Political Action Committee formed in the Kingsboro Houses through which 14-21 year-olds helped collect signatures to get people on the ballot.

Unity also led a boycott and protest of Ebinger's Bakery on Kingston Avenue. The bakery did not have any Black employees; they claimed no Black people wanted the positions. Unity responded by providing Ebinger's with a list of people in the community for whom working part-time, near home would be a valuable situation. When Ebinger's refused to hire anyone on that list, Unity and Congress of Racial Equality members picketed outside the bakery, cutting the business's income by more than $4000 in two Saturdays. Ebinger's closed instead of conceding to the protesters' demands.

Ruth Goring also volunteered with the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council and as the mother of a child going to public school, she noticed white teachers leaving the area schools with racist ideas about the children being "uneducable." "P.S. 138 used to be the teacher training center for Brooklyn. But they moved out services and then blamed the community because the level went down." She organized parents to buy a former church building and formed a new neighborhood school with affordable tuition.

Goring also raised objections against inequality in her workplace, the Visiting Nurse Association. For example, when she saw New York City public schools were not hiring Black women as school nurses, she took the required exam and got perfect marks. After returning from vacation a while later, she was told she had been moved to a different supervisor position in the Bushwick office. They explained it was for her benefit: the workload was easier so she would have more time for her degree. In truth, they siloed Goring in a position with fewer responsibilities and thus less influence.

While in the Bushwick office, Goring learned that her Polish co-worker was receiving a scholarship from their employer that Goring should have been receiving as well. The Visiting Nurse Association stonewalled her, claiming Goring was taking too many credits while working full-time. Eventually they paid for her to take six credits. In true Ruth Goring fashion, she finished with straight As: "I sent them a copy of my credits and said 'I know what is best for me and what I can do. But thank you for your six credits anyhow.' I get rude sometimes." Shortly thereafter in November 1964, Goring gladly accepted a job as aide to Brooklyn Borough President Abe Stark.

(Archival interlude: I was excited to find Ruth Goring's name in a seating list of the Visiting Nurse Association's May 1963 Diamond Jubilee Dinner-Dance held at the St. George Hotel in the The Visiting Nurse Association of Brooklyn records (1985.093). She sat at table 34, but I can imagine her making her way over to the dais to chat with honored guests Abe Stark and Stanley Steingut, Chairman of the Kings County Democratic Organization.)

Ruth Goring reports that the Unity Democratic Club began to fracture in 1964 for several reasons. First, Thomas Russell Jones accepted a judgeship instead of running for New York State Assemblymember as the Unity membership wanted. In the interview, Gerson suggests that Judge Jones thought Ruth Goring had been stolen away from the club. Goring concedes that she and Jones did argue and see things differently ("I have opinions and sometimes they're strong"), but she never disagreed with him in front of the group. In-fighting is what people who wanted Unity to fail hoped for, but Unity leadership knew better: "That's what we used to say 'That's what Whitey wants you to do, because then they keep defusing your leadership.'" Goring simply understood that Jones wanted a steadier position to support his family.

Shirley Chisholm's departure from the club also added to its growing ineffectiveness. Tension started when Chisholm backed Anthony Travia instead of Stanley Steingut for Democratic Party leader of Kings County. On a phone call with Ruth Goring, Chisholm explained she was voting with her conscience. Goring responded harshly: "And you will regret it because even though you give Travia the vote, he will never respect you.'" Goring asserts this is why Chisholm was then ostracized as a New York State assemblymember: "she was the loneliest person in Albany."

Goring says Chisholm also red-baited members of Unity, accusing them of supporting leftwing causes. "...it was the Cold War... People were afraid to even be seen talking to someone that they had known for years... because that person had registered Communist..." Chisholm ran for Jones' New York State Assembly seat in 1964 with the Unity Democratic Club's endorsement, but they did not back her in the 1968 Congressional run.

Gerson interviewed many of the founding members of Unity and I'm sure their interviews hold different perspectives and accounts of this time period. In his thesis, Gerson concludes, "Before UDC could enjoy the fruits of their historic achievement, post succession bedlam broke out, tearing asunder UDC's heart and soul. By 1964 UDC was transformed. The club's liberal and radical, black and white, were red-baited out of the club. Feeling betrayed and demoralized, they exited and entered non-electoral politics" (Gerson, 1990, pg. 329).

And what about Ruth Goring? Jeffrey Gerson's interview focused on her involvement in political activities in the 1960s, but she continued to be active in local politics throughout her life. In 1971, Ruth Goring was Community Health Planner for the Borough of Brooklyn, a smart match between her community activism, nursing background, and political acumen.

The two photographs below show Ruth Goring at a sign unveiling along Eastern Parkway when she was Chairperson of Community Board 8 in 1979. And at the time of the 1988 interview, Goring said she was a part of an interracial, interdenominational council in Crown Heights.

Ruth Goring died in 2006. She may not be as well known as her distinguished contemporaries, such as Shirley Chisholm, but Goring made her mark on the Crown Heights community. Far from being rude, Goring held strong views about what changes should be made to make her life and the lives of other people in Central Brooklyn better. She was realistic about what could be accomplished while always demanding more. As Goring said: "Power concedes nothing. You have to reach for it and get a grasp on it, even if you don't pull it away, that shows them the time has come."

If you would like to listen to Ruth Goring's or other interviews conducted by Jeffrey Gerson, please email cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.