School Colors
In 1968, the predominantly black and Puerto Rican community of Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood was exhausted by failed attempts at school integration. The parents’ move to hire black teachers for their children set off a chain reaction that, after 18 white teachers were dismissed, led to a New York City teachers’ strike that kept one million students at home. The School Colors hosts Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman, both of whom have relatives who worked in New York schools during this tumultuous period, trace a path from that strike to the city’s current education landscape, where they argue segregation is entrenched in part by the charter-school system. By the last episode, the narrative has arrived in present-day Brooklyn, driving home the point that for many black and brown students, the false notion of “separate but equal” schools isn’t a thing of the past.
Storyline
In 1968, the predominantly black and Puerto Rican community of Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood was exhausted by failed attempts at school integration. The parents’ move to hire black teachers for their children set off a chain reaction that, after 18 white teachers were dismissed, led to a New York City teachers’ strike that kept one million students at home. The School Colors hosts Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman, both of whom have relatives who worked in New York schools during this tumultuous period, trace a path from that strike to the city’s current education landscape, where they argue segregation is entrenched in part by the charter-school system. By the last episode, the narrative has arrived in present-day Brooklyn, driving home the point that for many black and brown students, the false notion of “separate but equal” schools isn’t a thing of the past.
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