White parents in the 1960s fought to be part of a new, racially integrated school. Where’d they go?

Nice White Parents

[email protected] (Serial Productions & The New York Times)

2: 'I Still Believe in It'

JUL 30, 202051 MIN
Nice White Parents

2: 'I Still Believe in It'

JUL 30, 202051 MIN

Description

Chana Joffe-Walt searches the New York City Board of Education archives for more information about the School for International Studies, which was originally called I.S. 293.

In the process, she finds a folder of letters written in 1963 by mostly white families in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. They are asking for the board to change the proposed construction of the school to a site where it would be more likely to be racially integrated.

It’s less than a decade after Brown v. Board of Education, amid a growing civil rights movement, and the white parents writing letters are emphatic that they want an integrated school. They get their way and the school site changes — but after that, nothing else goes as planned.

For more information about this show, visit nytimes.com/nicewhiteparents