May 26, 1969 Letter from Thomas Jones to Franklin Thomas

On May 26, 1969, New York State Justice Thomas Jones wrote to Franklin Thomas, president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, forwarding a copy of a letter sent four days earlier from Albert Bowker to Al Vann, Chair of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Coalition on Educational Needs and Services. In that letter, which Jones attached, Bowker had expressed a wish to overcome an “impasse” between City University of New York (CUNY) officials and an appointed planning delegation from the Bedford-Stuyvesant community, led by Vann, over preferred candidates for the presidency of the new Community College 7. In his brief cover letter, Jones expressed his alarm over “the danger that we may not get Community College 7 soon, for reasons known to many of us.” In the coming weeks, Jones, with a contingent of other community members, would publicly split from Vann and his allies in a schism that in the end determined the fate of the new college.

In February 1968, the City University of New York (CUNY) announced plans to establish a new “Community College 7 in or near Bedford-Stuyvesant. . . oriented to the Bedford-Stuyvesant Community and operated in consultation with the community.” Representatives of a broad network of Central Brooklyn community organizations engaged in an 18 months-long negotiation with CUNY Board of Higher Education officials over CUNY’s plans for its newly announced “Community College 7,” including discussions about the proposed school’s curriculum, who would lead it, and what role the community would play in the school’s governance. The role of the Bedford-Stuyvesant community in planning and determining the leadership of the college remained a central point of controversy between Central Brooklyn’s educational and civil society leaders and CUNY officials in the negotiations that followed.

Woodswork, Michael

Jones, Thomas

May 26, 1969

English

14282

Donald Watkins Collection (Brooklyn Public Library)

Correspondence