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60th Anniversary of BOE’s Vote to Desegregate Schools


PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

5/13/2024

Contents:

  • Teaneck Voices Celebrates May 13, 2024: The 60th Anniversary of the Teaneck Board of Education Vote to Desegregate the Teaneck Public Schools
  • A Year of Recognizing the 1964-65 Kick-off to Public School Desegregation in Teaneck
  • Municipal Budget Delayed – to Try to Sell the Cell Tower
  • NJ Senate’s Latest - OPRA Reform it is Not
  • The Week that Was – May 6-12, 2024
  • This Week in Teaneck – May 13-19, 2024


Announcements

  • Friends of the Library Book Sale – 5/16-19
  • Mental Health Awareness Month - May
  • East Votee Neighborhood Association Listening Session – 5/19
  • Teaneck Community Chorus honors Steve Bell -  5/19
  • Votee Picnic - 6/9
  • Juneteenth –  6/15 to 19
  • OTOV Fundraiser – 6/22


Contacting Teaneck Voices:

  • Email: teaneckvoices@gmail.com
  • Phone: 201-214-4937
  • USPS Mail: Teaneck Voices, PO Box 873. at 1673 Palisade Ave. 07666

Teaneck Voices Celebrates May 13, 2024: The 60th Anniversary of the Teaneck Board of Education Vote to Desegregate the Teaneck Public Schools

May 13, 1964, 8 PM, Teaneck High School Auditorium, Meeting of the Teaneck Board of Education;

The nine trustees of the Board and School Superintendent Harvey Scribner seated at a long table on the high school stage;

1400 Teaneck residents, most of them white and most of them angry, crammed into the auditorium.


Vice-President Theodore Ley: I move that Teaneck establish Bryant School as a Central 6th Grade, and institute busing to implement that plan.


President Bernard Confer: I second the motion.


Call the vote:

Dr. Bell -- “Yes”

Mrs. Hendricksen – “Yes

Mr. Herr – “Yes”

Mr. Jones – “Yes”

Mr. Larsen – “Yes”

Mr. Margolis – “No”

Mr. Warner – “No”

Vice President Ley – “Yes”

President Confer – “Yes”


By a vote of 7 to 2, the motion to establish Bryant School as a central 6th grade and institute busing to achieve racial equity in the Teaneck Public Schools is passed.


The 1400 residents packing the high school auditorium, most opposed to busing and led by the Neighborhood Schools Association, charged the stage in rage. The Teaneck Police, prepared for that reaction hustled the Board Trustees out a back door and accompanied each home. At home, each was embraced by family members who had been asked by Teaneck Police to stay home that evening: They feared they could not protect all trustees and family members seated in the audience from the angry mob.


The brave 7, along with School Superintendent Harvey Scribner, were called “Heroes” by Reginald Dammerell in his book Triumph in a White Suburb, and recognized similarly by Whitney Young, head of the National Urban League, in his book review in the New York Times.


Those 7 were composed of 6 Whites, 1 Black; 6 men, 1 woman, 4 Christians, and 3 Jews.


Let’s roll back 11 years to look at how the hard work and emotional effort to achieve this noteworthy vote started. On an evening in 1953, two young Jewish couples, all in their 30’s, met in a living room on Kensington Road. June and Morton (Mort) Handler, and Clarice and Theodore (Teddy) Ley were raised in modest circumstances in the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and The Bronx, grandchildren, and children of immigrants of the sewing machines and tenements of the Lower Eastside.


They were raised believing in the power of individuals to effect change, in “tikkun olam” which is Hebrew for “repair the world,” and most of all, in the education provided by the public schools to lift the daughters and sons of immigrants and first generation to the noble position where they were equipped to support a family, practice tikkun olam, and in some small way change the world for the better,


Noteworthy in 1953, the groundwork was being laid for the successful 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education.  Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.


Teaneck, as well as attracting young Jewish families after the war, was also attracting young Black families, mostly from the same boroughs of New York City. Most of the Black families moved into the Northeast section of Teaneck (engineered by many Teaneck real estate brokers). The result was that the public schools of the Northeast - Bryant and Washington Irving – were becoming primarily Black.


The two young couples, the Handlers and Leys, aware of the pending Brown v. Board of Education and the de facto segregation developing in the Teaneck Public Schools – and driven by their upbringings and beliefs – decided to do something about it. In that Kensington Road living room was born The Teaneck League for Better Schools, incorporated with the help of township attorney Jacob (Jack) Schneider. The League for Better Schools stood in opposition to the well-established Teaneck Taxpayers Association. The League was formed not only to deal with racial integration but, also, to encourage the building of more schools and to increase the public school budgets to handle the post-war baby boomers (ideas vehemently opposed by the TTA).


A side note on June Handler. June achieved a doctorate in Early Childhood Education from the Bank Street School. She noticed that in the Crayola crayon boxes was a pale pinkish colored crayon called “Flesh.” June contacted the CEO of Crayola explaining that “flesh” comes in many colors and pointed out the harm being done by Crayola’s teaching children and their parents that flesh was light pink. Quite amazingly, the CEO contacted June and, subsequently, the pale pink crayon was renamed Peach. The Handler family was invited to Crayola’s headquarters where they were presented with boxes of Peach crayons as tokens of recognition and appreciation.


Also in 1953, the rapidly growing Teaneck League for Better Schools supported Teddy Ley for Board of Education Trustee. His campaign was successful – he actually came in first – and the movement for racial integration in the Teaneck elementary schools finally had a voice in the public arena.


Two junior high schools (now middle schools) were built – Benjamin Franklin started in 1954 and Thomas Jefferson in 1957. When it came to naming the two schools, there was a debate: should they be named for poets like the Teaneck Public Elementary Schools or for statesmen. (It took until 2020 for Teaneck to name a public school for a woman, Theodora Smiley Lacey, a lifelong hero of the civil rights movement). In the 50’s it was decided to name the new junior high school for statesmen Benjamin Franklin (BF) and Thomas Jefferson (TJ). 


It is noteworthy that in the late 1990s/early 2000s Michelle March, former wife of legendary THS basketball coach Curtis March raised questions about a public school (Thomas Jefferson) being named for a slaveholder, and suggested it be renamed the “Sally Hemmings School” honoring the woman who was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson and bore him several children. No action was then or subsequently taken.


Now in 2024, the issue has re-emerged: How can Teaneck, New Jersey, a model of civil rights in public schools, continue to honor a slaveholder in the name of one of its public schools? Should Teaneck celebrate the 60th anniversary of public school desegregation by renaming the Thomas Jefferson Middle School?


As well, in 1956, an 8th public elementary school was constructed, named for another poet, Eugene Field. Eugene Field became the Theodora Smiley Lacey School in 2020.


While the development of the physical structure of Teaneck Public Schools was expanding, de facto segregation of the elementary schools was also growing as Teaneck continued to attract educated, successful Blacks and Whites of all religions, from New York City and other nearby urban areas like Newark, Paterson, and Jersey City. Hispanics, Muslims, and Asians were not yet (in the late ’50s and ‘60s) represented in significant numbers in Teaneck and its schools. 


By 1959, things were aligned to move into the final steps of school desegregation. The Board of Education had trustees who either favored finding a way to desegregate the public elementary schools or were willing to step aside for pro-integration candidates. The trustees at that time were Frank Burr, Anthony DeGennaro, Theresa Dayharsh, Ruth Hendriksen, Everett Hines, George Larson, Theodore Ley, Orville Sather, and Dr. Harold Weinberger, seven of whom had children in the public school system and thus were working directly for the future of their children and their children’s generation. The Superintendent of Schools was Dr. Theos Anderson. The Teaneck League for Better Schools had grown and was joined by a second group of Citizens, led by Ruth Glick, supporting desegregation and increased funding to schools.


And then came 1961, the year of three momentous events in Teaneck’s progress toward desegregation: 

  • Dr. Harvey Scribner was hired after Dr. Anderson retired,
  • Lamar Jones became the first Black elected Trustee on the Board of Education,
  • Theodora and Archie Lacey, a dynamic, activist Black couple moved to Teaneck with their children.


Harvey Scribner had been the chief school administrator in Dedham, Massachusetts. While he had never overseen a school district integration/desegregation, his initial interview with BOE Trustee Ley in his Dedham office, was an enthusiastic meeting of the minds that resulted in the Board’s hiring Dr. Scribner to lead them and the township in the first voluntary desegregation of public schools in the United States.


With Lamar Jones elected to the Board and the Laceys who had been raised on civil rights activism, the movement that had been building since 1953 and led by Whites came into full bloom! The Board of Education meeting room across the hall from the THS principal’s office and the family room of the Lacey home crackled with the energy of the about-to-be-realized dream. The plan was to establish Bryant School, which was serving primarily Black students, as a central 6th grade, with 6th graders from all over town bused to Bryant, and 1st through 5th grade students from the Bryant district bused to the other Teaneck elementary schools.


There was significant opposition to the busing plan, particularly from a newly formed organization, the Neighborhood Schools Association. This group insisted that elementary children needed to be able to walk home for a hot lunch, for which the cry of “My child needs a lamb chop and baked potato for lunch” became symbolic. Despite many obstacles, the 11 years of perseverance and hard work came to fruition.


On May 13, 1964, 60 years ago, the dream became reality. Bell, Confer, Hendricksen, Herr, Jones, Larson, Ley: YES!


Dr. Scribner and the heroic seven went home to bricks thrown through their windows and death threats – but when the buses rolled up to the Teaneck elementary school doors in September 1965 (as has been reported elsewhere), Dr. Scribner called Board President Confer and, almost weeping, reported, “The buses are in; the kids are okay.”


Postscript: While hailed as a success, which it was, the burden of the initial plan for desegregation fell heavily on the Black elementary students and their parents. Here is an excerpt from a Teaneck Voices interview with Allison Davis, a township leader in Teaneck. Allison, a journalist and television news producer, was part of NBC’s start-up team for MSNBC – the cable and internet brainchild news service of NBC and Microsoft -- who wanted to figure out ways to use technology to better tell stories. She was one of the 6th graders who participated in the desegregation dream:


Allison was going into 6th grade when Bryant became a central 6th grade in 1965. She remembers the town and the national media celebrating the 6th graders who were bused from all parts of town to Bryant as “heroes”



Allison says, “We sixth graders were not the heroes. The heroes were the little kids from Bryant [grades] 1-5 who got on one of 7 buses and were driven away to parts of town where they were not allowed to live and which their families didn’t know.” The heroes included the mothers, many of whom, like her mother, didn’t drive and didn’t know where their small children were going. Allison’s younger brother was bused to Lowell School. His friend next door was bused to Longfellow.


As Allison says, “Initially, as far as my mother knew, he could have been taken to Alabama!” If the school nurse called home because her brother was sick or injured, her mother didn’t know where to go and had no way to get there even if she had known. “So,” she says, “the burden still fell on the Black Community. These were the heroes – young kids put on buses and taken to places where their parents couldn’t get to them. That “successful” experiment was the beginning of racial integration but was nothing compared to the trauma experienced by many of the young Bryant School kids bused far from their homes.


But Teaneck being Teaneck, the leadership and residents accepted and addressed these unexpected consequences of achieving desegregation by establishing both a central kindergarten and 6th grade at Bryant and Washington Irving elementary schools, and 1st through 5th grades at the other Teaneck elementary school. The result was that almost every elementary school child in Teaneck was bused, and the burden of successful civil rights change was more equitably distributed. 

Nonetheless, it remains importantly noteworthy that too often the greatest burden of social change is borne by the ostensible beneficiaries of that change.


Perhaps the greatest impact of this successful experiment in social justice is that it shaped the culture of Teaneck for the next several decades. The fact that ordinary people could intelligently and, mostly, peacefully effect great social change in matters that were wreaking havoc across our nation attracted like-minded people to Teaneck. In 1964 and beyond, social activists like now-retired Senator Loretta Weinberg and her husband Irwin and their young children moved to Teaneck to become part of shaping the future. As well, it changed the image of Black communities.


Again, the words of Allison Davis from her Teaneck Voices interview:


Allison and her husband, Robert Wright, moved back to Teaneck in 1980. They chose Northeast Teaneck because they wanted to live in a stable Black neighborhood. In Silver Spring, [where she had gone to school] hers was the only Black family in the neighborhood. Allison wanted her children to know that they could move into a Black neighborhood and that it could be a great place to grow up.

A Year of Recognizing the 1964-65 Kick-off to Public School Desegregation in Teaneck

Teaneck, New Jersey is recognized in the history books for the truly profound achievement of desegregating its public schools when many towns and cities in the United States were ripped apart by the legal mandate to do so. To fully recognize and celebrate this historic achievement, Teaneck Voices will present new articles, archival materials, and support events over the next 12 months to honor this landmark occurrence.


We will feature interviews with several of the children who were bused to elementary schools distant from their homes – now parents and grandparents many of whom raised or are raising their children and grandchildren here in Teaneck; we will share their experiences, from anxiety at being in neighborhoods with people who didn’t look like them to delight at eating and enjoying previously unknown foods like collard greens and matzoh balls. We will also seek memories of the children of the “heroes” of 1964.


Teaneck Voices will also feature a booklet, “Live in Teaneck – A Forward Looking Town” published in the late ’60s by  The Teaneck Fair Housing Committee and The Northeast Community Organization: “We know that the integrated classroom is the accepted fact of today, and the integrated street is the sociological eventuality of tomorrow.” Serving as the pro bono attorney for the Teaneck Fair Housing Committee was a young lawyer who had grown up in the Teaneck Schools, David Stern, who later became the transformational Commissioner of the National Basketball Association


Also featured will be stories about long-time “downtown” establishments like Judaica House, Vitale’s, J&J Pharmacy, and the Golden Grill (known to 1950s kids as Red Robin, home of the first-time-tasted English muffins) and newer merchants like Platter House, Rudra Indian Bistro and Kudo Society.


Please contact teaneckvoices@gmail.com with memorabilia (pictures, letters, stories) and personal memories you would like to share. The year 2020 was supposed to be the 125th anniversary of Teaneck as a Township. The pandemic was a spoiler for those plans. The 60th Anniversary year of the desegregation vote gives Teaneck the opportunity to celebrate the rich history of Teaneck!

Municipal Budget Delayed – to Try to Sell the Cell Tower

On May 6 Teaneck Voices asked “When Do Resident Learn”

what’s delaying the late municipal budget?  We got a partial answer only from Council member Schwartz at Council’s May 7 meeting. This Schwartz answer takes less than a minute:

Actually, CM Schwartz was in error. In fact, the Town was on May 7 in the midst of a bidding process to identify that IT consultant, the actual bids for which were opened 2 days later (May 9). Council is not scheduled to select this consultant until the May 21 meeting.  


Council apparently does plans to give up the Town’s current $100K annual lease & try to then sell the municipal cell tower to secure additional revenue (it guesstimates it to be for $2M) by working with a consultant – and then

reportedly to pass an authorizing ordinance (a 2-step process that presumably cannot be completed until July). 


If the budget is actually introduced by the July 14 meeting, Council must legally then wait 20 more days before actually adopting that introduced budget. So the Township cannot have its budget #s until sometime in August.

That means that residents will not have good 2024 tax levy estimates when they must pay their next quarter of property taxes on August 1.


Will the State be willing quietly to wait for a budget due 4 months earlier?  It was not willing to do so when Council was similarly late in 2014! The state began threatening Teaneck officials with fines for every additional day the Town did not have an adopted budget.


A FINAL NOTE: Voices attended the bell tower consultant bid opening. The sole bidder for that consultancy – Ace Telecom Consulting - took the option of proposing that it receive a % (2.875%) of the sale of the cell tower. If that sale yields $2M, Ace would receive $57,500 for its work. If there is no sale……

OPRA - What Senator Weinberg is Warning Us About

Throughout the late winter and early Spring various attempts in both the State Senate and Assembly were made to try to amend the State’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA). The proponents – including Senator Sarlo - claimed that their proposals would “reform” the act. Open government groups of every variety overwhelmingly disagreed and were able to get the purported “reform” advocates to shelve their plans.


Last week a new attempt was made quickly to pass what was called a revised bill. And it is on a very fast track – moving forward Monday, May the 13th. The same chorus of opponents again found the revised version to be what our recent Senate Majority Weinberg calls a “bill to help close down the government to its citizens”. 


Voices actively encourages its readers to read this ten-point assessment (Click Here) and to contact our District 37 Senate and Assembly representatives immediately with your advice! Readers will need to move quickly if they are to have an effect.

The Week That Was – May 6 to May 12, 2024

Council’s May 7, 2024, Regular Meeting – This nearly 4-hour meeting (for the video, Click Here) eventually included unanimous passage of 2 ordinances, 14 consent agenda resolutions as well as the introduction of one new ordinance. The adopted ordinance (8-2024) which reconciles Teaneck’s code with new state law concerning tree removal regulations drew the most public commentary and an explanation as to its complexity by Town attorney Salmon. In Resolution 132-2024 Council asks for the assistance of officials in other towns to work toward CSX safety measures. 


Notably, 5 of the resolutions addressed Council recognitions: Re-affirmation of a 2019 resolution rejecting hate within the Township, recognition of May as Mental Health Awareness and Military Appreciation Month, and two resolutions recognizing Arab Heritage Month, the longer version of which rejects all forms of anti-Arab hate.


 The meeting’s early part focused on a variety of recent Township environmental achievements and the role of the re-invigorated Environmental Commission. The meeting was briefly disrupted (see review, “A busy, Disrupted Council Meeting” in Blue Teaneck  - Click Here). 


The internal Council dispute concerning the length of the Good & Welfare session when aspiring members of the public have not been able to speak continues unresolved. Council ended this meeting’s input session when 5 unheard members of the public had not been heard. Deputy Mayor Katz was absent.  


Planning Board’s May 9 MeetingThough it began an hour earlier than usual, the Board went immediately into executive session presumably to consider factors relevant to appointing a new Board attorney. The business of the meeting then focused on whether to approve the new 2024 draft Environmental Resource Inventory that was presented to the Board by Environmental Commission chair, Yosef Gillers. At issue was how to characterize the relationship of the Board’s unanimous approval of the Inventory to the draft Master Plan which the Board is now preparing. The answer is that the Inventory will be incorporated into the Master Plan when it is adopted by the Board.  The Board will meet again on May 23 beginning at 7:30 and will seek to hold that meeting in a Rodda Center gym since it is expected to draw a larger than normal public.

This Week in Teaneck - May 13-19, 2024

If additional information becomes available during the week, it will be added in RED font on the Voices website, Click Here


Social Services Advisory Board Monday May 13, 2024 at 11:30am. No other information currently available


Voter Registration Deadline to Participate in the 2024 Primary Election – Tuesday, May 14, 2024, 3:00pm to 9:00 pm. Town Hall Open until 9PM


Environmental Commission Wednesday May 15, 2024 at 7:30 pm


Municipal Open Space Trust Advisory Board Wednesday, May 15 at 8:00 pm by zoom only Click Here and add passcode 922209. For the agenda, Click Here


Board of Education Regular Meeting Wednesday, May 15, 2024 at 8:00pm in person in the Student Center of THS. The zoom address and agenda are routinely published 24 hours prior to a meeting on the schools website (Click Here). 


  • For the Board’s May 1 meeting, the Board’s Policy Committee had proposed revisions to existing policy that the Board then voted to send back to the Committee for clarification, particularly as to what those proposed policies would revise from existing policy. Attention was focused on revisions to policies affecting free speech and student protests. The Board asked that the Committee’s policy revisions be revisited at this May 16 meeting. As reported to our readers last week, the revisions then proposed could be found at Click Here and move to pp. 24ff). Whether these same revisions will be reviewed at the May 16 meeting is not known. 


Senior Citizen’s Advisory Board – Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 1:30pm at the Rodda Center. No other information currently available 


Board of Adjustment, Special Meeting – Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 7:00pm. No other information currently available


  • Routinely scheduled Board of Adjustment “special meetings” are cancelled during the days that precede their scheduled time.

Announcements

Contacting Teaneck Voices


Co-Editors: Dr. Barbara Ley Toffler and Dr. Chuck Powers

IT Editor: Sarah Fisher

By Email: teaneckvoices@gmail.com

By Phone: 201-214-4937

By USPS Mail: Teaneck Voices, PO Box 873. at 1673 Palisade Ave. 07666

Teaneck Voices' Website is www.teaneckvoices.com


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