Congress of Racial Equality
Name Entries
corporateBody
Congress of Racial Equality
Computed Name Heading
Name Components
Name :
Congress of Racial Equality
eng
Latn
authorizedForm
rda
CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)
Computed Name Heading
Name Components
Name :
CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)
eng
Latn
alternativeForm
rda
C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality)
Computed Name Heading
Name Components
Name :
C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality)
eng
Latn
alternativeForm
rda
Genders
Exist Dates
Biographical History
Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), a chapter of the CORE national organization, was formed in March 1963 and remained active until the end 1966. Based on Manhattan's Lower East Side, it was one of nearly a dozen New York City local chapters organized in the early 1960s. Its founders included Rita and Michael Schwerner (the latter one of the group of three civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964), and its members included radical pacifist Igal Rodenko, anarchist activist and theorist Murray Bookchin, and writer Bell Gale Chevigny.
While the chapter focused much of its energy on tenant organizing and combatting racial discrimination in housing, its first local action, in July and August of 1963, was organizing demonstrations protesting discrimination in hiring of workers building Rutgers Houses (a public housing development then under construction on the Lower East Side), as part of a national CORE campaign against all-white building trades unions. A dozen and half Downtown members were arrested on disorderly conduct charges during these demonstrations and sentenced to five days in prison or paying a $25 fine. Three of them, including Helena Lewis (sometimes also known as Helena Levine), an administrative assistant at New York University and a Downtown CORE officer, refused to pay their fines and served their time at New York City's Women's House of Detention, in October 1964. Appalled by what they saw and experienced there, they mounted a campaign, in concert with others, to protest and focus public attention on conditions at the prison. This campaign included sending letters to editors of newspapers and confidential memoranda to New York City and State public officials, and testifying to a grand jury convened (possibly in part because of their actions) to investigate complaints against state of affairs at the jail, as well as to the New York State legislature's Joint Committee on Penal Institutions.
eng
Latn
External Related CPF
https://viaf.org/viaf/264215175
https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n80080481
https://id.loc.gov/authorities/n80080481
https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1125901
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/10522820
Other Entity IDs (Same As)
Sources
Loading ...
Resource Relations
Loading ...
Internal CPF Relations
Loading ...
Languages Used
Subjects
Education
African Americans
Teachers
Black nationalism
Black power
Civil disobedience
Civil rights
Civil rights demonstrations
Civil rights movement
Civil rights movements
Civil rights workers
Collective bargaining
De facto school segregation
Demonstrations
Discrimination in employment
Discrimination in employment
Discrimination in housing
Discrimination in public accommodation
Discrimination in public accommodations
Freedom of movement
Freedom rides
Fund raising
Government, Resistance to
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington, D.C., 1963
Minorities
Nonviolence
Passive resistance
Police
Police patrol
Prisons
Race discrimination
Reformatories for women
Reformatories for women
Rent strikes
Restaurants
Reunions
Riots
School integration
Social integration
Tenants' associations
Voter registration
Nationalities
Activities
Occupations
Legal Statuses
Places
United States
00, US
AssociatedPlace
Convention Declarations
<conventionDeclaration><citation>VIAF</citation></conventionDeclaration>