Stein, Annie

"The average child in eighty-five percent of the Black and Puerto Rican schools is functionally illiterate after eight years of schooling in the richest city in the world. This is a massive accomplishment." These first sentences, from an essay Annie Stein wrote for the Harvard Educational Review in 1971, encapsulate a lifetime of radical activism, a career in statistical research, and a habit of righteous anger.

For nearly 50 years-- working through labor unions, civil rights committees, and community groups-- Stein used these energies to combat the routines and institutions of racism. Her efforts could be structural or personal; she wrote amicus briefs in crucial legal battles, and she rebuked individual vendors on Coney Island for selling Confederate flags. She mobilized to defend the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s. During the 1940s, she helped lead the movement to integrate restaurants in Washington, D.C. From the 1950s through the 1970s, she struggled to end segregation in New York City's public schools. This was her greatest campaign-- involving thousands of students, parents, teachers, researchers, and administrators-- but it was also her most frustrating one.

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