Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Records 1963-1967

ArchivalResource

Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Records, 1963-1967

Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Records 1963-1967

http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_633/tam_633.html

Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), one several New York City chapters of the CORE national organization, was formed in March 1963, and remained active until the end 1966. Founders included Rita and Michael Schwerner (the latter one of the group of three civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964), and members included well-known leftist and radical pacifist activists, such as Murray Bookchin and Igal Rodenko. The chapter focused on tenant organizing, combatting racial discrimination in housing and the exclusion of nonwhites from building trades unions. Women members of Downtown CORE who were arrested in a demonstration and had served jail terms at New York City’s Women’s House of Detention organized a campaign to reform the prison. Most of the materials in the collection concern conditions in New York City’s Women’s House of Detention or racial discrimination in housing in New York City. Organizations represented in the collection include Downtown CORE, the Human Rights Commissions of New York City and State, the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, Committee of Outraged Parents, and the national CORE office. Documents include letters to the editors of New York City newspapers and New York City public officials, memoranda to New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay, spiral bound notebooks with handwritten notes, newspaper clippings and newspapers, circulars, press releases, policy statements, reports, leaflets, and posters, mainly between the years 1963 to 1965.

0.5 linear feet, Two boxes

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives