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Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Records

Call Number

TAM.633

Date

1963-1967, inclusive

Creator

Congress of Racial Equality
Lewis, Helena, Dr. (Role: Donor)

Extent

0.5 Linear Feet Two boxes

Language of Materials

Materials are in English

Abstract

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.

Historical/Biographical Note

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.

Scope and Contents

Collection consists of documents from [New York City] Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), 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, mainly between the years 1963 to 1965. These include handwritten notes, handwritten drafts and carbon copies of typed correspondence addressed to New York City public officials and letters to the editors of New York City newspapers, circulars, newspaper clippings, memoranda to New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay; press releases, policy statements, reports, leaflets, spiral bound notebooks with handwritten notes, and posters.

Most of these documents concern conditions in New York City's Women's House of Detention (reports on, protests against, and proposals for remediation, and racial discrimination in housing in New York City, including reports on discriminatory practices by specific real estate agents garnered through "testing" (sending a white person, followed by an African American person to attempt to rent the same apartment and comparing their treatment by the agents). Correspondents include: Helena Lewis (aka Helena Levine), Benita Cannon, Barbara Pliskow and Carol Janeway. One of the circulars by the Committee of Outraged Parents focuses on the experiences of poet Andrea Dworkin (then an 18-year-old freshman at Bennington College) arrested in a protest against the war in Vietnam and held in the Women's House of Detention.

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by Dr. Helena Lewis were transferred to New York University in 2013 by Dr. Helena Lewis. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive. Please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu.

Preferred Citation

Identification of item, date; Downtown CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Records; TAM.633; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Location of Materials

Materials are located at the Tamiment Library.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated by Dr. Helena Lewis in 2013. The accession number associated with this gift is 2013.012.

Appraisal

No records were removed from this collection.

Bibliographical Note

Information for this guide was drawn in part from the website, "CORE NYC: A History of the New York City Chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality" (http://corenyc.org/index.htm), section on Downtown CORE (http://corenyc.org/downtowncore.htm).

Collection processed by

Erika Gottfried

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 16:39:34 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: English

Processing Information

At the time of accessioning, these materials were moved into archival housing and a finding aid was created.

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012