Design - Josh McKible @Mckibillo.com
This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.
in partnership with Zach Rodger's Beaconites! podcast
WHAT MAKES a “good school” a “good school”?
WHAT MAKES a “bad school” a “bad school”?
Are some of the things we do to make a “good school” “good”, the same things that contribute to making a “bad school” “bad”?
WHAT MAKES a “bad school” a “bad school”?
Are some of the things we do to make a “good school” “good”, the same things that contribute to making a “bad school” “bad”?
21st-century "separate but equal"
If you were to go on one of the many real estate websites and look at a map of the mid-Hudson Valley area, you would find that the Poughkeepsie School district has a rating of 2 out of 10 while neighboring Spackenkill (situated within the Town of Poughkeepsie limits) has a rating of 8 or 9. There might be very comparable prices for homes in both areas, but there is clearly a world of difference when it comes to schools. What the website will not tell you is that Poughkeepsie is predominantly Black and Hispanic and that Spackenkill is mostly affluent and mostly white.
The disparities in neighboring school districts in our own backyard betray what SUNY New Paltz Prof. Susan Books calls a “21st century version of separate but equal.” (You can read Prof. Susan Books' case study titled "The Politics of School Districting: A Case Study in Upstate New York" here)
How does this happen? How do we fund our schools? And how do we fund them so unequally, almost 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education?
The effect of what Prof. Sue Books describes as de facto segregation in the Poughkeepsie area has its roots in the larger history of inequality in education in New York State as a whole, going all the way back to the 19th century.
The disparities in neighboring school districts in our own backyard betray what SUNY New Paltz Prof. Susan Books calls a “21st century version of separate but equal.” (You can read Prof. Susan Books' case study titled "The Politics of School Districting: A Case Study in Upstate New York" here)
How does this happen? How do we fund our schools? And how do we fund them so unequally, almost 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education?
The effect of what Prof. Sue Books describes as de facto segregation in the Poughkeepsie area has its roots in the larger history of inequality in education in New York State as a whole, going all the way back to the 19th century.
Toussaint L'Ouverture College
The NY State Legislature's Act approving the establishment of Toussaint L'Ouverture College in 1871
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The Haitian revolutionary leader known as the "Black Napoleon" who turned a years-long slave revolt into the world's first Black-led Republic
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The story of what could have been Toussaint L'Ouverture College, an all-Black administered, Black-funded and Black-taught institution for higher learning that was planned for the city of Poughkeepsie in 1870 is emblematic of the kind of determination demonstrated by a generation of Black New Yorkers (who had only been "freed" as of 1827) in order to elevate themselves and their children to the level of citizenship they felt they deserved (and had consistently been denied.) Much like the founding in 1861 of Matthew Vassar's "Vassar Female College", Toussaint L'Ouverture College held the promise of becoming an institution devoted to those who had historically been excluded from higher education and would today be called the Northeast's first (and only) HBCU.
WHAT WOULD
the Northeast's only HBCU look like today?
WATCH:
A conversation with Dr. Anita Hemmings,
a speculative discussion with the 6th President of Toussaint L'Ouverture College,
Dr. Anita Hemmings, played by Twinkle Burke & written by Jean-Marc Superville Sovak
a speculative discussion with the 6th President of Toussaint L'Ouverture College,
Dr. Anita Hemmings, played by Twinkle Burke & written by Jean-Marc Superville Sovak
This performance, in the vein of what Prof. Saidiya Hartman would call "critical fabulation", was written to share historical facts about the education of Black students (or lack thereof) in the latter half of the 19th century in New York. Based largely on details in Carleton Mabee's Black Education in New York State, the conversation is meant to imagine a future-present where Toussaint L'Ouverture College is a thriving institution on par with Vassar College (whose founder, Matthew Vassar, it is surmised, had a role to play in TLC's endowment.)
Performed at Vassar College's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center as part of the annual MODfest with special thanks to John Murphy and Amanda Potter.
Performed at Vassar College's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center as part of the annual MODfest with special thanks to John Murphy and Amanda Potter.
WHO WERE
the founders of Toussaint L'Ouverture College?
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In 1870, a coalition of Black carters, porters, waiters and gardeners decided that if New York State was unwilling to educate their children (until the 1880s, Black New Yorkers still attended "colored schools" often limited to elementary education and housed in substandard conditions) they were going to do it themselves. The Committee responsible for incorporating Toussaint L'Ouverture College included a janitor at Poughkeespie High School named Abraham/Abram Bolin, father of Gaius Bolin who went on to become the first Black graduate of Williams College and later led a successful career a lawyer. Marching in her father's footsteps, Gaius's daughter, Jane Bolin, went on to serve as the United States' first Black female Judge.
GENERATIONS OF BLACK EXCELLENCE
(despite it all)
Gaius Charles Bolin
(1864-1946), first Black Graduate of Williams College (1890)
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Hon. Jane Bolin, (1908 – 2007), first Black woman to serve as a U.S. judge
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WHY
do Poughkeepsie's school districts look the way they do?
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 current boundaries of City of Poughkeepsie & Spackenkill School Districts (Google maps)
The Spackenkill School district (green) an area mostly occupied by the local IBM campus and Locust Grove Estate, former home of Samuel Morse, inventor and avowed apologist for slavery whose name infamously adorns a Poughkeepsie City School District (pink) elementary school.
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The origin story of the Spackenkill School District is one that at first seems rather benign, even quaint. To hear them describe themselves as “a small and closely knit school district” with the “uniqueness of remaining independent without centralization with other districts” reveals nothing of the decades-long legal battle that the Spackenkill School District waged against the New York State Education Department to separate themselves from the Poughkeepsie school district by establishing their own High School.
In the face of the most logical and evidence-based arguments from the NYS Education Department, the Poughkeepsie BOE, even from residents within their own district, the Spackenkill BOE would not take no for an answer; they continued to resist consolidation and insisted on building their own high school. One of the most heart-wrenching quotes in Prof. Sue Books' paper is from Kenneth Parker, son of a Methodist minister and Spackenkill resident who said at a public hearing “If we build our own high school, all we are doing in creating a middle-class ghetto high school. I see no other word for it than racism [.]”
Ironically, the forces that ultimately prevented Toussaint L'Ouverture College from opening its doors (legislation to desegregate New York's school districts) are the same forces that the Spackenkill School district vehemently resisted thanks to a legislative workaround (in which none other than State Senator Jay Rolinson Jr., father to current State Senator and former Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolinson played a crucial role), to usher into being what Prof. Sue Books calls a de facto segregated school district .
In the face of the most logical and evidence-based arguments from the NYS Education Department, the Poughkeepsie BOE, even from residents within their own district, the Spackenkill BOE would not take no for an answer; they continued to resist consolidation and insisted on building their own high school. One of the most heart-wrenching quotes in Prof. Sue Books' paper is from Kenneth Parker, son of a Methodist minister and Spackenkill resident who said at a public hearing “If we build our own high school, all we are doing in creating a middle-class ghetto high school. I see no other word for it than racism [.]”
Ironically, the forces that ultimately prevented Toussaint L'Ouverture College from opening its doors (legislation to desegregate New York's school districts) are the same forces that the Spackenkill School district vehemently resisted thanks to a legislative workaround (in which none other than State Senator Jay Rolinson Jr., father to current State Senator and former Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolinson played a crucial role), to usher into being what Prof. Sue Books calls a de facto segregated school district .
FIRST PODCAST EPISODES COMING SOON!!
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This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson. |
in partnership with Zach Rodgers' Beaconites! podcast
with special production assistance from Jonny Taylor and Beacon AV Lab