Radical Multiculturalism at Harlem Prep, 1967–1974: Expanding Emancipatory Black Educational Frameworks in the Era of Black Power

• In Event: 28.033 - Black Power, Black Schools, and Radical Multicultural Reform

Abstract

This study explores the history of Harlem Preparatory School, an independent community school in Central Harlem from 1967 to 1974 that successfully educated former “dropout” students and other non-traditional students. Specifically, this paper explores Harlem Prep’s unique multicultural philosophy, in which school leaders and its primarily Black student population believed in “strength in diversity” and cultural tolerance in ways that differed from other Pan-African schools of the era (and Freedom Schools of previous years). Contextualized within nascent scholarship on Black community educational efforts of the late 1960s and 1970s, this paper offers a third, unstudied, stream of emancipatory education—multiculturalism—that expands scholars’ current understandings of the diversity of Black school of the era.

Author

• Barry Goldenberg, Teachers College, Columbia University