United Bronx Parents and Community Organizing for Bilingual Education in New York City in the 1960s

• In Event: Roundtable Session 46
  In Roundtable Session: Community Organizing and Public Scholarship

Abstract

In the South Bronx from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, United Bronx Parents, Inc. (UBP) sought to empower poor and working- class Puerto Rican and African American parents to demand accountability from their neighborhood public schools. Through parent-training workshops, UBP sought to inform parents and to create leaders who would confront the unresponsive and callous principals and administrators in the schools. Through advocacy and direct actions, UBP brought lasting changes to the schools in the South Bronx and throughout New York City including bilingual education programs, increased minority teachers and administrators, multicultural curricula, improved and ethnically appropriate lunches. Grassroots community organizing brought lasting accountability to the schools that served minority children in the poorest neighborhood of the city.

Author

• Laura Janet Kaplan, The Graduate Center, City University of New York