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FREEDOMWAYS    FOURTH QUARTER 1972

a request for a local committee that included Blacks to represent the community. This fact was reported by the Brooklyn Eagle but omitted in the Board's records. Close on the heels of this petition, however, another petition was presented to the Board by a community group proclaiming that they, "earnestly protest against all the proceeding taken at the meeting; characterize the objections against the white teacher on the ground of her complexion as wicked and silly and disclaim all responsibility for the disrespectful and vile language used toward the Board at said meeting."12 The Board's decision was to oust the white teacher and by extension it concluded that,"...the healthy sentiment which aids in preventing a more intimate relationship between blacks and whites,...ought not to be impaired. The association of children in the public school system demands separate schools for the two races—it is demanded in the interest of the Blacks themselves...."13
In 1873 the Board's resolution that, "this Board shall not, after the first of January maintain any school for the distinctive accommodation of colored children,"14 was applauded by one petition representing Blacks from all over Brooklyn while another petition, of which several Weeksville residents were a part, opposed the decision. They specifically requested that the Board maintain the designation colored and in addition upgrade the schools.15 The Board's committee resolved the maintain both separate schools and the designation colored. The Board was again petitioned by the faction against colored schools. The residents of Weeksville sent another letter asking the Board to maintain their local school, Colored School No. 2. The Board stood by its original decision but chose to ignore the request to improve school conditions.
By 1892, the membership of the Board included T. McCant Stewart, its second Black member. As a member of the Local Committee for Public School 68, formerly Colored School No. 2, Stewart was at the eye of the storm that engulfed Weeksville's fight for a new larger school building. The Board's first Black member, Philip A. White, had been successful in getting a resolution passed to erect a new building after the community had waged a long and arduous battle.16 A site was purchased but when the Board entertained a 
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12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., August 5, 1873.
15 Ibid., October 7, 1873.
16 Ibid., May 3, 1892.

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