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FREEDOMWAYS           FOURTH QUARTER 1972

1) the relationship between the Board of Education and the community; 2) intra-community relations and 3) the relationship of quality education, the main issue, to political and social expediency. An analysis of these key relationships will afford the isolation of critical factors on which the issues turn, a measurement of the impact of these factors and point to directions for our struggle today.

The relationship between the Board and the community is generally reflective of the historical relationship between white society and her Black "charges." Freedom made little difference to the residents of Weeksville because the Board dealt with and administered to them on the traditional master-slave basis. Policy decisions therefore were made by an all white committee. The community's efforts to secure Black representation on this Committee were ignored until 1882 although, as noted above, it was requested as early as 1869. Salary differentials were based as much on race as on any other factor. In the June 4, 1867 minutes of the Board's meeting Miss Putnam, Principal of the Primary Department of Colored School No. 1, received a salary increase to $575.00 per year. In the October 1st minutes of the same year Mrs. J. A. Dunkley, Principal of the Primary Department of School No. 15, a white school, received an increase to $1000.00. The most revealing examples of the nature of the relationship between the two adversaries are in their periodic confrontations. In 1869, for example, the community was as incensed by the appointment of a white teacher as they were by the fact that, "The chairman of the Local Committee, . . . without any consultation or communication whatever with the principal of said school, appointed a white teacher to fill the vacancy. The principal knew nothing of the selection until the lady presented her appointment."20 Four years later the community was up in arms over the abolition of their schools. In the community meeting organized by the advocates of Colored Schools it was noted that,

"We found in the meeting two strangers, colored men, one from Rhode Island, the other from New Jersey. These two men were found weak enough to leave their own States and come to our city, to assist in considering the action of the Brooklyn Board of Education, and they very impudently assumed to teach the very intelligent colored citizens of this city, their duty in the matter at issue. Now we would say to these strangers, 'please to mind your own business,' as we belong to that class of persons who 

20 Brooklyn Board of Education, December 2, 1873

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