Thurgood Marshall Comes to Hillburn
Saturday, June 17 @ 11:00am
Presented in-person & online.
Registration required for virtual attendance and strongly urged for in-person attendance, as space is limited.
In 1943, the local leader of the NAACP in Hillburn, New York, Marion Van Dunk, reached out to the New York office to assist the Ramapough and African American communities in solving the problem of their children being assigned to a substandard school. Starting in the 1930s, minority parents complained that their school, Brook School, did not have a library,
indoor plumbing, or a playground. The other school in Hillburn, Main Street, had all of those things and the space to accommodate all the school age children in Hillburn. New York State had passed a law in 1938 ending school segregation, yet it continued in Hillburn. NAACP Legal Director, and later United States Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall arrived in Hillburn to lead the movement to end segregation in Hillburn schools. He consulted with the community leaders and J. Eagar Davidson, Board of Education president, who had announced it was better for the community “if they were separated.” Davidson was a powerful leader in Hillburn, as he was an officer at the local foundry where most of the men in Hillburn
worked. These workers feared they would lose their jobs if they joined the protest.
This program will feature a video entitled: “Two Schools in Hillburn.” Craig Long, the Historian of Suffern, Travis Jackson, a cultural anthropologist and school counselor in the Suffern Central School District, and Joe Allen, the film’s director, will introduce the video and lead a Q & A after. This story is an early version of what took place all over the US in the 1950s and 1960s centered around the challenge of ‘separate but equal’ segregated schools, which communities fought to preserve.
This is a hybrid event and will be presented in-person and virtually over Zoom.
For virtual attendees, Zoom links will be sent to the email you provide before the event.
For in-person attendees, any necessary information will be sent to the email you provide.
Registration for this event has closed.