Video: Marian Wright Edelman Defends the Rights of Children

Steven A. Levine 
Coordinator for Educational Programs

“Willingness to protect children is a moral litmus test of any decent and compassionate nation and city and state.” Marian Wright Edelman, 1988

A quarter century ago, Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, gave a speech about the state of children in the United States as part of the La Guardia Lecture Series. Edelman’s speech was a powerful indictment of our society’s and government’s failure to protect the health and well being of children. Edelman’s emphasis on the high rates of child poverty, the lack of health insurance for 35 million Americans, the need for prenatal care and for more and better early childhood education were as real then as they are today. She denounced President Reagan’s notion that government is the problem, believing that government played a critical role in addressing society’s ills. Budget deficits were also high in the 1980s, but Edelman argued that they were not caused by programs for children or the poor. She turned instead to the ballooning military budget as the main cause for the deficit and demanded action to address the needs of children, 20% of whom lived in poverty.

In President Obama’s State of the Union he addressed many of these concerns, defending the role of government in supporting people’s needs. Most notably, he called for universal pre-K education. But this is an old story. Edelman saw the need for such an initiative 25 years ago and Congress passed legislation 42 years ago, only to see it vetoed by President Richard Nixon. (See Gail Collins’ NY Times column “The State of the 4-Year-Olds.”) The Affordable Care Act will address many of children’s health concerns, but will Congress take up this call for universal pre-K education? If not now, when?

Constance Baker Motley and Thurgood Marshall

Constance Baker Motley, James Meredith and Jack Greenberg

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

The Archives recently conducted an oral history with Joel Motley about his mother Constance Baker Motley, the great NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) lawyer and federal judge. We asked him specifically whether Thurgood Marshall had passed her over to be director of the LDF when he left in 1961 to a federal judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He said that Marshall probably thought that it would have been “an extra burden” for an African-American woman to take on that role at that time. (Click here to watch the video.)

I was reading Judge Motley’s autobiography today, Equal Justice Under the Law, and found that she largely agreed with her son, but that there was another layer to the decision related to the competition between Marshall and Robert Carter, the general counsel of the NAACP which was separate from the LDF. Marshall mistakenly thought Motley was aligned with Carter and instead turned to their LDF colleague Jack Greenberg to be his successor at the LDF. Interestingly, Bella Abzug supported Motley, as did Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers. (To read the excerpt from Motley’s autobiography, click here.)

As we in the Northeast wait out the blizzard, it’s a good moment to think about how we can learn from different sources and how we can teach ourselves and our students about the nature of sources and how to interpret them. If you would like to learn more about the civil rights movement, check out our primary source lesson on Mississippi Freedom Summer. As always, please feel free to contact me if you want to learn more about this or any other Archives related topics.

Mayor Edward I. Koch, 1924-2013

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION:  JULY 3-6, 1986." 

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

I write with great sadness after the passing of Mayor Edward I. Koch, an iconic New Yorker who embodied the city’s spirit and verve.  While often a controversial figure, no one could deny his overwhelming love for his City.  “How‘m I doin’” was his trademark question to the people he served.

Koch began his political career as Greenwich Village reformer, who defeated former Tammany Boss Carmine De Sapio in 1963, was then elected to the City Council and from there to the U.S. House of Representatives.  Koch was elected mayor in 1977 in a rollicking race, which included the incumbent Abe Beame, Mario Cuomo, Congress members Bella Abzug and Herman Badillo, and Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton.

When he became mayor in 1978, he led New York out of its worst fiscal crisis. In addition to the fiscal problems and the struggle to restore basic services, Koch and his Administration faced rising homelessness, the AIDS epidemic, an increase in racial tensions and major corruption scandals in his third term.  Although his first two terms were the most successful politically, it was in his third term where Mayor Koch started what was perhaps his greatest legacy to New York City, a multibillion dollar housing rehabilitation program.  In his final years as mayor, the Koch Administration restored or built 2,000 units in formerly abandoned buildings with 13,000 more under construction and 20,000 more in the design stage.  Over the next 15 years more than 200,000 units were restored or built and the number of abandoned buildings declined from 10,000 to under 800.

New York City was flat on its back and many had given up on it when Mayor Koch took the reins of power.   Using his political skills and the sheer force of personality, he helped bring the City back from the brink.  For this we owe him a debt of gratitude.

If you would like to learn more about Mayor Koch, the Archives has a collection of videos on YouTube, two sets of photos on Flickr here and here, and thousands of photos and documents on our website.

Gemma La Guardia Gluck: Sister of Fiorello and Holocaust Survivor

Gemma La Guardia Gluck

In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Archives is featuring the story of Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of Fiorello and Holocaust survivor, on our website.  Fiorello's and Gemma's mother was Jewish and Gemma had married a Hungarian Jewish man and settled in Budapest before World War II.  To read more about Gemma's harrowing story and her correspondence with Fiorello when he helped her and her family emigrate to the U.S., click here.  

VIDEO: Women in the World War II Military

                                                                           WAVES Visiting USS Missouri, 1944

      National Archives

Steven A. Levine
Coordinator for Educational Programs

With Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s announcement that the Pentagon will lift the ban on women serving in combat, it seemed an opportune moment to watch the La Guardia and Wagner Archives’ video on the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), a branch of the Navy during World War II. The WAVES were the first women to serve in the Navy beyond traditional roles as secretaries and nurses and many of them trained at Hunter College in the Bronx (now Lehman College). Despite their limited roles, which included detasseling corn in Iowa, the women of the WAVES (and their Army and Air Corps counterparts in the WACs and WASPs) played a crucial role in the victory during World War II and opened the doors for women in the military in the future.

To learn more about women and their role in the military and on the home front during World War II, check out the New-York Historical Society’s exhibit WWII & NYC, the Archives’ lesson Women and World II, and a website on the WAVES created by the US Military.

P.S. If you would like to see more Archives materials, check out our Facebook page and Like us.

Judge Constance Baker Motley: Trail Blazing Civil Rights Attorney

Mayor Robert F. Wagner swears in Constance 

Baker Motley as Manhattan Borough President, 1965

Steven A. Levine
Coordinator for Educational Programs

In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I hope you will take the time to watch two videos about the life of Judge Constance Baker Motley, a lesser known but key figure in the legal battles of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. In the first video, her son, Joel Motley, describes his mother’s ideas on women’s leadership and how her sex might have played a role in her being passed over as director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1961, after President Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall a judge in the 2^nd Circuit Court.  In the second video, Joel Motley describes  her appointment to a federal judgeship and how it was delayed by a controversy in the NY State Senate involving US Senator Robert Kennedy.  This led to the direct intervention of President Lyndon Johnson and a fascinating phone conversation between Kennedy, Motley and Johnson, included in the video.

Constance Baker Motley worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund with Thurgood Marshall, winning 9 out of 10 cases she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.   She also argued some of the most important desegregation cases, including the James Meredith case which desegregated the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in 1962.  Her NY Times obituary described her work this way:

She visited the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, sang freedom songs in churches that had been bombed, and spent a night under armed guard with Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was later murdered.

But her métier was in the quieter, painstaking preparation and presentation of lawsuits that paved the way to fuller societal participation by blacks. She dressed elegantly, spoke in a low, lilting voice and, in case after case, earned a reputation as the chief courtroom tactician of the civil rights movement.  (Click here to read the full obituary.)

Motley entered New York politics in 1964, becoming the first African-American woman elected to the NY State Senate and later the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President.  But the law called her back when President Johnson appointed Motley a judge in New York’s Southern District in 1966, where she often used her position to uphold the rights of the poor and powerless.

The Archives also has a speech given by Mayor Wagner in praise of Constance Baker Motley and a lesson on Mississippi Freedom Summer from our Let Freedom Ring Curriculum.

Lyndon Johnson Appoints Constance Baker

            Motley to be a Federal Judge

Thurgood Marshall, The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 

and Constance Baker Motley's Role in Leadership

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, New York 1911 and Tazreen Fashions Fire, Bangladesh 2012: When will we ever learn?

Steven A. Levine 
Coordinator for Educational Programs

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire New York 1911

            When we shop for clothing, price is often paramount in our considerations and we too often neglect to ask who makes our clothing and what are their wages and work conditions, until these conditions become deadly and appear on the front pages of our newspapers.  I could be referring to last month’s factory fire in Bangladesh, but the “high cost of low prices” has a long history and the parallels between the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York and the fire  at the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh are eerily similar.  (To learn more about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, check out the memorial created by State Senator Serphin Maltese, who lost family members in the fire. For more information on the Tazreen Fashions factory fire go to “Fatal Fire in Bangladesh Highlights the Dangers Facing Garment Workers” “Garment Workers Stage Angry Protest After Bangladesh Fire” and “Horrific Fire Revealed a Gap in Safety for Global Brands.”)

            Both factories paid low wages to a predominantly female work force. In the early 20^th century, New York was the center of the garment industry and Bangladesh today exports $18 billion in clothing, second only to China.  Triangle sold blouses to the major department stores; Tazreen produced clothing for Wal-Mart and other global retailers.  The New York Times coverage of the two fires sadly makes clear that workers in both factories had similar deaths because of unsafe conditions.

Witnesses described a desperate scene, as workers leapt from the upper floors of the factory, trying to land on nearby rooftops and escape the smoke and flames. Others suffocated inside the factory building, as the blaze apparently rendered stairwells impassable.  .  .  “These international, Western brands have a lot of responsibility for these fire issues,” said Ms. Akter, the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. “In this factory, there was a pile of fabrics and yarn stored on the ground floor that caught fire. Workers couldn’t evacuate through the stairs. What does this say about compliance?

The New York Times, November 26, 2012, “Garment Workers Stage Angry Protest After Bangladesh Fire”

Most of the victims were suffocated or burned to death within the building but some who fought their way to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the pavements below.  . . .  The one little fire escape was never resorted to by any of the doomed victims.  Some of them escaped by running down the stairs, but in a moment or two this avenue was cut off by flame.  The girls rushed to the window and looked down at Greene Street, 100 feet below them.  Then one poor, little creature jumped.  There was a plate glass protection over part of the sidewalk, but she crashed through it, wrecking it and breaking her body into a thousand pieces.  Then they all began to drop . . .

The New York Times, March, 26, 1911, “141 MEN AND GIRLS DIE IN WAIST FACTORY FIRE; TRAPPED HIGH UP IN WASHINGTON PLACE BUILDING; STREET STREWN WITH BODIES; PILES OF DEAD INSIDE.”

            The Triangle Shirtwaist fire led to the creation of the Factory Investigating Commission led by Senator Robert F. Wagner (Chair), Assemblyman Alfred E. Smith (Vice- Chair), along with a reinvigorated movement to protect workers and improve factory conditions and the enactment of 25 New York State laws to implement the Commission’s recommendations.

  

            After the deadly fire in Bangladesh, thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand justice.  The horrific fire there, like the one a century earlier, makes clear that workers cannot achieve justice without the right to organize unions and employers and the global corporations whom they sell to must respect the rights and lives of their workers above that of their profits now stained by the deaths of 112 workers. As we shop for clothing, we must also think about the consequences of our consumption.