Scope and arrangement
Personal and professional papers, writings, office files and printed matter documenting Preston Wilcox's dual career as an educator and community organizer. Included are biographical and autobiographical narratives; some correspondence and organization files; an extensive writings series; proposals, minutes, reports and other documents dating from 1958 to 1965 pertaining to the East Harlem Project, the East Harlem Summer Festival, and the Massive Economic Neighborhood Development (MEND); confidential files from the 1964 Princeton Summer Studies Program, the pilot project for the pre-college Upward Bound program; compilations of material on public schools, decentralization and community control; and Afram's surviving records. Some of the main themes explored in the writings are: decentralization and parental decision-making, community organization and economic development, Black Power versus integration, social policy and white racism, empowering the poor, and black studies and black schools. The Afram files comprise the following subseries: Administrative, Publications, Parent Participation in Follow Through, Malcolm X Lovers Network and Vertical Files. The latter two categories are compilations of articles and other printed matter, with editorial notes by Wilcox, on Malcolm X, and on selected topics and personalities, including education, community control, reparations, Harlem, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) and Leonard Jeffries.
The Preston Wilcox papers are arranged in eight series:
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1940 - 1966
This series is mostly biographical and autobiographical material, with some education, employment and revenue files for the late 1950s and early 1960s. Included are transcriptions of biographical narratives by Wilcox, and Wilcox associates Hannah Brockington and Jitu Weusi, toward a Wilcox biography to be written by William Foster, Jr. Also included are Youngstown, Ohio and New York City memorabilia, and a 1986 tribute, "Ode to a Harlem Lover." Wilcox, who spent the greater part of his life correcting common perceptions about the black community and black people in general, assiduously told his own story in countless biographical sketches, narratives and personal updates, filed in box 1. But the Wilcox story is limited to his public life. There are only glimpses of his private life, family, health, military service, finances, and his 1974 life-altering automobile accident. On the other hand, detailed employment, speaking engagement and consultation files available for the 1963 to 1966 period, are those of a challenging but popular advocate and speaker on social work theory and the plight of the urban poor. An Education subseries looks back at "old happy days" at the Rayen High School in his native Youngstown, where he played basketball and was on the honor roll; at his enrollment at the New York School of Social Work (1955-1958); and at some of his research and course work for a doctorate degree in urban education at Columbia University's Teachers College in 1965- 1966.
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1958 - 2006
The files in this series were culled for the most part from the voluminous Afram files – the main body of the author's correspondence is yet to be recovered. The Afram Action Library and other name files, in alphabetical order, are mostly incoming letters with attachments and printed matter. Noteworthy files include those of Ruwa Chiri (1943-1974), a young Zimbabwean writer and editor of the magazine Afrika Must Unite who was killed by a subway train in Harlem; the Japan Center for International Exchange, and Mako Nakagawa (Asian-American Cultural Heritage) for their relevance to African-American and Japanese relations in the 1970s. The remaining letters in this series, filed chronologically from 1958 to 2005, provide a good cross- section of the author's activities and interests. They range from a case of housing discrimination in 1959, his 1974 car accident and its aftermath, and the imposition of a security deposit on residents in low income neighborhood by the New York Telephone Company in 1977, to the forced resignation of Atlanta Commissioner of Public Safety Reginald Eaves accused of favoring black officers in police promotional examinations (1978), the classification of African- Americans as Negro or Black by the 1990 Census, his support of black political prisoners Joan Little, Dhoruba Moore and the Wilmington 10, and his many letters to editors and public officials on issues of the day.
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1965 - 1999
This series groups materials from the annual Black Power conferences held between 1967 and 1969, the founding of the National Association of Afro-American Educators in 1968, the 1971 National Black Political Assembly, the first and second biennial assembly of the Congress of African People (1970-1972), and Community School Board No. 5 in New York City (1999). Other substantive files are those of the New York School of Social Work Alumni Association (NYSSW), the African-American Election Monitoring Delegation to Nigeria in 1996 and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (1968-1986). Wilcox was active in the NYSSW Alumni Association between 1958 and 1962 as a member of its Committee on Social Action and Social Policy. The delegation to observe the 1996 local elections in Nigeria was led by Roy Innis, the controversial chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality and supporter of Nigerian strongman Sani Abacha. As a member of the Save the Schomburg Coalition in 1982 and 1983, Wilcox took part in weekly protest rallies in front of the Schomburg Center, calling for the dismissal of a white archivist as curator of the Center's Manuscripts and Rare Books Division.
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1957 - 1997
This series is emblematic of Wilcox's earlier career as an educator and social work theorist -- prolific but methodical, provocative yet engaging. It groups a considerable body of essays, conference papers and magazine articles, written for the most part in the ten year period from 1963 to 1973, along with related correspondence with editors and publishers, conference organizers and participants, with attachments and printed matter. The series' original order has been preserved. Topics include: decentralization and parental decision-making; independent black schools; Black Power and public education; teacher training and curriculum development; integration and school busing; race and social change; black studies and white institutions; social policy and white racism; community organization and economic development; and involving the poor in overcoming poverty. The author's reputation as "the leading theoretician of the community control movement" is substantiated in these files.
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1957 - 1980
The East Harlem series comprises three subseries: the East Harlem Project, 1958-1963; United Neighborhood Houses, 1960-1966; and the Massive Economic Neighborhood Development (MEND) Project, 1964-1965. Earlier experiences working with dependent children and old age assistance cases at a welfare center in Brooklyn, and at detention center for juvenile delinquents in the Bronx are not documented in the collection.
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1964 - 1965
The files include student profiles, parents' surveys listing education, residential history and income levels, faculty and staff reactions, Wilcox's assessments and interviews with students, reports on discussion groups and attendance at activities. Also included is an incident file when a Princeton barber refused to cut the hair of black participants in the program.
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1966 - 2003
This series is a compilation of material about public schools, decentralization and community control. There are files on the I.S. 201 and Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversies in New York City, decentralization in Philadelphia, and community schools in Boston. Also included are the transcription of a lengthy conversation between Wilcox and Afram co-founder and educator Kenneth Haskins, and several articles authored by Haskins.
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1968 - 2005
The most extensive in the collection, this series comprises 5 subseries: Administrative; Publications and Agitational Literature; Parent Participation in Follow Through; Vertical File; and Malcolm X Lovers Network. The material grouped in the first subseries is more conceptual than administrative or operational. Afram's administrative records and personal papers of the author that were to be the basis of a book were destroyed through vandalism and fire at the Afram Farm in upstate New York. The Afram files listed in this inventory are mostly publications and printed matter produced by Afram, some funding proposals, and a sampling of subscription and financial records for 1970 and 1971. Included are several Statements of Capability that detail the organization's origins and early history, an Afram Farm file, directories of black organizations published by Afram, and a compilation of promotional literature that make the case again and again for black support of Afram's efforts. Afram published the monthly National Afrikan Kalendar of Events and Information, renamed Afram Drum by 1974, a directory of national black organizations (1972) and Directory of Afrikanamerican Research Centers (1980). Also represented in the collection is a large body of Afram agitational and ephemeral literature written by the author over a 30 year period (1970- 2000). By January 1974, Afram had produced and distributed 429 "Thought Stimulators," 246 "Action Stimulators," 139 "Humanizers," and countless flyers. Other Afram material released as hand-outs or broadsides bore the names of "Afram Communiques," "Liberators," "Black Humanizers" and "Idea Stimulators." Afram operated an Action Library, renamed the Afrikan Reference Library in 1975; the Institute of Afrikan Research for data collection and compilation; and Aframailibrary which handled subscriptions and mail order requests.