Research Catalog

Details

Additional authors

1. Innis, Roy, 1934-2017.
2. Windom, Alice, 1936-
3. Wilcox, Preston. School community control as a social movement.
4. AFRAM Associates.

Description

1. 21.6 lin. ft. (51 boxes)

Summary

1. Collection contains 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

Subject

1. Wilcox, Preston, 1923-2006
2. Haskins, Kenneth, 1923-1994
3. Jeffries, Leonard
4. Carmichael, Stokely, 1941-1998
5. X, Malcolm, 1925-1965
6. Ferguson, Herman Benjamin
7. Intermediate School 201 (New York, N.Y.)
8. AFRAM Associates
9. Ocean Hill-Brownsville Demonstration School District (New York, N.Y.)
10. Nihon Kokusai Kōryū Sentā
11. AFRAM Farm (Dundee, N.Y.)
12. Princeton University. Princeton Summer Studies Program
13. Princeton University. Summer Institute
14. Malcolm X Lovers Network (Harlem, N.Y.)
15. United Neighborhood Houses
16. Massive Economic Neighborhood Development
17. East Harlem Project
18. East Harlem North Special Improvements Project
19. International Conference on Black Power 1968 : Philadelphia)
20. African American authors
21. African American social workers
22. Urban poor > United States
23. Inner cities > United States
24. African American educators
25. African American political activists
26. African Americans > Relations with Japanese
27. Schools > Decentralization > New York (State) > New York
28. Urban renewal > New York (State) > Harlem (New York)
29. Community and school > New York (State) > New York
30. Segregation in education > New York (State) > New York
31. School children > Transportation > New York (State) > New York
32. Community centers > New York (State) > New York
33. Community organization > New York (State) > New York
34. Human services > New York (State) > New York
35. Social service > New York (State) > New York
36. Social settlements > New York (State) > New York
37. Social group work > New York (State) > New York
38. Social work education
39. African Americans > Reparations
40. Education > Parent participation
41. School management and organization > Parent participation > New York (State) > New York
42. School management and organization > Parent participation > United States
43. Community development consultants > New York (State) > New York
44. Community development, Urban > New York (State) > New York
45. Election monitoring > Nigeria
46. Children with social disabilities > Education
47. East Harlem (New York, N.Y.) > Social conditions

Call number

1. Sc MG 235

Note

1. Photographs transferred to Photographs and Prints Division.
2. Audiotapes, videotapes and films transferred to Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division.

Access (note)

1. Access to Princeton Summer Studies Program series requires a signed confidentiality agreement.

Source (note)

1. Preston Wilcox

Biography (note)

1. From 1958 to 1964, Preston Wilcox worked as a tenant organizer and later as director of the East Harlem Project; as a program consultant to the East Harlem Summer Festival, a United Neighborhood Houses initiative designed to prevent juvenile delinquency; and as a consultant and catalyst for the Massive Economic Neighborhood Development (MEND), an anti-poverty program in East Harlem. He also participated as a social researcher in the Princeton University six week summer studies program for junior high school students that led to the nationally-funded Upward Bound Program.
2. Known as "the father of school decentralization" in New York City, and "the leading theoretician of the community control movement," Wilcox was at the forefront of the campaigns at Intermediate School 201 in Harlem and later in the Ocean-Brownsville school district, for parent participation in curriculum development, and in the hiring of school supervisors and teachers. A prolific writer, he authored in the period between 1963 and 1973 some 200 articles, position papers and essays on public education and community empowerment, published in professional journals and as chapters in books. He also taught courses in social work theory and community organization at Columbia University's School of Social Work between 1963 and 1968, and at Atlanta University, Medgar Evers College, and other institutions of higher learning in the 1970s.
3. Wilcox founded Afram Associates in 1968 as a public service agency to provide technical assistance to community groups in the areas of education, economic development, and consumer rights. Between 1970 and 1975, Afram operated a parent-implemented program in education, funded by the Follow Through Program Division of Compensatory Education of the U.S. Office of Education, at eight Afram-affiliated sites in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. Afram also operated a farm experiment, Afram Farm, in upstate New York, as a campsite and recreational center for urban-bound families and groups, and as a conference and rural educational research and study center. In later years, Afram evolved into a one-person alternative clearinghouse compiling and disseminating information relevant to the Black community. An admirer of Malcolm X, Wilcox kept an informal network of Malcolm X followers and former associates: the Malcolm X Lovers Network.

Author

1. Wilcox, Preston, 1923-2006.

Title

1. Preston Wilcox papers, 1940-2005.

Access

1. Access to Princeton Summer Studies Program series requires a signed confidentiality agreement.

Biography

1. From 1958 to 1964, Preston Wilcox worked as a tenant organizer and later as director of the East Harlem Project; as a program consultant to the East Harlem Summer Festival, a United Neighborhood Houses initiative designed to prevent juvenile delinquency; and as a consultant and catalyst for the Massive Economic Neighborhood Development (MEND), an anti-poverty program in East Harlem. He also participated as a social researcher in the Princeton University six week summer studies program for junior high school students that led to the nationally-funded Upward Bound Program.
2. Known as "the father of school decentralization" in New York City, and "the leading theoretician of the community control movement," Wilcox was at the forefront of the campaigns at Intermediate School 201 in Harlem and later in the Ocean-Brownsville school district, for parent participation in curriculum development, and in the hiring of school supervisors and teachers. A prolific writer, he authored in the period between 1963 and 1973 some 200 articles, position papers and essays on public education and community empowerment, published in professional journals and as chapters in books. He also taught courses in social work theory and community organization at Columbia University's School of Social Work between 1963 and 1968, and at Atlanta University, Medgar Evers College, and other institutions of higher learning in the 1970s.
3. Wilcox founded Afram Associates in 1968 as a public service agency to provide technical assistance to community groups in the areas of education, economic development, and consumer rights. Between 1970 and 1975, Afram operated a parent-implemented program in education, funded by the Follow Through Program Division of Compensatory Education of the U.S. Office of Education, at eight Afram-affiliated sites in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. Afram also operated a farm experiment, Afram Farm, in upstate New York, as a campsite and recreational center for urban-bound families and groups, and as a conference and rural educational research and study center. In later years, Afram evolved into a one-person alternative clearinghouse compiling and disseminating information relevant to the Black community. An admirer of Malcolm X, Wilcox kept an informal network of Malcolm X followers and former associates: the Malcolm X Lovers Network.

Connect to:

1. Finding aid

Local subject

1. Black author.

Added author

1. Innis, Roy, 1934-2017.
2. Windom, Alice, 1936-
3. Wilcox, Preston. School community control as a social movement.
4. AFRAM Associates.

Research call number

1. Sc MG 235