CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

On October 7, 1968, Al Vann, chairman of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Coalition on Educational Needs and Services, wrote a letter to the Editor of the New York Amsterdam News, responding to an editorial published a week earlier. The editors of the Amsterdam News had expressed concerns that Community College 7 might never come to fruition because of the “indecision, bungling, foot-dragging or ineptitude” of the CUNY officials and Bedford-Stuyvesant community delegation, led by Vann, charged with developing and implementing the plans. In his letter, Vann details his delegation’s successes in convincing CUNY officials to agree to key demands for a college that would be controlled by the community. However, tensions among Bedford-Stuyvesant’s community leaders over the nature and extent of the community control to be demanded of CUNY, and concerns that the opportunity for a college in Central Brooklyn might be lost, continued to escalate in the coming months.