CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

In this telegram from Al Vann, chairman of the Steering Committee of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Coalition, to Porter R. Chandler, Frederick Burkhardt, and Chancellor Albert Bowker, Vann lists the community's five selected representatives that will sit alongside five members from the Board of Higher Education on a presidential search committee. The responsibility of the committee had recently expanded to include not just the selection of a college president, but all matters related to the development and opening of the school. The community's placement on the committee was a hard-won victory for Bedford-Stuyvesant leaders following a protracted struggle with CUNY officials over the role of the neighborhood in the college's creation.