CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

In July 1969 Al Vann, Chairman of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Coalition on Educational Needs and Services (B-SCENS), wrote a “Progress Summary to the Community,” detailing the activities and positions of the Negotiation Team, delegated by the coalition to meet with City University of New York (CUNY) officials planning Community College 7. Approximately one month before, a splinter group of B-SCENS members had written directly to CUNY officials expressing their dissent from the Negotiation Team’s insistence that Rhody McCoy should be named the new college’s president. In his report, Vann detailed the Negotiation Team’s process and rationale for selecting McCoy as their preferred candidate, and called for the community’s support for the Negotiation Team’s authority to make decisions for a college planned by, in, and for the people of Bedford-Stuyvesant.