CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

By Sean Molloy (23 June 2017)

Racial Exclusion Within American Colleges and the City University of New York (1960-64)

We now designate some United States colleges and universities as “historically black” and Alexandria Lockett has argued we should designate all others as “historically white.”  But in the early 1960s, racial exclusion within American higher education was not yet historical. Southern white college systems fought to preserve their legally enforced de jure racial exclusion systems. Almost all northern white college systems practiced more subtle forms of de facto racial exclusion.

For example, in 1960 there were only 70,000 black students at all white US colleges, comprising only 2.4% of their total enrollment of 2.8 million students. But African-Americans constituted close to 13% of the total college age population, such that their equal proportional representation in white colleges would have been 364,000 (Molloy, 2016, pp. 40-41; Crossland, 1971).

This racial exclusion was especially glaring within the new City University of New York system (CUNY) which had consolidated  New York City’s then seven municipal colleges  in 1961 after the 1960 New York State Heald Commission had recommended increasing annual State funding for higher education from $300 million to as much as $1.2 billion by 1975 and doubling New York’s total college students from 401,000 to 804,000 by 1970 (Hechinger, 1960, November 16, pp. 1, 57; Gordon, 1975, pp. 82-83).

In the 1950s and 1960s, New York City was changing rapidly as “great migrations” of black and brown residents moved into the City from the American South and from Puerto Rico as throngs of white, middle-class families moved to nearby suburbs. From 1954 to 1964, black and Puerto Rican children increased from 29% to over 50% of all New York City public school students (Gordon, 1975, p. 35). By 1960, black and Puerto Rican students made up 75% of Manhattan elementary school enrollment (Ravitch, 1974, p. 261).

In theory, these black and brown New York City public school students had equal access to CUNY’s tuition-free colleges. But in practice, only a token few were admitted. In the mid-1960s, CUNY’s student body remained “by all accounts” 94 to 97% white (Warren, 1984, pp. 2, 35).

In 1963, Republican Assembly Speaker Joseph Carlino directly charged CUNY with unfair racial exclusion. According to Carlino, “only 1.9 per cent of the [CUNY] student body was Negro.” As such, CUNY “had become a haven for the elite,” with high GPA requirements that forced black and Puerto Rican students “to forgo college” (Currivan, 1963, November 27).

Bowker Presses CUNY To Expand and Desegregate Itself (1964)

In 1963, newly arrived CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker quickly pressed CUNY to admit more students (CUNY, 2011; Gordon, 1975, pp. 90, 93-95; Edelstein, 1986, p. 1-2). Bowker laid out his vision: total enrollment in the existing four-year “senior” colleges would increase from 36,000 in September 1963 to between 52,000 and 58,000 by September 1968; two new CUNY senior colleges would soon further expand access (Bowker, 1964, May, p. 2).

Bowker also asserted that CUNY’s new plan would be “color-blind.” He recognized that black and Puerto Rican students were now approaching half of all City public school students—the pool from which CUNY drew 85% of its entering students (the other 15% came from the City’s private schools). Bowker saw “major erosion” within the public schools in poor areas of the city. But he rejected arguments that CUNY should not include these students in its expansion plans; Bowker asserted that nothing “could be more destructive for the City of New York and for the individuals involved” (p. 7). Instead, CUNY “must say to these youngsters that they are expected to succeed and that there will be opportunities for them beyond high school. The places for freshmen must be there” (p. 7).

In a February 7, 1964 memorandum [included in this collection] from the Office of the Chancellor—developed in part by City College professor and nationally renowned psychologist Kenneth Clark—Bowker also called for three new forms of CUNY desegregation programs (CUNY, 1964, February 7, pp. 1-2; Board, 1966, June, p. 23). This “three-pronged experiment” would be exempt from CUNY’s general obligation to admit only students with the highest high school grades and admission test scores. Its goal would be “to find out enough about the methods of selection and education of culturally disadvantaged persons of high native ability (‘potential’) to enable us to formulate policies which will place the admission to college of such students upon a firm non-discriminatory basis” (CUNY, 1964, February 7, p. 2). In essence, Bowker’s office recognized that CUNY’s existing admissions procedures were indeed discriminatory.

The Chancellor’s office assumed these new students would be underprepared and would struggle to succeed. They would be assigned to zero-credit remedial courses or a mix of remedial and credit bearing courses “until [they] clearly demonstrate a capacity to pursue college-level work” (p.7). Group and individual tutorials would “discover weaknesses and gaps in their educational backgrounds” and raise student performance “to an acceptable collegiate level.”

Students would not be treated “as a group” but “as persons, to be judged on their individual records” (p.7). Although retention policies would not be altered in “mistaken generosity” to help any student who “shows himself incapable of completing college level work satisfactorily,” the goal was “for these students to be integrated into the courses and life of the College….by hard work (both on the part of the student and teacher) to a level where they will not suffer new agonies of falling “below par” (p. 7). Students would receive special “counseling and supportive services,” including faculty counseling, “psychological counseling [and] social work” (p. 7). The Chancellor’s office called for a 50-student program to begin in the fall of 1964 and suggested Brooklyn College host the first program (p. 6).

The Brooklyn College ATSP Program (1964-1968)

In the Fall of 1964 (supported by a Rockefeller Foundation grant) Brooklyn College’s School of General Studies launched a 42-student pilot program using Bowker’s model, which it called the “Academic Talent Search Project” or “ATSP.” The ATSP students were recent graduates from Brooklyn academic high schools in poverty areas. They had academic diplomas, but low high school grade point averages (Furcron, 1968, pp. 3, 7) [included in this collection]. They were provisionally admitted until they could demonstrate academic success. ATSP “was designed to explore whether students with apparent college potential, but without the required academic standards for admission, could succeed in college despite financial and cultural deprivation in terms of middle-class values” (p. 7). No new students were added in later semesters; ATSP instead tracked these 42 students for four years.

Brooklyn’s modest program demonstrated the complex barriers to racial integration within a conservative, white, four-year college. By 1968, ATSP’s closing report  was forced to state “unequivocally that many people at the College believe the Project to have been a failure” (Furcron, 1968, p. 27). After two years, 27 of the 42 ATSP students (64%) returned for a fifth semester. But their GPAs were low, averaging only 1.8 (about a C-) in their first year when they studied in small segregated tutorial groups and 1.2 (just over a D) in their second year when they entered mainstream classes. Also after two years, only one ATSP student had been fully matriculated as a regular student (Furcron, 1968, pp. 14, 18). Eleven more students dropped out in the next two years, leaving only 16 of 42 (38%) in college after eight semesters. By 1968, only four had been fully matriculated. Others persisted, but with low grade point averages. By fall of 1968, only one ATSP student had graduated and counselors believed that six more would likely eventually graduate, a potential success rate of 7 out of 42 (16.7%) (pp. 21-22). In June of 1966, ATSP was not mentioned in CUNY’s revised Master Plan (Board, 1966, June, p. 29).

Growing Pressures to Integrate City College (1964-1965)

By early 1964, the pressures to integrate City College (with its hilltop campus directly above the western edge of central Harlem) were growing more urgent. A faculty committee that included City College political science professor and civil rights activist John Davis proposed admitting a group of “prematriculated students to be selected from underprivileged areas” who demonstrated high motivation. These specially admitted students would receive personal counseling, diagnostic testing to assist with course placement and tutorial services “in mathematics, foreign languages, and English” (CCNY, 1964, April 23, p. 2). [Included in this collection.] This proposal was adopted by the City College faculty council and submitted to Chancellor Bowker for approval. But for some reason Bowker rejected the proposal (CCNY, 1964, June 15).

In the spring of 1965, City College still sat like “a white colony” on its hilltop over central Harlem (Ballard, 2014, p. 2). (Ballard’s video oral history and transcript is included in this collection.) A City College student newspaper article, “College Image: Color it White” outlined the growing community pressures as CORE, the Amsterdam News, Harlem parents, Harlem students, and City College professor Kenneth Clark all attacked City’s continued racial exclusion. Clark charged President Buell Gallagher’s administration with a policy of “indifference, detachment and isolation.” An Amsterdam News editorial charged City as being “almost as lily white during the day as the University of Mississippi” and challenged Gallagher to act or lose his reputation as a reformer: “We don’t care how you do it. Get some Negroes in City College” (Blintz, 1965, March 18, pp. 1-2, quoting Clark and James Hintz).

John Aubrey Davis grew up in Washington D.C., where in the 1930s he organized effective black boycotts of racist white businesses, setting off a legal fight that ended in a 1938 Supreme Court victory upholding the picketing rights of civil rights protesters, New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery, Co., Inc. Davis joined City College as a political science professor in 1953, the same year he assisted the NAACP team in the Brown v. Board of Education case (Saxon, 2002; Ballad, 2011, p. 212; Kluger, 1975, pp 619-626).

In March of 1965, Davis demanded [included in this collection] that his colleagues take action.  He wrote to the Faculty Senate that two years had “passed since various units of City College have been considering ways of increasing the presence of Negro and Puerto Rican students in this college…” (p. 1). Yet, Davis complained, “the college has been able to do nothing” while other colleges acted. Davis proposed: a desegregation program to immediately admit fifty students based on teacher recommendations as well as GPA/SAT scores; starting summer programs for “culturally deprived” high school juniors and seniors and then admitting them to City College with the help of “guidance and tutorial centers;” and helping to improve the public schools through City College’s School of Education (pp. 2-3).

During an April 8, 1965 faculty council meeting, President Buell Gallagher asked for and received authority to appoint new committees to plan and initiate a Fall 1965 desegregation program for 50-100 students, housed within the School of General Studies. (CCNY, 1965, April 8, pp. 2-3). [These Faculty Minutes are included in this collection.]  A week later the committees met and began to plan the new “Prebaccalaureates” program (Bass, 1965, April 15) [included in this collection].

The City College Pre-Bac/SEEK Program

In September 1965, City College launched its Pre-Baccalaureate (Pre-Bac) desegregation program with 113 successful applicants from poor black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods near City College. Although Bernard Levy, the Dean of the School of General Studies, was designated as the leader of the new program, the actual planning and administration of the program soon fell to an informal faculty committee of psychologist Leslie Berger, political scientist and historian Allen Ballard and mathematician Bernard Sohmer (Ballard, 2014). In a possible indication of Gallagher’s support for their work, Ballard, Sohmer and Berger were all named as City College deans between 1965 and 1967—making Ballard the first black dean within the at City University system (Ballard, 2011, p. 217; 2014, pp. 3-4).

Bowker, Gallagher, Clark, Davis, Levy, Sohmer and many others at City College and at CUNY promoted, defended, shaped and supported SEEK in its first years. Many New York politicians also provided critical support beginning in 1966 (CUNY, 2007, September 12; 2012, March 19). City College professors Kenneth Clark and John Davis were already national civil rights leaders who had each played a key role in securing the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. SEEK teachers and counselors also made critical contributions. But Ballard and Berger quickly emerged as SEEK’s principal shapers, voices, leaders and theorists: Berger was its first City College administrator; Ballard was its second. Both used their SEEK model to shape racial and social justice programs and pedagogies across CUNY. [Berger’s December 1966 City College Alumnus article about SEEK, his February 1967 position paper on the role of psychological counseling in SEEK, and his 1968 CUNY SEEK Report, as well as  Ballard’s 1968 CCNY SEEK Report are all included in this collection.]

Pre-Bac was an immediate success. Renamed SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) in 1966, it expanded in its second year to admit 732 SEEK students to City, Brooklyn and Queens colleges, serving students from poor neighborhoods across the City. Among the incoming 1966 SEEK students were Francee Covington, Marvina White and Eugenia Wiltshire (then Dorothy Robinson). [Covington, White and Wiltshire’s video oral histories and transcripts are all included in this collection.]

Ballard and Berger theorized and built SEEK to empower teachers, to allow them to experiment with creative pedagogies, and to shield them (at least for a while) from any conservative backlash. Berger knew that “remedial courses taught in a narrow context, are usually the most deadening of courses” and he believed that placing students into fully remedial coursework was a failed approach that survived only due to colleges’ “vacuousness or rigidity” (Berger, 1969-70, p.4). Ballard also recognized “the intrinsic worth of the students’ own thoughts and writing, no matter how ungrammatically expressed. This cannot be a gratuitous and patronizing act of kindness, for the Black student brings with him both a creativity and a knowledge of the human condition unduplicable by white middle-class students” (1973, p. 98).

Berger and Ballard believed in the SEEK students and in the SEEK teachers. Their SEEK program sought 1) to recognize both the scars carried by students as well as their tremendous abilities, insights and potential; 2) to both challenge and support students to prepare them to succeed in the larger college; and 3) to develop collaborative, creative and successful pedagogies and practices.

Neither Berger nor Ballard knew anything about how to teach writing, but they knew that “writing was the key to the SEEK program. The writing program was the essence of it” (Ballard 2014, p. 7). Ballard recalls now that “everything else was secondary” (2015, September 2).

The SEEK Writing Program 1965-1967

The SEEK writing teachers reported both to Berger and Ballard and to the English Department, chaired by Edmund Volpe. But at first Volpe and the English department had little interest in SEEK: “When the program began, very few members of the faculty were even aware of it, and those of us who were, treated it rather casually, as a peripheral concern. After helping to set up the remedial courses and appointing teachers for them, I returned to what I considered my proper business” (Volpe, 1972, p. 768).

In the summer of 1965, Volpe assigned Anthony Penale (who was then 50 years old) as SEEK’s first English coordinator.  [A photograph of Penale as a young man is included in this collection.] Volpe also hired Toni Cade Bambara (then a 26-year-old Toni Cade) as a full-time SEEK lecturer. “I…appointed a man with many years of teaching experience who, I knew, honestly enjoyed teaching freshmen, and a young black woman whom I had known and admired as a graduate student” (Volpe, 1972, p. 773). In the Fall of 1965, Penale and Bambara taught writing to all 113 pilot class SEEK students; they each taught three sections of SEEK’s new stretched, five-hour version of English One—with an average of 19 students per section. (“Pre-Baccalaureate,” 1965, October 7, p. 2) [included in this collection]. Sometime in the Fall of 1965, Volpe also hired a young Columbia University doctoral student, Barbara Christian, who began teaching as a part-time SEEK lecturer in Spring 1966, just after her twenty-second birthday (Volpe 1966, May 15, p. 5; Christian, 2000, June 27).  

In 1966-67, Volpe hired four more SEEK lecturers: Amy Sticht, Addison Gayle, Janet Mayes (Singer) and Fred Byron. They joined Penale, Bambara and Christian (Volpe, 1967, May, p. 2). All seven SEEK English teachers were lecturers with temporary appointments. As SEEK expanded, Volpe hired more SEEK lecturers including David Henderson, Alice Trillin, Raymond Patterson, June Jordan, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde and Blanche Skurnick. in 1967-68, Volpe hired a new SEEK English co-ordinator, Mina Shaughnessy, who replaced the then ailing Penale (Mayes, 2016, June 29, p. 1) [Janet Mayes’ 2016 oral history is included in this collection.]  

This combined support from SEEK and neglect by the English department empowered the original seven SEEK lecturers to shape their own writing pedagogies. The fragmentary surviving record  suggests a creative and collaborative teaching circle rather than a fixed writing program. In these small writing classes, students could bond with and open up to their teachers. Francee Covington recalls: “you felt that you could tell your instructors Barbara Christian, Addison Gayle, Toni Cade of course, anything that was happening with you, because you had established a rapport” (2015, June 8, pp. 5-6) [included in this collection].

To Marvina White, Barbara Christian’s summer course was the perfect introduction to college: “the whole experience was just one of human beings engaging with ideas…. she responded to specific ideas and thoughts I had about the books…. I had never had that experience before…. it was the most human experience I’ve ever had in the classroom. It was also everything I imagined college to be, everything, including the teacher (pp. 3-4) [included in this collection].

SEEK student Henry Arce remembers Anthony Penale as a teacher who focused on grammar and sentence mechanics, but in a way that was exciting and empowering. “He had fervor, energy and vibrancy. Penale would run across the front of the room challenging and encouraging students. He was manic in his quest to show students we did well, telling us “You got it! You got it!” It was just what we needed because we were so jaded and fearful about mastering English. Penale broke the mold and broke the fear (2016, June 9, p. 1).

Gayle had a reputation among SEEK students as an “outstanding, effective and caring teacher” (Norment, 2009, p. xii). Covington remembers that Gayle “took pride in being a tough marker. But he was also one of the instructors that we would sit around with and have coffee with and just laugh and joke and just talk about current events. And what was going on in black America particularly…” (2015, June 8, p. 7) [included in this collection].

After she arrived in the fall of 1967, Shaughnessy gradually pressed the SEEK writing pedagogies toward a more conservative focus on what she called “the A, B, C’s of correctness.” By the summer of 1971, the original seven SEEK lecturers had left City College. Bambara went to Livingston College; Gayle went to Baruch; Christian went to Berkeley (Molloy, 2016, pp. 215-17). By the fall of 1971, Shaughnessy reshaped the original SEEK writing pedagogies into her error-centric “basic writing” program (Molloy, 2016, pp. 218-308).   

The Growth, Success and Impact of SEEK

According to Berger’s October 1968 report [included in this collection], in the academic year 1967-68 alone, six CUNY campuses admitted over 1,100 SEEK students (Berger, 1968, Table 35). In 1968-69, CUNY admitted over 1,600 new SEEK students. By February of 1969, there were over 3,000 SEEK students enrolled and studying across CUNY (Berger, 1969, October 21, Table 40).    

After consulting with City College’s SEEK founders [this Manhattan luncheon bill and reimbursement memo is included in this collection], the State University of New York began its own SEEK program when SUNY Buffalo enrolled 249 SEEK students in 1967-68 (Gould, 1968, October 14) [included in this collection]. With expanded New York state funding in 1968-69, SUNY Buffalo enrolled 190 new SEEK students and transferred 89 successful SEEK students to six other SUNY campuses. That same year, new SEEK programs were formed at SUNY Albany, SUNY Cortland  and SUNY Purchase (Gould, 1968, October 14).

SEEK proved that undervalued students could compete and succeed in elite four-year colleges. Close to 40% of the 1965-67 incoming SEEK classes at City College graduated by mid-1972 (Frost, 1972, April 19). This success was critical to CUNY’s adoption of its Open Admissions Program beginning in the Fall of 1970. In 1969, CUNY’s new Vice Chancellor Timothy Healy wrote that SEEK was both the practical and theoretical model for open admissions. He cited the success of SEEK as proof to skeptical community leaders that the newly expanded CUNY would not become a revolving door that further victimized already wounded black and Latino students. In Healy’s view, without “SEEK the idea of open admissions would never have been born; without SEEK the operation could well fail.” (1969, November) [included in this collection].

SEEK also served as a model of success for college racial and social justice programs nationwide. In his 1969 address to the first annual conference on educational opportunity programs, Berger asserted that CUNY’s SEEK program was then “considerably larger than any other experimental program” (1969, July 18, p. 7) [included in this collection].

SEEK programs have now continued to operate across CUNY for fifty years. In May of 2016--fifty years after Arce, Covington, White and Wiltshire entered City College--another SEEK student, Orubba Almansouri, graduated as the City College 2016 Salutatorian. An immigrant from Yemen, Almansouri is a first generation college student who broke tribal and her own family’s taboos against women attending college; she majored in English literature and history and plans to pursue her doctorate tracing “the history of women’s contributions to and roles in literature, oral traditions and cultures of the Middle East” (CCNY, 2016, May 24, pp. 3-4). Almansouri delivered an impassioned salutatorian address in both English and Arabic at the City College commencement as Michelle Obama sat only a few feet away (Almansouri, 2016, June 3).

 

This introduction and collection is drawn from my 2016 CUNY doctoral dissertation, A Convenient Myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy, and the rise of high stakes testing at CUNY. I also discuss SEEK in a  chapter in the forthcoming Writing Assessment and Social Justice. Both sources are listed below.  

References

Almansouri, O. (2016, June 3). [Commencement Address]. The City College of New York. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIzGfAsl1PQ

Anthony Penale as a young man [Photograph]  (Penale Family Archive).

Arce, H. (2016, June 9). Henry Arce: An oral history of the CCNY 1960s and 1970s SEEK program. Appended to Molloy, S. (2016). A convenient myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy and the rise of high-stakes testing at CUNY. (pp. 504-506). (Doctoral dissertation). City University of New York: New York.

Ballard, A. B. (August 22, 1968). 1967-1968 Annual Report Pre-Baccalaureate Program, The City College of New York. Archives and Special Collections, SEEK Box One. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Ballard, A. B.  (1973) The Education of Black Folk: The Afro-American Struggle for Knowledge in White America. New York: Harper & Row.

Ballard, A. B.  (2011) Breaching Jericho’s Walls: A Twentieth-Century African-American Life. Albany: SUNY Press.

Ballard, A.B. (2014). Allen B. Ballard: An Oral History of the CCNY SEEK Program. Transcript appended to Molloy, S. (2016). A convenient myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy and the rise of high-stakes testing at CUNY. (pp. 406-417). (Doctoral dissertation). New York: City University of New York. Video retrieved from https://youtu.be/xqOSvD056LY [Included in this collection.]

Ballard, A.B. (2015, September 2). Email to Sean Molloy.

Bass, F. (1965, April 15). [Minutes of Special Committee.] Buell Gallagher files, “SEEK Program 1964-1969.” Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Berger, L. (1966, December). The Pre-Baccalaureate Program at the College. City College Alumnus. (Buell Gallagher Files: “SEEK Program 1964-1969”). Archives and Special Collections, SEEK Box One. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Berger, L. (1967, February). [Position Paper]. A New Role For Psychology: Working With Disadvantaged Persons in a College Setting. Berger family archives, New City, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Berger, L. (1967, May 16). [Memo to Grossman]. Berger family archives, New City, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Berger, L. (1968, October 15). Annual report 1967-68 SEEK program The City University of New York. Berger family archives. New City, NY. Also (SEEK Box One). Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY, New York, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Berger, L. (1969 July 18). Educational opportunity programs: Are they educationally justifiable? [Speech to the first annual conference on educational opportunity programs]. Berger family archives, New City, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Berger, L. (1969, October 21). Annual report 1968-69 SEEK program The City University of New York. (SEEK Box One). Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY, New York, NY.

Berger, L. [1969-70]. [Draft SEEK History.] Berger family archives, New City, NY.

Blintz, E. (1965, March 18). College image: Color it white. The Campus. Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, N.Y. Retrieved from http://digital-archives.ccny.cuny.edu/thecampus/1965/MARCH_116_10/00000099.PDF

The Board of Higher Education of the City of New York. (1966, June). Second annual revision of the 1964 master plan for the City University of New York. New York, N.Y.: Author.

Bowker, A.H. (1964, May). Foreword. Master plan for the City University of New York 1964. New York: The Board of Higher Education of the City of New York.

Christian, C. (2000, June 27). Tribute to my sister, Barbara T. Christian. St. Thomas Source. Retrieved from http://stthomassource.com

The City College of New York. (1964, April 23). Interim report of the committee on enrollment policy. (Faculty Council Box 5. “64-1965”). Faculty Council Box 5. Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, N.Y. [Included in this collection.]

The City College of New York. (1964, June 15). Report of the committee on enrollment policy. (Faculty Council Box 5. “64-1965”). Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, N.Y.

City College of New York. (1965, April 8). Minutes. Faculty Council Box 5. “64-1965.” Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, N.Y. [Included in this collection.]

The City College of New York. (2016, May 24). Forty-sixth annual SEEK awards tribute and salute to graduating seniors and honor students. New York, NY.

The City University of New York. (1964, February 7). A three-pronged experimental approach to the problem of undiscovered college potential among the young men and women of New York City. [Memorandum from the office of the Chancellor] Berger family archives. New City, NY. [Included in this collection.]

City University of New York (2007, September 12). The impact and history of the SEEK program. [Documentary.] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/KvVQWE0i8ro

The City University of New York. [2011]. The birth of a modern university. Retrieved from http://www2.cuny.edu/about/administration/chancellor/university-history/

City University of New York (2012, March 19). Second chances: The CUNY seek and college discovery story. [Documentary.] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/TtGbYi4KtlE

Covington, F. (2015, June 8). Francee Covington: An oral history of the CCNY 1960’s SEEK program and the paper. Transcript appended to Molloy, S. (2016). A convenient myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy and the rise of high-stakes testing at CUNY. (pp. 430-442). (Doctoral dissertation). New York: City University of New York. Video retrieved from https://youtu.be/rBfCRp0fTkg [Included in this collection.]

Crossland, F.E. (1971). Minority Access to College. Ford Foundation. New York, NY: Schockten Books.

Currivan, G. (1963, November, 27). Carlino bids City University drop free tuition. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/

Davis, J. (1965, March). Statement of professor John A. Davis in behalf of the committee of enrollment policy for presentation to the faculty council. Faculty Council Box 5. “64-1965.” Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, N.Y. [Included in this collection.]

Frost, Olivia. (1972, April 19). Table Showing Distribution of Spring 1972 SEEK Student Registration. [Memo to Dean Robert Young et al.]. (Olivia Frost Papers, Box 10, Folder One). Research Collections at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. New York Public Library. New York, NY.

Furcron, M. (1968). To help them achieve: The academic talent search project 1966-68, Part II. Brooklyn College School of General Studies and the Rockefeller Foundation. Bowker Box 245. CUNY Central Archives, La Guardia Community College: Long Island City. [Included in this collection.]

Gordon, S.C. (1975). The transformation of the City University of New York, 1945-1970. (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University: New York. Retrieved from Xerox University Microfilms. (77-27,856).

Gould, S.B. (1968, October 14). [Letter to Hughes.] Berger family archives. New City, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Healy, T. (1969, December 20). Will everyman destroy the university? CUNY, reprinted from the Saturday Review. (Academic Affairs Box 172). CUNY Central Archive. LaGuardia Community College: Long Island City, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Hechinger, F. (1960, November 16). Sweeping change in college set-up is urged on state. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/

Kluger, R. (1975) Simple Justice: The history of Brown v. Board of Education and black America’s struggle for equality. [1977 ed.] New York: Vintage Books.

Lockett, A. (2016, April 8). Race and writing methods: Investigating racism through autoethnography, history and technology. Conference on College Composition and Communication presentation.

Mayes, J. (2016, June 29). Janet Mayes: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960’s SEEK Program. Appended to Molloy, S. (2016). A convenient myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy and the rise of high-stakes testing at CUNY. (pp. 507-512). (Doctoral dissertation). City University of New York: New York. [Included in this collection.]

Molloy, S. (2016). A Convenient Myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy, and the rise of high stakes testing at CUNY. (Doctoral dissertation). CUNY Academic Works. Retrieved from http://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1513

Molloy, S. [forthcoming] “Human Beings Engaging With Ideas”: The 1960s SEEK Program as a Precursor Model of Ecological and Sociocultural Writing Pedagogy and Assessment. In N. Elliot, A.B. Inoue & M. Poe. (Eds.). Writing Assessment and Social Justice. (pp._______). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.

Norment, N. Ed. (2009). The Addison Gayle Jr. reader. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Photograph of Anthony Penale. (n.d.). Courtesy of Adam Penale, Penale family archives, Lewiston, New York. [Included in this collection.]

“Pre-Baccalaureate Program Student Statistics – Fall Term 1965.” (1965 October 7). Faculty Council Box 5 “64-1965” CCNY Archives, New York, NY. [Included in this collection.]

Ravitch, D. (1974). The great school wars: A history of the New York City public schools. [3rd ed. 2000]. Baltimore, MD.: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Saxon, W. (2002, December 21). John A Davis, 90, Advocate in major civil rights cases. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/

Volpe, E. (1966, May 15). Report of the chairman. (English department box one). Archives and Special Collections, Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, NY.

Volpe, E. (1967, May 15). Report of the chairman. (English department box one). Archives and Special Collections, Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, NY.

Volpe, E. (1972). The confessions of a fallen man: Ascent to the D.A. College English. 33(7), 765- 779.

Warren, C. (1984). Open admissions at City College: The implementation of an egalitarian reform in a meritocratic institution. (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University: New York. Archives and Special Collections. Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. New York, NY.

White, M. (2015, January 27). Marvina White: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960’s SEEK Program. Transcript appended to Molloy, S. (2016). A convenient myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy and the rise of high-stakes testing at CUNY. (pp. 406-417). (Doctoral dissertation). New York: City University of New York. Video retrieved from https://youtu.be/tmGtJUGbL5U [Included in this collection.]

Wiltshire, E. (2015, November 20). Eugenia Wiltshire: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960’s SEEK Program. Transcript appended to Molloy, S. (2016). A convenient myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy and the rise of high-stakes testing at CUNY. (Doctoral dissertation). New York: City University of New York. Video retrieved from https://youtu.be/Q7rtnY79oAc [Included in this collection.]