Hidden Voices of New York City: Elsie Richardson Educator Workshop

"We’ve been studied to death, what we need is bricks and mortar!”  

These are the words of Elsie Richardson (1922–2012), a community-based leader who worked to revitalize her Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and the next New Yorker highlighted in our series Hidden Voices of New York City.

Join us for this virtual talk as we explore the life of Elsie Richardson and her fight for community development and racial equality in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Hear from Brian Purnell, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at Bowdoin and author of Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn. Examine primary resources that help illuminate Elsie Richardson’s life and leave with new ideas for how to inspire students to invest in their communities.

Just announced! This program will also feature Celeste Moses, Richardson’s granddaughter, who will share personal memories about her grandmother’s advocacy for her community. 

Elsie Richardson grew up participating in civil rights campaigns as a teenager and emerged as a courageous fighter for human rights as an adult. As a neighbor and community organizer in the second-largest black community in New York City, Richardson challenged politicians and fought against the economic recession that was devastating her neighborhood of Bedford- Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Richardson’s legacy lives on to this day, including through the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, an organization she helped found to support the needs of her struggling community that became a model for other communities to follow. 

This program is geared towards educators but is open to all with an interest in the topic. Participants will be provided with a list of resources for further learning after the session. 

Do you work with students in Grades 3-5? Sign up for our corresponding free virtual student workshop on Elsie Richardson on March 22. Learn more at https://www.mcny.org/hidden-voices    

FREE. Registration required. 1.5 CTLE hours 

About the Scholar

Brian Purnell is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. His scholarship falls generally within the field of US history with specific concentrations in African American history, urban history, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Born and raised in Coney Island, Brooklyn, much of his work centers around the legacy of racial activism in New York City.  

 His first book, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn (University Press in Kentucky, 2013), won the New York State Historical Association’s Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize. In 2019 he was the co-editor (with Jeanne Theoharis) of The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle Outside of the South (NYU Press).  

About the Hidden Voices of New York City Virtual Program Series 

Hidden Voices of New York City is a six-part virtual workshop series from the Museum of the City of New York that highlights and honors the individual and collective experiences of a diverse swath of New Yorkers.  

Students who participate in the Hidden Voices of New York City virtual student series will sharpen their historical thinking skills through engagement with primary and secondary source materials, hone skills in civic agency through exposure to the stories of people who organized within and beyond the city of New York, and gain an understanding of how the past influences our present and future.  

The professional learning portion of the Hidden Voices of New York City series is designed to support educators in bringing these stories into the classroom. Learn more about these changemakers through thought-provoking guest speakers and primary source analysis that will expose multiple perspectives about the era in which they lived, the challenges they faced, and the legacy they left in New York. The Hidden Voices project is aligned to the Passport to Social Studies curriculum.

This series draws from the Hidden Voices: Untold Stories of New York City History resource guide for teachers that was developed in partnership between the Museum of the City of New York and the New York City Department of Education. 

Learn more at www.mcny.org/hidden-voices