Research Catalog

Preston Wilcox papers

Title
Preston Wilcox papers, 1940-2005.
Author
Wilcox, Preston, 1923-2006.
Supplementary Content
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StatusContainerFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
Box 1Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 1Offsite
Box 2Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 2Offsite
Box 3Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 3Offsite
Box 4Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 4Offsite
Box 5Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 5Offsite
Box 6Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 6Offsite
Box 7Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 7Offsite
Box 8Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 8Offsite
Box 9Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 9Offsite
Box 10Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 10Offsite
Box 11Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 11Offsite
Box 12Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 12Offsite
Box 14Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 14Offsite
Box 15Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 15Offsite
Box 16Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 16Offsite
Box 17Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 17Offsite
Box 18Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 18Offsite
Box 19Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 19Offsite
Box 20Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 20Offsite
Box 21Mixed materialRequest in advance Sc MG 235 Box 21Offsite

Details

Additional Authors
  • Innis, Roy, 1934-2017.
  • Windom, Alice, 1936-
  • Wilcox, Preston. School community control as a social movement.
  • AFRAM Associates.
Description
21.6 lin. ft. (51 boxes)
Summary
Collection contains personal and professional papers, writings, office files, and printed matter documenting Preston Wilcox's dual career as an educator and community organizer. Included are biographical and autobiographical narratives; some correspondence, and organization files; an extensive writings series; proposals, minutes, reports and other documents dating from 1958 to 1965 pertaining to the East Harlem Project, the East Harlem Summer Festival, and the Massive Economic Neighborhood Development (MEND); confidential files from the 1964 Princeton Summer Studies Program, the pilot project for the pre-college Upward Bound program; compilations of material on public schools, decentralization, and community control; and Afram's surviving records. Some of the main themes explored in the writings are: decentralization and parental decision-making, community organization, and economic development, Black Power versus integration, social policy and white racism, empowering the poor, and Black studies and Black schools. The Afram files comprise the following subseries: Administrative, Publications, Parent Participation in Follow Through, Malcolm X Lovers Network, and Vertical Files. The latter two categories are compilations of articles and other printed matter, with editorial notes by Wilcox on Malcolm X and on selected topics and personalities, including education, community control, reparations, Harlem, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), and Leonard Jeffries
Subjects
Note
  • Photographs transferred to Photographs and Prints Division.
  • Audiotapes, videotapes and films transferred to Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division.
Access (note)
  • Access to Princeton Summer Studies Program series requires a signed confidentiality agreement.
Source (note)
  • Preston Wilcox
Biography (note)
  • From 1958 to 1964, Preston Wilcox worked as a tenant organizer and later as director of the East Harlem Project; as a program consultant to the East Harlem Summer Festival, a United Neighborhood Houses initiative designed to prevent juvenile delinquency; and as a consultant and catalyst for the Massive Economic Neighborhood Development (MEND), an anti-poverty program in East Harlem. He also participated as a social researcher in the Princeton University six week summer studies program for junior high school students that led to the nationally-funded Upward Bound Program.
  • Known as "the father of school decentralization" in New York City, and "the leading theoretician of the community control movement," Wilcox was at the forefront of the campaigns at Intermediate School 201 in Harlem and later in the Ocean-Brownsville school district, for parent participation in curriculum development, and in the hiring of school supervisors and teachers. A prolific writer, he authored in the period between 1963 and 1973 some 200 articles, position papers and essays on public education and community empowerment, published in professional journals and as chapters in books. He also taught courses in social work theory and community organization at Columbia University's School of Social Work between 1963 and 1968, and at Atlanta University, Medgar Evers College, and other institutions of higher learning in the 1970s.
  • Wilcox founded Afram Associates in 1968 as a public service agency to provide technical assistance to community groups in the areas of education, economic development, and consumer rights. Between 1970 and 1975, Afram operated a parent-implemented program in education, funded by the Follow Through Program Division of Compensatory Education of the U.S. Office of Education, at eight Afram-affiliated sites in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. Afram also operated a farm experiment, Afram Farm, in upstate New York, as a campsite and recreational center for urban-bound families and groups, and as a conference and rural educational research and study center. In later years, Afram evolved into a one-person alternative clearinghouse compiling and disseminating information relevant to the Black community. An admirer of Malcolm X, Wilcox kept an informal network of Malcolm X followers and former associates: the Malcolm X Lovers Network.
Call Number
Sc MG 235
OCLC
233594671
Author
Wilcox, Preston, 1923-2006.
Title
Preston Wilcox papers, 1940-2005.
Access
Access to Princeton Summer Studies Program series requires a signed confidentiality agreement.
Biography
From 1958 to 1964, Preston Wilcox worked as a tenant organizer and later as director of the East Harlem Project; as a program consultant to the East Harlem Summer Festival, a United Neighborhood Houses initiative designed to prevent juvenile delinquency; and as a consultant and catalyst for the Massive Economic Neighborhood Development (MEND), an anti-poverty program in East Harlem. He also participated as a social researcher in the Princeton University six week summer studies program for junior high school students that led to the nationally-funded Upward Bound Program.
Known as "the father of school decentralization" in New York City, and "the leading theoretician of the community control movement," Wilcox was at the forefront of the campaigns at Intermediate School 201 in Harlem and later in the Ocean-Brownsville school district, for parent participation in curriculum development, and in the hiring of school supervisors and teachers. A prolific writer, he authored in the period between 1963 and 1973 some 200 articles, position papers and essays on public education and community empowerment, published in professional journals and as chapters in books. He also taught courses in social work theory and community organization at Columbia University's School of Social Work between 1963 and 1968, and at Atlanta University, Medgar Evers College, and other institutions of higher learning in the 1970s.
Wilcox founded Afram Associates in 1968 as a public service agency to provide technical assistance to community groups in the areas of education, economic development, and consumer rights. Between 1970 and 1975, Afram operated a parent-implemented program in education, funded by the Follow Through Program Division of Compensatory Education of the U.S. Office of Education, at eight Afram-affiliated sites in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. Afram also operated a farm experiment, Afram Farm, in upstate New York, as a campsite and recreational center for urban-bound families and groups, and as a conference and rural educational research and study center. In later years, Afram evolved into a one-person alternative clearinghouse compiling and disseminating information relevant to the Black community. An admirer of Malcolm X, Wilcox kept an informal network of Malcolm X followers and former associates: the Malcolm X Lovers Network.
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Finding aid
Local Subject
Black author.
Added Author
Innis, Roy, 1934-2017.
Windom, Alice, 1936-
Wilcox, Preston. School community control as a social movement.
AFRAM Associates.
Research Call Number
Sc MG 235
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