When half of NYC’s students stayed home

Plus: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Pavarotti |

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By Lily Rothman Senior Editor Here in New York City, this week marked the beginning of a new year for the city’s public-school students—well, sort of, after in-person learning for many pupils was delayed for safety reasons. As schools and cities across the country and the world grapple with how to educate kids safely amid COVID-19, leaders have had to adapt quickly. The disrupted school year is also changing plans for one particular group of students: those who had plans to protest ongoing segregation within the city’s public schools. Those young activists took inspiration from a moment that happened more than 50 years ago, when approximately half of NYC’s public-school students stayed home for a day. The school boycott was the largest protest of the period—hundreds of thousands more people participated than attended the March on Washington—but it has largely been left out of today’s mainstream retellings of the civil rights era. In a fascinating story and video, Olivia B. Waxman and Arpita Aneja took a look back at this overlooked milestone. Click here to watch. Here’s more of the history that made news this week:

HISTORY ON TIME.COM Column: Hard Truths Can't Be Erased—My Family's Nazi Past Included By Géraldine Schwarz I knew that my German grandfather Karl Schwarz was in the Nazi party. I didn't dig any deeper until a remark by my aunt piqued my curiosity Read More » Inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg's History-Shaping Marriage of Equals By Rachel E. Greenspan "Marty Ginsburg was the first boy I met who cared that I had a brain" Read More » Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Legacy Doesn’t Start With the Supreme Court. Here’s How She Made News Decades Earlier By Lily Rothman Here's how she first became a key figure in gender equality law Read More » Column: What We Can Learn From Early American Conspiracy Theories By John Fea While the particulars of today's conspiracy theories may be new, the dynamics are not. In fact, they go all the way back to America's earliest years Read More » Column: America's Founders Knew Democracy Requires Public Education By Derek W. Black America's education story is ultimately a story of the tension between the idea that the nation's democracy rests on the foundation of education and the inability to ever fully deliver on that commitment Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT Today in 2001: One Nation, Indivisible "So while it was up to the President and his generals to plot the response, for the rest of us who are not soldiers and have no cruise missiles, we had candles, and we lit them on Friday night in an act of mourning, and an act of war. That is because we are fighting not one enemy but two: one unseen, the other inside. Terror on this scale is meant to wreck the way we live our lives—make us flinch when a siren sounds, jump when a door slams and think twice before deciding whether we really have to take a plane. If we falter, they win, even if they never plant another bomb." (Sept. 24, 2001) Read More » Today in 1984: America's Upbeat Mood "Put on the Willie Nelson record. Turn up Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring. Woody Guthrie will do fine too, and even John Philip Sousa is permissible. The Zeitgeist has turned zesty. The U.S. is at peace, and between rising employment and fading inflation, the economy is aglow. Americans are feeling more sanguine and comfortable about their country than they have felt in two decades. A rebirth of the American spirit, as Carter dearly hoped five summers ago? It sure feels like it." (Sept. 24, 1984) Read More » Today in 1979: Bravo Pavarotti! "Last week Pavarotti was back at the San Francisco Opera, starring in the season's opening production, Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda. Once more there was drama and tumult. Profound tremors again swept through the house. But the intervening decade had made an enormous difference. This time Pavarotti himself was the earthquake., No other tenor in modern times has hit the opera world with such seismic force. At 6 ft. and nearly 300 lbs., 'Big P,' as Soprano Joan Sutherland calls him, is more than life-size, as is everything about him--his clarion high Cs, his fees of $8,000 per night for an opera and $20,000 for a recital, his Rabelaisian zest for food and fun." (Sept. 24, 1979) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB On Display For the Tribune-Review, Paul Guggenheimer has the story of why the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh is covering up a famous—but controversial—121-year-old diorama. What Lies Beneath John Briley got an up-close look at history with a scuba-diving trip off the coast of North Carolina to explore the wreck of a World War II tanker, and has the details for the Washington Post's travel section. Broadcast News New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo has a suggestion that should appeal to anyone interested in history: add some perspective to today's news by watching TV from the past. Official Response The American Historical Association has issued a statement in response to President Trump's backing of a "patriotic" American history curriculum. You can read it here. Change Afoot Richard Fisher at BBC Future explores the idea that future historians might look back on today as a "hinge" moment, and considers arguments for and against the idea that we're living through a turning point.

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