Introduction

When Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her sit on the bus, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, the civil rights struggle in New York City was already ten years old.

The struggle for civil rights in New York City in the 1940s and early 1950s is often forgotten, but its victories were real and important.

Central to African-Americans’ struggle for civil rights in New York City was public housing.  The Amsterdam Houses play a starring role in that story.

Confined by prejudice to live in a just few of New York’s neighborhoods,  landlords could charge African-Americans more for rent than whites.  For example, in 1940 while most residents of Manhattan paid only 20 percent of their income for rent, Harlemites paid 45 percent (Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight, p. 114)

And so for African-Americans,  equal access to the city’s housing was a matter of racial and economic justice. 

The 1950s saw an explosion of construction in New York City and the surrounding suburbs. The vast majority of this new construction was closed to African-Americans – except public housing.  While the real-estate industry worked to increase racial segregation in both the suburbs and the city, public housing advocates saw the New York City Housing Authority as a way to increase racial integration.  Because in this period the private market denied African-Americans decent homes, public housing was key to securing full citizenship for blacks in New York City.

Race and the Planning of Amsterdam Houses

Whites had driven African-Americans out of a series of New York’s neighborhoods over the course of the 19th century (see the panels on San Juan Hill in this exhibit).  And the pattern was set to continue in 1939 as the New York City Housing Authority planned the Amsterdam Houses in the heart of the San Juan Hill neighborhood.

NYCHA’s plans for integrated public housing interfered with many whites’ ambitions for the neighborhood.  White opposition to the Amsterdam Houses came not only from the Irish and Italian residents bordering San Juan Hill but from New York’s leading citizens groups and religious neighborhoods.

In this 1941 press release, NYCHA addressed its plans for the Amsterdam Houses to provide housing for both blacks and whites. Box 54D5, folder 2, NYCHA collection, La Guardia and Wagner Archives .