Browse Items (12 total)

This is a photo of Rita Schwerner a founding member of Downtown CORE and the the wife of Mickey Schwerner. She also worked on the Mississppi Freedom Project.

Originally an English major at Queens College/CUNY, she went on to get a J.D. From…

This is a photo of Mickey Schwerner, founding member of Downtown CORE on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

He was also one of the three field workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in the summer of 1964 for his civil…

This is a 1964 photo of a Downtown CORE rent strike demonstration in front of 125 North St., Manhattan. The CORE members here are currently unidentified.

This is a May 26, 1964 photo of Downtown CORE member Patricia Newman (holding sign) and other CORE members being arrested. They had been staging a sit-in at the office of Building Commissioner Harold Birns.

The other members of CORE here are…

This is a still image of Downtown CORE member Bell Gale from the documentary 'Eyes on The Prize'. She is shown here in Mississippi working in the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) office for the Freedom Summer Project of 1964.

An…

This is an early 1970’s photo of Downtown CORE member Chris Sprowal. His personal story speaks to what Dr. Nishani Frazier identifies as the transformative nature of CORE.

Originally from Philadelphia, Sprowal had been locked up on several…

This is a photo of Chris Sprowal on the cover of the November 1986 issue of the news magazine, City Limits. By the early 1980’s, a failed marriage ultimately led him to return to Philadelphia, drug addiction and homelessness.

Rather than stay…

This is a 1971 photo of Downtown CORE member Barbara Pliskow (dark hair, in handcuffs). In the photo she has been arrested for trying to hijack an airplane at a Detroit airport. The action was done in order to free two members of the Black Panther…

This is a 1936 yearbook photo of Downtown CORE member Betsy Wyckoff. The future Dr. Elizabeth Wyckoff, PhD, was at the time a senior at Bryn Mawr college where she graduated magna cum laude.

The daughter of Dr. John H. Wyckoff, a prominent…

This is a 1961 photo of Dr. Elizabeth Wyckoff as a Freedom Rider. Known as Betsy, she was fined $200, sentenced to two months and served time in Parchman prison after being arrested in Jackson, Mississippi and convicted for ‘breach of the…