An Historic Day in Harlem: 2007

This Black History Month 2023 we look back at the opening of a landmark educational institution spearheaded by the late civil rights leader, educator, and pastor of Abyssinian Baptist church, Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III. This is a picture of the opening of Thurgood Marshall Training Academy for Social Change in Central Harlem in 2007, one of several secondary and elementary schools founded, funded, and operated by the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC). ADC spearhead the development of the first public high school to be built in Harlem in over 50 years. The school complex is named after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a former Harlem resident and legendary attorney who helped craft legal arguments that overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine on legal grounds, thus de-segregating the nation’s schools and ushering in equality of opportunity under the law in the U.S.A. The Thurgood Marshall Academy is a public middle and high school. Pictured below from right to left are Rev. Butts, Caroline Kennedy, Thurgood Marshall’s widow Cecilia “Cissy” Suyat, and attorney Ted Shaw who was General Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

(photo © D-Day Media)