Series 1: Subject Files, 1950-2007, inclusive

Subject Files principally includes correspondence, newsletters, event announcements (e.g., fliers), directions to demonstrators, photographs, press releases, clippings, and other documents related to Brooklyn CORE's civil rights activism, particularly for the period 1961-1965. The documents in the series reflect actions on a number of fronts. Protests over garbage (Operation Clean Sweep), apartment/housing conditions, traffic, police brutality, and other problems facing the local community are well-represented, especially for the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Actions confronting employment discrimination are included, such as those involving Sealtest, Schaefer, White Castle, construction jobs at Downstate Medical Center, and Ebinger Baking; a copy of the signed agreement with Ebinger Baking concerning hiring of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans is in the series.

The series includes much on protests against de facto school segregation, including actions such as Operation Shutdown and Elaine and Jerome Bibuld's efforts to move their children from an underperforming minority-majority school to a more effective school. The series includes material on the Stall-In, Brooklyn CORE's well-publicized plan to back up traffic at the opening of the 1964 World's Fair as a protest against employment and other forms of discrimination.

Brooklyn CORE's response to national events is also documented. Responses included participation in the 1962 Freedom Highways program (CORE's challenge to segregated facilities), Operation Federal Intervention in Georgia (FIG), and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Local actions, including a call for a Christmas shopping boycott, in response to the church bombing and murder of children in Birmingham are represented. Letters written to editors and others protesting cultural imagery/representations of African-Americans in the press, comic strips, etc. are in the series.

In addition to Brooklyn CORE, other New York-area CORE chapters and organizations, such as the Harlem Parents Committee and the Metropolitan Council on Housing, were involved in the actions of the early 1960s, and the series includes documents related to them as well. Documents from national CORE, such as committee minutes, and national groups, especially the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), are included to a limited extent in the series.

The series also includes files that illuminate the human dimensions of civil rights activism, in the person of Arnie Goldwag. The series includes Goldwag's files of his activism at Brooklyn College in the late 1950s, his mid-1960s readmission and graduation, his selective service (draft) card, draft induction notice, and record of arrests principally during various civil rights actions. The series includes correspondence sent to Goldwag while he was in Rikers Island penitentiary and his reflections on CORE while in prison, as well as other correspondence to Goldwag from friends and family.

The focus of Subject Files on CORE actions centers on the first half of the 1960s; there is little material on CORE actions from later periods. Nevertheless, other local organizations continue to be represented through the 1960s, especially Vietnam War opposition/peace organizations such as End the Draft (ETD) and Committee for Peace Organization (CPO). Several of ETD's newsletter, downdraft, and CPO's newsletter, ergo, are in the series. Many documents relate to the military draft refusal trial of David Henry Mitchell, including End the Draft's downdraft commentary. Mitchell's lawyer was Conrad J. Lynn, the African-American civil rights attorney; Lynn also represented Goldwag in at least some of his legal matters, so documents prepared by Lynn on Goldwag's behalf are in the series. Nonetheless, with some exceptions, such as material related to Major Owens's 1986 congressional campaign, the series holds very little material from the 1970s and 1980s. Picking up in the 1990s and 2000s, the series includes memorials, tributes, obituaries, reminiscences, historical research papers, interviews, reunions, and other such material as Goldwag and other former CORE activists reflected back on their 1960s activism.

The series also holds many photocopies of police reports, notably from the New York City Bureau of Special Services, concerning protests, demonstrations, meetings, and other events held by CORE and other organizations in New York throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. These were presumably obtained by Goldwag in the 1990s or later in response to disclosure requests; a copy of at least one such request from Goldwag is in the series. Finally, the series holds a variety of lapel pins and buttons from election campaigns, anti-war demonstrations, union activities, and other matters.