Latif, Wadiya: Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation oral histories: NYU Special Collections Finding Aids

Scope and Contents

In this interview, Wadiya Latif, a long-time employee of Restoration, shares memories from Restoration's earliest years. She remembers the Home Improvement Program and the mortgage pool, officially named the Restoration Funding Corporation. Latif recalls Restoration's loss of funding from the Special Impact Program, and describes the organization's evolving goals as it navigated a new reality of reduced federal funding, including a period of layoffs. Latif recounts the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn's culture circa 1971, an accidental shooting that left her son paralyzed, her conversion to Sunni Islam, and discusses the lives of her three children. At the interview's end, Latif reflects on the importance of voting and healthy political leaders, particularly at the highest levels of government. Interview conducted by Sady Sullivan.

Biographical / Historical

Wadiya Latif was born in 1947 in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in the Crown Heights and Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn, where she worshipped at the Presbyterian church, and attended P.S. 167, Walt Whitman Junior High, and Erasmus Hall High School. Both of Latif's parents were school teachers; her father rose to serve as the superintendent after whom Brooklyn's Walter Weaver Elementary School (P.S. 398) was named. Latif attended the historically Black Hampton University (also her mother's alma mater). As an adult Latif became employed at Restoration in January 1971, when its headquarters were still located at the Hotel Grenada. At the time of the interview, Latif worked as Restoration's commercial leasing manager with responsibility for Restoration Plaza.

Conditions Governing Access and Use

Access to the interview is available onsite at the Brooklyn Historical Society's Othmer Library and online on the Oral History Portal. Use of the oral histories other than for private study, scholarship, or research requires permission from BHS by contacting library@brooklynhistory.org.

Subjects

Organizations

Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation

Topics

Places

Bedford-Stuyvesant (New York, N.Y.); Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)

Latif, Wadiya, 2008 January 7, inclusive