Mary Barksdale

Interview Description

Oral History Interview with Mary Barksdale
Mary (Griggs) Barksdale was born in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, in 1931. Her parents were African Americans who had migrated from the southern United States to New York. She lived in the Bronx until the 1960s, when she and her husband bought a house in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. She continues to live in the Starrett City (Spring Creek) section of the neighborhood as of 2014. She was very active in community organizations, such as the United Community Centers and the Council for a Better East New York. She was also a local school board representative and president of the parent-teachers association at her son's school.

In the interview Mary Barksdale discusses her deep involvement in the issues of education and interracial collaboration in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. She relates how she arrived in East New York in the 1960s, as African American and Hispanic families moved in and White families left. Barksdale speaks in depth on her community activism, especially with United Community Centers. She was heavily involved with improving and integrating the neighborhood's schools. She also discusses her childhood and family, internal conflict at United Community Centers, her hopes for the future, and the worrying trends she sees in our current political climate. The interview was conducted by Sarita Daftary-Steel at United Community Centers in East New York.

The collection consists of twenty oral history interviews (with nineteen narrators) conducted by Sarita Daftary-Steel with residents (past and present) of the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. The interviews were conducted between January 2014 and February 2015. The project was designed to capture the experiences of East New York residents who lived in the neighborhood during the period when families of color (African American, West Indian, and Puerto Rican) moved in and White families moved out, and the resulting decline of services and quality of life that followed. This process began as early as the 1950s and continued through the rest of the twentieth century. Sarita Daftary-Steel is a community organizer who worked for United Community Centers from 2003 to 2013, most of those years as the East New York Farms! Project Director.

Citation

Barksdale, Mary, Oral history interview conducted by Sarita Daftary-Steel, March 28, 2014, Sarita Daftary-Steel collection of East New York oral histories, 2015.011.01; Brooklyn Historical Society.