Nice white parents is made by serial productions and brought to you by the New York Times.

I want to take you back to a time when a group of idealistic people, feeling hopeful about

the future, about America, threw themselves into the fight for racial integration.

It was 1963 and New York City was planning to build a new school right next to a housing

project, where the students would be almost entirely black and Puerto Rican.

These white parents came in and said, no, no, no, no, don't build it there.

Put it closer to the white neighborhood.

That way all our kids can go to school together.

They were dogged these white parents, lobbying the city at meetings, writing letters, saying

don't build it there, it will inevitably be a segregated school.

And we want our kids to mix with black and Puerto Rican kids from the projects.

It's a decade after Brown v. Board of Education, they said, schools should be integrated.

There's an archive filled with letters where the parents wrote things like, we don't want

our white children to be part of some, quote, small white middle income click.

The Board of Education agreed.

Change the entire plan and located the building where the white parents wanted it.

A few years later the school finally opened.

And then, none of them sent their kids there.

I went through this box of letters, called as many parents as I could, not a single

person actually sent their kid to the school.

Not one.

What happened?

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