Nice White Parents - Ep. 3: ‘This Is Our School, How Dare You?’

Nice White Parents - Ep. 1: The Book of Statuses

Serial - Nice White Parents - Ep. 2: ‘I Still Believe in It’

White parents in the 1960s fought to be part of a new, racially integrated school. Where’d they go?

Nice White Parents - Ep. 2: ‘I Still Believe in It’

From cereal and the New York Times, this is Nice White Parents, episode two.

The New York City Board of Education has an archive of all of its records.

Everything that goes into making thousands of schools run for years and years

is sitting in boxes in the municipal building.

First of all, to look through it, you have to go to a century old municipal building downtown.

Arch doorways, lots of marble and echo, vaulted ceilings.

It really makes a person feel like she's up to something important.

You sit at a table and then a librarian rolls your boxes up to you on the cart.

Inside the boxes are all the dramas of a school system.

Big ones, tiny ones, bureaucratic, personal, it's all in there.

There's a union contract and then a zoning plan.

And special reports on teacher credentialing, a weird personal note from a bureaucrat to his assistant.

A three-page single-space plea from Cindy's grandmother,

who would please like for her not to be held back in the second grade.

An historian friend once pulled a folder out of the archive and a note fell out.

Something a teacher clearly made a kid write in the 1950s that read,

I came to the board of Ed archive after I attended the gala, thrown by the French Embassy.

The fundraiser for SIS organized by the new upper class white families coming into the school.

I felt like I just watched an unveiling ceremony for a brand new school,

Serial returns with a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in Guantánamo’s evolution, who know things the rest of us don’t about what it’s like to be caught inside an improvised justice system.

Serial Productions makes narrative podcasts whose quality and innovation transformed the medium. “Serial” began in 2014 as a spinoff of the public radio show “This American Life.” In 2020, we joined the New York Times Company. Our shows have reached many millions of listeners and have won nearly every major journalism award for audio, including the first-ever Peabody Award given to a podcast.

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0:00.0	From cereal and the New York Times, this is Nice White Parents, episode two.
0:06.0	The New York City Board of Education has an archive of all of its records.
0:10.0	Everything that goes into making thousands of schools run for years and years
0:14.0	is sitting in boxes in the municipal building.
0:18.0	I love the B.O.E. archive.
0:21.0	First of all, to look through it, you have to go to a century old municipal building downtown.
0:27.0	Arch doorways, lots of marble and echo, vaulted ceilings.
0:32.0	It really makes a person feel like she's up to something important.
0:35.0	You sit at a table and then a librarian rolls your boxes up to you on the cart.
0:40.0	Inside the boxes are all the dramas of a school system.
0:44.0	Big ones, tiny ones, bureaucratic, personal, it's all in there.
0:47.0	There's a union contract and then a zoning plan.
0:50.0	And special reports on teacher credentialing, a weird personal note from a bureaucrat to his assistant.
0:56.0	A three-page single-space plea from Cindy's grandmother,
1:00.0	who would please like for her not to be held back in the second grade.
1:04.0	An historian friend once pulled a folder out of the archive and a note fell out.
1:09.0	Something a teacher clearly made a kid write in the 1950s that read,
1:13.0	quote,
1:14.0	I am a lazy boy.
1:35.0	I came to the board of Ed archive after I attended the gala, thrown by the French Embassy.
1:40.0	The fundraiser for SIS organized by the new upper class white families coming into the school.
1:46.0	I felt like I just watched an unveiling ceremony for a brand new school,
	...

Nice White Parents - Ep. 2: ‘I Still Believe in It’

Serial

Serial Productions & The New York Times

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