November 22, 1965
June 1, 1966
September 21, 1966: Manhattan Country School opens at 7 East 96th Street with 66 students—31 boys and 35 girls. Thirty-three students were on scholarship; 14 of those qualified for the lowest-fee category, paying 10 percent of the tuition. Black and Hispanic children made up a third of the student population.
April 27, 1967: The 167-acre farm was purchased for $24,469.
May 17, 1968: In a segment for the Today show, Barbara Walters says: "Manhattan Country School represents what the American public school was ideally supposed to be but rarely became."
June 14, 1968
January 15, 1969
April 9, 1969
July 28, 1969
February 2, 1970: MCS Black Caucus submits "demands" for increased minority enrollment and faculty and a black studies program
MCS graduates its first class—eight eighth-graders. From Director Gus Trowbridge's graduation remarks to the graduates: "You have had the pride and pleasure of knowing that your place here has been unprecedented and unrivaled, that the path you have traveled has been over fresh ground, you have suffered from having no one ahead of you, no one older to lead the way, no one to take the blame or to warn you of the good places and the hard places that you have had to travel."
September 23, 1971: Erikson writes: "For me, the days at your school have always been a fountain of encouragement.... In the play constructions done, some messages came through with extraordinary force: the messages of being at ease with each other and with the staff; of wishing to express themselves freely, and of wanting at the same time to do a good job at whatever they are doing."
The Ford Foundation funds economic awareness seminars to establish tuition reform at MCS, a system designed to eliminate dual standards. Franklin Roosevelt, MCS parent and trustee: "[Tuition reform] is based on the precept that the school is one community of individuals joined in the common task of educating children... In such a community, the concept of 'tuition' becomes obsolete and the 'scholarship' category also disappears. All parents are treated alike; all are expected to contribute amounts of money which reflect their economic circumstances."
March 20, 1972: The National Association of Independent Schools reports membership's minority enrollment at 5.5 percent; 3.8 percent have blacks in administration. At MCS, 50 percent of students in entering classes are of color, with the same percentage for head teachers and administration.
From Spring 1973 to Spring 1976, MCS' Center for the Advancement of Integrated Education, to promote the move from desegregation to integration, is co-chaired by Kenneth B. Clark. Advisory Board: Julian Bond, Robert Coles, Jack Greenberg, Theodore Hesburgh and Eleanor Holmes Norton.
May 15, 1974: CAIE Conference: "Twenty Years After: Brown v. Board of Education." Speakers: psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Thomas F. Pettigrew.
A textiles studio and nature lab are constructed at the MCS Farm in the building formerly called the Wagon House.
The Ford Foundation funds the publication of Tuition Reform for Private Schools: The MCS Plan, co-authored by Frank Roosevelt and Thomas Vitullo-Martin, who writes, "Tuition reform is better because it doesn't waste subsidies on the wealthy and because it doesn't treat the inclusion of lower-income families as a luxury."
MCS Farm launches Urban/Rural Exchange, matching MCS 9-10s students with Roxbury Central School fourth-graders as pen pals. Farm Director Ginny Scheer: "The school's 96th Street building was chosen to bring together two neigborhoods that would not otherwise have known each other. Similarly, the insistence on a deeply rural location for the MCS Farm has meant that MCS' country program has been in a position to bring together two other worlds, the rural and the urban."
December 4, 1985: MCS Conference on Divestment from South Africa marks the first occasion at which private schools address the option of socially responsible investment policies, and prompts the National Association of Independent Schools to urge member schools to "declare their opposition to apartheid as part of their educational responsibility."
December 16, 1986: In a letter to MCS, Coretta Scott King writes: "You will remember, I am sure, the vision of society that Martin described so vividly in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial—a society where children can simply be and discover the joy of each other. To the extent that you and your students, parents and teachers have remained true to that future not yet seen in society, you are bearers of a vision.... Please convey to all my sense of joy in your history, in your future, and in your celebration of a continuing sense of possibility.
MCS faculty adopts recommendation to teach the Civil Rights Movement as the core of the sixth-grade social studies curriculum.
From the report: "Supporters of independent education usually cite their capacity for innovation and demonstration as a justification for the privileged existence of independent schools in our system; yet, all too often we fail to fulfill our potential for innovation. Manhattan Country School is a shining exception to this tragic generalization, and, for this reason, enhances all of independent education.... Only through the extension of the principles of MCS will we move toward a more just school system and society."
January 17, 1989
The NAACP's Crisis Magazine cites MCS as "New York's only realistically integrated private elementary school."
MCS is awarded a five-year grant of $150,000 from the Greentree Foundation to work with public schools. Michèle Solá is appointed director of the Public School Outreach Program.
January 16, 1990: Coverage of the second annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative March was included on the front page of the New York Times. The march concluded at Gracie Mansion with a greeting from New York City's First Lady Joyce Dinkins. The story also appears in the New York Post, Newsday, The New York Daily News, the Amsterdam News and the Greek American Daily.
"Models That Work," MCS' second conference on multicultural education, co-sponsored with the Lab School, draws more than 300 participants. The event opened with children from MCS and the Creative Learning Community in East Harlem presenting a hand-sewn "Gorgeous Mosaic of Children's Lives and Dreams" quilt to Mrs. Joyce Dinkins, wife of New York City's first black mayor.
MCS receives a planning grant from Beech Street Foundation to develop a model gender equity curriculum.
June 10, 1991: The first Living the Dream Book Award, presented by fifth-graders from MCS and P.S. 151 in recognition of a book that enhances all children's self-esteem and dispels their prejudices toward children of cultures different from their own. Recipient: Phil Mendez for The Black Snowman.
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