ABSTRACT
New York City's worst racial incident within the public school system in the immediate postwar period erupted on September 27, 1945, at Benjamin Franklin High School, an all-boys school located on Pleasant Avenue between East 114th and 116th Streets in Italian Harlem. This chapter recreates the intercultural and interracial educational events and presents the remarkable campaign. One month later, when America's most famous Italian American, Frank Sinatra, visited the school—that healed the racial breach caused by the racial incident and restored the reputation of the school, its principal, and the Italian Harlem community. Leonard Covello, New York City's first Italian American high school principal, had gained national recognition for his leadership as the founding principal of Benjamin Franklin High, which was widely viewed as an experimental community for the implementation of Covello's educational philosophy.
