Leslie Beth Ribovich's "Without a Prayer"

Leslie Ribovich is an educator and scholar of American religion, race, and education. She is the Director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Public Policy & Law at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

Ribovich applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools, and reported the following:

Page 99 of Without a Prayer analyzes how the 1958 final report of the New York City Board of Education’s Commission on Integration articulated the Board’s understanding of integration as a value in what the Board called its Judeo-Christian tradition. The Board established the Commission following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. On page 99, I explain that while “the Commission’s recommendations could have contributed to desegregation, had they been acted upon,” a close reading of the report shows that “the Board’s version of integration, the value, involved researching, meeting, and discussing, but not necessarily desegregating.” I also discuss how the report refers to “residential segregation,” but does so without mentioning redlining or other discriminatory practices that led to residential segregation. The page concludes by referring back to a quotation from the final report, citing the Board’s reaction to Brown, that appears on page 97 of Without a Prayer in which the Board said that Brown was “a legal and moral reaffirmation of our fundamental educational principles.” Page 99 explains that “Although the report offered possible actions, because of lack of funding, it ultimately described a value, not an action, and a value that did not require action. The value mythologized the new tradition, Judeo-Christianity, and rendered change unnecessary. In moments of fleeting togetherness, the schools already enacted integration as a moral value.”

This page provides an excellent concrete example of the book’s argument as it addresses how the failure of schools to desegregate happened alongside the persistence of liberal religion in New York City public schools. Someone reading this page alone would get a clear sense that New Yorkers debated the meanings of integration and desegregation and that New York City was home to segregated schools where a centralized Board of Education supported particular religious values. They might also want to know more about the Judeo-Christian tradition the Board cultivated.

The book is structured in three parts to show that while we don’t often think of secularization relating to race and desegregation as relating to religion, in fact, these processes and structures intersect. The first two chapters fall under “Secularization | Race,” the second two under “Desegregation | Religion,” and the final two under “Purposes of Public Education.”

Page 99 comes from chapter 4, “Conflicting Religious Visions of Integration” in Part II. The chapter shows that the Board framed integration as a positive value in what its president called “the morality of our American heritage and of our Judaeo-Christian tradition” (p. 94) in 1963, as schools were supposed to be removing religion due to U.S. Supreme Court cases declaring school prayer and Bible-reading unconstitutional. Yet, New York City schools remained segregated. Instead, the Board supported what I name on page 99 “fleeting moments of togetherness,” such as multicultural celebrations, in which “the schools already enacted integration as a moral value.” At the same time, Black and Puerto Rican communities presented their own visions of integration, some of which included the act of desegregating. For instance, the top of page 99 mentions two major Black Civil Rights Movement figures who served on the Commission, Ella Baker and Kenneth Clark, who held this view of integration. Elsewhere in the chapter and book, I describe Black New Yorkers who adopted narratives of Black redemption in the U.S. nation, as well as Pan-African theologies that rejected public schools in service of new, Black publics.

The Commission’s final report also informs my ongoing research. With a demographer and ethicist, I am working on comparing this 1958 report to a 2019 report on integration in New York City schools to identify what problems and proposed solutions remain consistent and which differ over 60+ years.

Visit Leslie Ribovich's website.

--Marshal Zeringue