| Chapter 7: | The Schools |
learning would “mitigate the Italo-American sense of inferiority by gaining for the Italian student and Italian group, social and ethnic status and probably a decrease in discrimination through the concept of the cultural worth and prestige of Italian civilization.” Franklin High had other minority students as well and their needs had to be met too. Franklin was considered by its founders as a “fluid, experimental school and must have its entire personnel saturated with the spirit of experimentation and willingness to be anything and do anything for boys.” Teacher education programs at New York University and Columbia University were initiated under the direction of Covello to meet the needs of the high school. Covello became a teacher, he wrote me years later, because “books were a passion with me.” In 1972 Covello joined the Sicilian social reformer Danilo Dolci to work as a consultant with Dolci’s Center for Study and Action in Western Sicily. Covello died in Sicily in 1982.23 I was influenced by that “passion” for books. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Franklin graduate, may have been influenced by the liberal political philosophy that guided Covello, Marcantonio and LaGuardia.
Fiorello LaGuardia was elected to the Congress in 1916 representing lower Manhattan, but he became a national figure in the 1920’s when he represented East Harlem in the Congress. He supported a liberal program of social reform, including equal rights for women, old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, workmen’s compensation, public housing and an end to child labor. The Norris-LaGuardia Act prevented the use of antilabor injunctions. He took office as mayor of New York City in January 1934 taking