For 40 years as a progressive legislator in New York State and New York City, Albert Van moved the political center of black from Harlem to Brooklyn and challenged white-dominated democratic machines at his home in Bedford on Friday. died. -Stuyvesant section of the autonomous region. He was 87 years old.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Binta Vann-Joseph.
In particular, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Attorney General Letitia James leader Van were so popular and powerful that they ran for the Democratic primary in 1980. Signing his qualifying petition, he was re-elected to the Legislature on the Liberal Party line alone.
“We are all on the shoulders of leadership,” Mayor Adams said in a statement.
In the mid-1980s, Van was instrumental in driving to register black voters. Nevertheless, in 1985, he lost the Brooklyn Borough President’s primary and tried to form a black-Hispanic coalition to dismiss Mayor Edward I. Koch, but Koch said that year. I was reelected.
However, by 1988, thanks to Mr. Van’s registration campaign, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was the first to run in the Democratic primary in New York City. The following year, David N. Dinkins was elected the city’s first black mayor.
Mr. Van was a catalyst for the economic development of the neighborhood through the Vanguard Urban Improvement Association. He was also the founder of City University of New York at Medger Evers University.
He began his career as an educator. He accused the local school board in Ocean Hill Brownsville, Brooklyn, of the late 1960s, primarily of white teachers, of moving 19 white teachers from the district to violate contractual seniority. At that time, he was an advocate of the voice of community management in public schools.
Ocean Hill was one of three experimental districts in the city that slightly recognized local control over school operations and curriculum, but with local committees and mostly white (and very Jewish) coalitions. There was a fierce and fierce struggle with the Commonwealth over how much control broke out. teacher’s. The conflict resulted in several months of strikes and boycotts and was a major source of tension between the black and Jewish communities in the city.
Van helped organize the African American Teachers Association. The association supported a local board of directors, whose newsletter contained a statement accusing white union members of “exploiting” black students and parents.
The crisis was resolved by compromise. The legislature decentralized the school system, giving community committees like Ocean Hill-Brownsville narrow discretion, and the resurrection of white teachers transferred from the district. Dissatisfied with the contract, Van resigned from his school system and eventually turned to electoral politics.
A relentless critic of police atrocities, Mr Van was often recognized early on as a radical. But as an elected official, he became more dignified, if not less passionate.
“He always fought for equality, but the challenge never bothered him,” former Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter.
“I don’t think I’m an angry young man, other than the fact that I’ve read my history,” Van said in an interview with New York Magazine in 1983. He added: “I know the injustice and inhumanity we had to endure. Obviously, when you know the story, you are angry, and everyone should.”
Albert Van was born on November 19, 1934 in Brooklyn to his parents, who had recently moved from North Carolina to New York on a big move. His parents separated shortly thereafter. His father was Benjamin Palmer. His mother, Nina (McGloan) Van, a former peasant, worked as her maid and in the factory before opening the grocery store.
After graduating from Franklin K. Lane High School, Van served in the Marine Corps from 1952 to 1955, earned a basketball scholarship at the University of Toledo, and graduated with a business degree in 1959.
Returning to New York, uninspired by the department store’s administrative training program, he earned a master’s degree in education from Yeshiva University. (He later earned another master’s degree in coaching counseling from Long Island University.)
He is a public school teacher, coaching counselor, and vice-principal, and ran a college placement program at Long Island University before being elected to the state legislature as a rebel in 1974.
As chairman of Parliamentary Blacks, Puerto Rico, Hispanics, and Asian Legislative Caucus, he oversaw lawsuits leading to more minority representatives in the city council, state council, and parliamentary delegations in New York.
She and Mr Van switched seats after Annette Robinson was barred from seeking re-election to the city council due to term restrictions. She was elected to Parliament and attended the Council from 2002 to 2013.
He was also an instructor at Vassar College’s Urban Center for Black Studies.
Van is survived by his daughter, Slap, and his wife, Mildred (Cook) Van, who married in 1954. The other three children, Foravan, Albert Scottvan and Shannon Clark Anderson. 8 grandchildren. One great-grandson. And his brother, Charles Van.