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Because of the size of the site, the chapter estimated it would need hundreds of people to maintain picket lines at the site's entrances for the majority of the day, five days a week. Hoping to get their respective congregations involved, BK CORE sought the help of various Black ministers in Brooklyn. The ministers formed their own organization, The Minister's Committee for Job Opportunity. Although an alliance was created between the two groups, in reality they worked mostly as two different groups. Purnell suggests the Ministers were primarily motivated less by selflessness, more by ego and that Brooklyn CORE allowed the ministers to take the lead in the campaign while it continued to go about with its own actions.
BK CORE, for example, was responsible for the press coverage. According to Purnell, the ministers did not want Arnie Goldwag to handle the press relations at first because he was White. They believed that Blacks should be in control of all aspects of the campaign. Goldwag, however, got the job done where and how the ministers could not.
BK CORE members were also the first to be arrested. Gil Banks was arrested for sitting down in front of a truck on the first day. Both Jerome and Elaine Bibuld were arrested for assaulting the police. Both Bibulds admitted to hitting the cops but only after one of the officers pushed their son Douglas for no reason. While Jerome was released on bail for disorderly conduct and 3rd degree assault, Elaine, pregnant at the time, received ten days for yelling at the judge in court and calling him an Uncle Tom. The sentence may have contributed to the miscarriage she had soon after.
Over the length of the campaign, demonstrators continued to lay down in front of trucks and formed human chains in front of the site's entrances. As many as fifteen hundred people participated in the demonstration at its height. Several BK CORE members were arrested multiple times over the course of the campaign. Approximately seven hundred people in total were arrested, which made it the largest mass arrest for a civil rights demonstration in the history of NYC. The demonstration, just like the ones at the Harlem Hospital site, also included an appearance by Malcolm X who stood on the sidelines, observing but not participating.
Even with arrest of so many members such as Stan Brezenoff, the ranks of BK CORE also swelled with new enlistees. The campaign introduced several members who would go on to become some of the most militant members in the history of the movement in NYC, future BK CORE chairmen Isaiah Brunson and Sonny Carson, as well as Yuri Kochiyama.
Her son, fourteen year old Billy, was arrested as were many other children. Inspired by the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, BK CORE arraigned for at least seventeen other children to sit-in at the site. They were arrested along with the BK CORE members who organized them and charged with endangering the life of minors.
The campaign also started another trend in CORE. BK CORE members stopped a crane shovel from working by climbing all over its base. This tactic evolved as members in other chapters while demonstrating at other sites chained themselves to construction cranes after climbing up them several stories high. This was the case later that fall when Herman Ferguson was arrested with Queens CORE members at the Rochdale Village demonstration and when Gladys Harrington was arrested at New York CORE's demonstration in Foley Square.
The SUNY Downstate Medical Center campaign, which started July 10th, lasted approximately a month. On August 6, the ministers negotiated a deal with Governor Rockefeller. They agreed to end the protests and demands for jobs in exchange for an apprenticeship program and a monitor to report instances of discrimination in the construction industry to the State Division of Human Rights. Brooklyn CORE accused the ministers of selling the campaign out. Even though BK CORE tried to continue the demonstration on its own, it could not muster the necessary bodies and the campaign ended without having achieved its goals.
Intermission 2
On August 15, 1963, the Freedom Walkers,, a group of CORE members primarily from Brooklyn CORE, started from the Downstate Medical Center and walked the two hundred and thirty miles to Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.
The marchers included sixteen year old Larry Cumberbatch, Sylvia Simon, Lena Crosson, Agatha Hassell, Mike Zapata, August Austin, Janet Rose, Sam Johnson, Chuck Killens, Leroy Smith, Milton Saunders, Isaiah Brunson, Kenneth Peterson, the Freedom Rider Joe Adler and Tony Spencer of Harlem CORE. Different newspaper articles state as many as twenty members may have participated while others count as few as fourteen or fifteen members. Some members such as Arnie Goldwag started but never intended to walk all the way down. Once they made it to the great March, the group sat on the platform behind the speakers, a front seat for history.
BK CORE also played a big part in the 1964 citywide school boycotts. It supported the first boycott on February 3, as did national CORE and all NYC CORE chapters. Ollie Leeds sent specific members over to directly work for Milton Galamison, such as fresh out of high school Vivian Casey who worked as Galamison's secretary. Two other BK CORE members, Marjorie Leeds and Mary Ellen Phiffer already worked for Galamison's organization, the Parent's Workshop. Along with New York CORE and Bronx CORE, BK CORE also supported Galamison's second boycott on March 16 even though national CORE did not. Stan Brezenoff was sent by Ollie Leeds to also work for Galamison during the second boycott. Serving as his chief of operations, Brezenoff was referred to in the press as 'Galamison's White henchman'.