photo of Stanley Brezenoff, Brooklyn CORE, as Deputy Mayor
Dublin Core
Title
photo of Stanley Brezenoff, Brooklyn CORE, as Deputy Mayor
Subject
Brooklyn CORE members
Description
This is a 1984 photo of Brooklyn CORE member Stanley Brezenoff as deputy mayor of New York City.
According to Brezenoff, after he left Brooklyn CORE (BK CORE), he had a hard time finding a job. ‘ No one would hire me… I had been arrested so many times.’ * He couldn’t even get a taxicab license because of interference from NYPD.
After someone in Congressman Adam Clayton Powell’s office made a phone call on his behalf, he got a job in the Parks Department. He got even luckier when Frank Espada, who was in charge of setting up the community corporations and anti-poverty programs during Mayor Lindsay's administration, came to find Brezenoff to hire him. Espada had once been part of a East New York Action, one of the groups Brezenoff and BK CORE trained and taught how to do rent strikes.
He became an acting administrator for the community corporation part of the Community Development Agency within the Human Resources Agency. He then worked for the Ford Foundation during the Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversy and was a program adviser for the NY Urban Coalition. He then began to work his way up the ladder of the Koch administration. In 1978, he was the commissioner for the Department of Employment during which time Rev. Al Sharpton held a Brooklyn CORE type sit-in at his office. After serving as Human Resources Administrator, Mayor Koch made him the head of NYC’s Health and Hospital Corporation.
In 1984 he was made a deputy mayor and eventually the first deputy mayor. Ironically, it was his job was to supervise the day to day operations of the city’s municipal agencies including the police department. Whenever Koch was incapacitated by illness or out of the city for an extended period of time, Brezenoff was the acting mayor. A member of Brooklyn CORE, once considered the most militant civil rights group in a city that saw its members as borderline terrorists, was the de facto leader of New York City. The New York Times referred to him as ‘Mayor’ Brezenoff.
When Mayor Dinkins succeeded Koch, he made Brezenoff the executive director of Port Authority. As such, he was in charge of the World Trade Center and on site during its first bombing in 1993. The New York Times quoted Mayor Dinkins as praising Brezenoff for his efforts.
He is currently the head of the Continuum Health Partners which 'oversees the partnership of four venerable health care providers in New York City: Beth Israel Medical Center, St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals and New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.' **
* Stanley Brezenoff's oral history, Columbia University Oral History Research
** http://www.wehealny.org/whatsnew/releases/brezenoffrelease.html
According to Brezenoff, after he left Brooklyn CORE (BK CORE), he had a hard time finding a job. ‘ No one would hire me… I had been arrested so many times.’ * He couldn’t even get a taxicab license because of interference from NYPD.
After someone in Congressman Adam Clayton Powell’s office made a phone call on his behalf, he got a job in the Parks Department. He got even luckier when Frank Espada, who was in charge of setting up the community corporations and anti-poverty programs during Mayor Lindsay's administration, came to find Brezenoff to hire him. Espada had once been part of a East New York Action, one of the groups Brezenoff and BK CORE trained and taught how to do rent strikes.
He became an acting administrator for the community corporation part of the Community Development Agency within the Human Resources Agency. He then worked for the Ford Foundation during the Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversy and was a program adviser for the NY Urban Coalition. He then began to work his way up the ladder of the Koch administration. In 1978, he was the commissioner for the Department of Employment during which time Rev. Al Sharpton held a Brooklyn CORE type sit-in at his office. After serving as Human Resources Administrator, Mayor Koch made him the head of NYC’s Health and Hospital Corporation.
In 1984 he was made a deputy mayor and eventually the first deputy mayor. Ironically, it was his job was to supervise the day to day operations of the city’s municipal agencies including the police department. Whenever Koch was incapacitated by illness or out of the city for an extended period of time, Brezenoff was the acting mayor. A member of Brooklyn CORE, once considered the most militant civil rights group in a city that saw its members as borderline terrorists, was the de facto leader of New York City. The New York Times referred to him as ‘Mayor’ Brezenoff.
When Mayor Dinkins succeeded Koch, he made Brezenoff the executive director of Port Authority. As such, he was in charge of the World Trade Center and on site during its first bombing in 1993. The New York Times quoted Mayor Dinkins as praising Brezenoff for his efforts.
He is currently the head of the Continuum Health Partners which 'oversees the partnership of four venerable health care providers in New York City: Beth Israel Medical Center, St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals and New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.' **
* Stanley Brezenoff's oral history, Columbia University Oral History Research
** http://www.wehealny.org/whatsnew/releases/brezenoffrelease.html
Source
New York Times, Feb 24, 1984
Rights
New York Times
Collection
Citation
“photo of Stanley Brezenoff, Brooklyn CORE, as Deputy Mayor,” corenyc.org, accessed November 17, 2024, http://corenyc.org/omeka/index.php/items/show/175.