PLAYGROUND IN THE HILL

“As their mothers, fathers, neighbors, and grandparents mobilized that summer to fight the “slumlords,” CPI, and the RA, the children of the Hill— many of whom attended the Hill’s Freedom School, as well as weekly HNU meetings with their families—began to see their own stake in collective action. A group of kids, ranging in age from around four to fifteen years old, gathered frequently at the run-down, ill-equipped Hallock Street Park. Sweating one morning, as usual, in the shadeless patch of crooked pavement that passed for a playground, they hatched an idea to force the city to make their park into the kind of space they wanted. That afternoon, transforming the park was the hot topic of conversation at the Freedom School. A petition was drafted by the students, with help from their teachers, demanding repairs, playground equipment, a water fountain, and regular maintenance. They made posters to articulate very specific demands, such as, “We need more swings and a trash can to put the papers and bottles in,” and “They should have lines for the basketball court.” The group then took to the streets of their neighborhood, collecting signatures from children and adults. They marched down Hallock Street to Columbus Avenue, then down Redfield, and back up Congress, collecting signatures along the way. When they returned to the HNU office, they regrouped and fanned out again to hang up their posters in the park and on surrounding streets. The next day, the kids received a visit from the park commissioner...Through the park protest and the successful acquisition of trash cans and swings, the youngest Hill activists learned the potentially direct relationship between collective action and the shape of the physical spaces in and around which they lived.”

A Black, Indigenous, and Latinx People’s History of New Haven and CWYC.org