Tom Roderick

Tom Roderick agreed to be interviewed as part of the Judson Memorial Church Oral History Project. Born in Akron, Ohio in 1942, Mr. Roderick lived in Akron for ten years and then moved with his family to Silver Lake, an affluent suburb of Cuyahoga Falls. After graduating from Cuyahoga Falls high school, Mr. Roderick attended Yale college. At Yale, Mr. Roderick became involved with the Northern Student Movement, originally begun as a northern partner to the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC. Mr. Roderick's work with the Northern Student Movement running tutoring programs in poor neighborhoods eventually led to his migration to New York City where he attended Bank Street graduate school, taught elementary school in Harlem and ultimately founded the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility.

• Becoming Aware of the World

Tom Roderick's life story is rooted in his midwestern upbringing, a Norman Rockwell childhood viewed by Mr. Roderick with ambivalence. At Yale, Mr. Roderick became involved with the Civil Rights movement for the first time and this involvement underscored his understanding of his sheltered childhood.




And then I became aware of all the things going on in the world. You know, William Sloane Coffin was the chaplain there and he was very inspiring and he preached about the Civil Rights Movement and organized activities for students to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement and I got involved in the Civil Rights Movement at Yale. There was an organization there called Northern Student Movement that was started by a Yale dropout, Peter Countryman and I got involved in the Northern Student Movement. You know I was this very shy, naive, nerdish, Middle-western guy. Again, I mean I'd grown up, it was just like baseball, turkey, apple pie, the Presbyterian Church, the policeman is your friend, you know the whole thing which... And in some sense you know, Norman Rockwell was really true for us. The only black people I'd had any contact with were cleaning ladies quote unquote that my mother would have. There weren't any black people, in fact there was only one Jewish family in Silver Lake and the Catholic families lives on the other side of the lake. (Laughing) So you know, it was a waspy, waspy place. And I was pretty sheltered, but I knew that, not even consciously, but I knew there was something missing in our life.

• Understanding Activism

During his Junior year at Yale, Tom Roderick devoted his energies to organizing a tutoring program in associaiton with the Northern Student Movement. Over the summer between his Junior and Senior years at Yale, Mr. Roderick organized a similar tutoring program in Akron, culminating in a party at his parents' home in Silver Lake. I asked Mr. Roderick whether he had a sense that he would want to pursue similar work professionally and his answer illuminated his understanding of activism at that time.



(Adina: Did you have a sense then that, that this was an interest to pursue, or did you have a sense at all that it could be the start of some kind of professional career? Was there any sense, in your thinking at that time, that there was a separation between those things, or was it just what you were doing?) Yeah, I think so, uh. But, I don't think I was thinking about careers so much, because at that time it seemed like "the times, they were a-changin'" you know and the uh, and maybe all bets were off. Maybe you didn't have a career anymore. Maybe you just spent your life changing society or (laughs) throwing yourself into the movement or whatever...

• Coming to New York

After a "disasterous year" spent working for the Northern Student Movement's tutoring program in Philadelphia, Tom Roderick came to New York City. For Mr. Roderick, Greenwich Village in the 1960s was the perfect place to be.




When it came time to come to New York thought, I had heard about Judson Church, and somehow I had found out that they had a student house. So I remember going and being interviewed by Howard Moody, the minister, and being selected to live in the student house. And at that time, Bank Street College was on Bank Street in the Village. Bank Street was a wonderful experience. At that time it was very fashionable for young people to go into urban education. So I lived in the Judson student house and went to Bank Street and that was a wonderful decision because I had sort of a built in group of adult mentors and young people my age and I was living in the Village which was like I had died and gone to heaven, it was like my dream... it was just the romantic 60s place to be. We would come down, we would go from coffee house to coffee house hearing folk music... It was just Bohemian, it was just so exciting a place to be, and it felt so adult and off the straight midwestern track to be up all night on the street...

• An Educational Community

Launched at Judson House and Bank Street in the Village, Tom Roderick went on to work for the East Harlem Block Schools, an experiment in community-controlled education that provided him an opportunity both to contribute to and learn from a strong New York City community.



So I came to New York in '65, went to Bank Street '65-'66, taught for two years, '66 to '68 and, then in '68 I decided to interview for a position at the East Harlem Block Schools. Now this was a parent-controlled, store-front school that was outside the public system. And they had a first grade-- the parents had not liked the teachers they hired for the first grade-- and now they'd moved up a grade, so now they had a first and second grade, the school was growing up sort of with their kids. They'd started as nurseries but when the kids were old enough to go to elementary school, they wanted to start an elementary school. So anyway, they hired me, and so I then left the public schools and went over to East Harlem where I then spent the next seven years building that into uh, an eight grade elementary school outside of the public system. And that was really where I found my most solid, important community in the city.