The Downstate Campaign

In 1963, a three-week-long demonstration for jobs at the construction site of the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, became one of the most significant and widely publicized campaigns of the civil rights movement in the United States. An interdenominational group made up mostly of locally based African American ministers, who in trade union hiring practices, both of which they believed excluded African Americans from construction jobs.

Inspired by the emergence of African American religious leaders as key figures elsewhere in the civil rights movement, and reasoning that the ministers would be able to mobilize large numbers of people from their congregations and network effectively with other religious leaders throughout the city, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a their political careers and their reputations within their communities for effecting change through established political channels.

The Downstate campaign ended with an agreement between the ministers and both government and union officials. This agreement did not include new legislation or a commitment to a specific numerical increase in jobs for African Americans, as the protestors had demanded. But even though some civil rights activists therefore considered the agreement a model for future ministers who sought to initiate protest actions on behalf of their communities.