Reflections on Community Development: Stories from Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
Exhibition Dates: February 28 - August 31
“Reflections on Community Development: Stories from Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation” provides a local and national narrative of the rise and importance of community development corporations (CDCs) from their inception during the late 1960s into the present. Using the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, one of the first CDCs in the country, the exhibit will present the story of how federal and state elected officials joined with local community activists, politicians and business leaders to create a truly cooperative public-private partnership whose mandate was nothing short of completely transforming an economically depressed, physically blighted urban community into a vibrant, dynamic, safe, stable place to live and work. Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation became a center for job training, housing development, block rehabilitation, economic development, youth activity, political organization and the arts. It has renovated entire blocks, put thousands of people to work, hosted political forums, attracted businesses to the community, and became a center for the arts and theater. Narrating its auspicious beginnings, struggles, andevolution with oral histories, captivating photographs, and rare documents this exhibit will tell the story of Bedford-Stuyvesant's -- indeed the entire nation's -- daring effort to make real the bold vision of a truly democratic society in the midst of America's crushing urban crisis.
“Reflections on Community Development: Stories from Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation” provides a local and national narrative of the rise and importance of community development corporations (CDCs) from their inception during the late 1960s into the present. Using the 
