by Gerald Meyer

New York City's worst racial incident in the immediate postwar period erupted on September 27, 1945 at Benjamin Franklin High School, an all-boys school located on Pleasant Avenue between East 114th and East 116th Streets in Italian Harlem.

This, the most Italian Little Italy, which in 1940 had approximately sixty thousand Italian Americans, occupied an area of East Harlem from East 96th Street to East 125th Street from Madison Avenue to the East River. Its enrollment included 1,162 students, 37 percent of whom were Italian American, 13 percent African American, 9 percent Puerto Rican, and 41 percent "Other" that included a large number of Jewish students. 

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Source: http://www.politicalaffairs.net/