1978 BMCC Students "Invest in Us" March Intercepts a Presidential Visit for Educational Equity

On November 2, 1978, police surveillance cameras set up near Wall and Pine Streets in Lower Manhattan were tasked with monitoring President Jimmy Carter’s political campaign visit. But as national press gathered around the President and city officials, thousands of working-class students from the Borough of Manhattan Community College marched down Broadway from Chambers Street to redirect the spotlight.

Navigating severe municipal austerity and proposed CUNY budget cuts in the wake of New York's 1970s fiscal crisis, Black, Brown, and immigrant students refused to allow public higher education to be treated as a disposable expense. Carrying handmade signs reading "INVEST IN US WE'RE NEW YORK'S FUTURE" and "WE ARE 9000 STRONG WE SHALL OVERCOME," young people transformed a corporate and political photo-op into an urgent demand for community investment.

While institutional cameras monitored the crowd from behind wooden barricades, these students reclaimed the sidewalk. They asserted that budgets are moral documents—and that working-class youth are the true engine of the city's future.

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Why This Story Matters

• People Over Surveillance: Reclaiming police surveillance reels centers the voices, vision, and determination of working-class students rather than the institutional lens that recorded them.
• Education as Community Wealth: BMCC students demonstrated that public higher education is an essential resource for neighborhood mobility and collective progress.
• Connecting History to Present Day: The 1978 demand for fully funded public education directly mirrors current organizing for college accessibility, student debt relief, and municipal investment across Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Brooklyn.

IN THE WAKE TV is a community-centered media platform rooted in New York and New Jersey. Through original storytelling, photography, and curated journalism, we document Black life where it is lived while highlighting the relationships that connect our communities across regions.

The story of 1978 Manhattan is a local history, but its heartbeat belongs to every neighborhood from Newark and Camden to Detroit and Philadelphia, where families continue to reclaim their narrative, protect local resources, and build futures rooted in collective dignity.