The Way Will Open

John H. "Jack" Niemeyer was Bank Street College's first "official" president. From 1956-73, during one of the most turbulent political and social eras in America, he led the transformation of a small teacher preparation institution into a thriving center of innovation that influenced American educational policies. McCarthyism was fading but still pungent. Cities were grappling with the impact of the Supreme Court's landmark Brown school desegregation decision. Cold War shadows darkened when the USSR launched the Sputnik satellite. Rapid expansion of American education converged with growing diversity within the nation's population and the crusade for civil rights. John F. Kennedy's election brought new hope for change, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs attempted to fulfill lofty goals. Niemeyer's tenure included the Vietnam War, the Black Power movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other upheavals. Richard Nixon's election in 1968 created new challenges during Jack's final years of leadership. Niemeyer expanded Bank Street's engagement with public schools and introduced new educational ventures, such as the Bank Street Readers. He helped to create the national preschool program Head Start. He was an ardent champion of progressive education, school integration, equal access to educational opportunities, and anti-poverty programs. Idealistic and pragmatic, Niemeyer always believed that with perseverance and ingenuity, as the Quaker quotation said, "The way will open."
About the Author: John Borden has been a member of the Bank Street College community since 2004. He was the chief advancement officer (fundraising, alumni relations, and communications) until 2015, and retired from Bank Street in 2016. Previously, he held similar roles at several universities (Adelphi, Columbia, and Yale) as well as at Teachers College, St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He began his working life as a program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born and bred in Baltimore, where he met his wife Marian, John has lived in Washington, DC, New Haven, and since 1981 in Larchmont and New Rochelle, NY. Marian and he have been blessed with four adult children and five exceptional grandchildren. John has a bachelor's degree from Franklin & Marshall College and a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins University. He sees his work in development as an important component of institution building and felt an immediate connection to the challenges that Jack Niemeyer faced and his approach to building Bank Street into a significant player in public education in the U.S. John enjoys reading history, especially biographies by Scott Berg, Robert Caro, Ron Chernow, Joseph Ellis, and David McCullough. Their impressive work encouraged him to pursue this project on Jack Niemeyer.