This Black History Month, RPA would like to recognize the impacts made by Black staff members and board members over the organization’s history.

As we wrote in 2020, the urban planning profession seeks to make better places for everyone. It also has special culpability and responsibility to address racial inequality in the built environment, given the field’s legacy of contributions to racial segregation and disparate impacts in our communities.

Urban planning still does not reflect the diversity of our country and of our region. The first formally trained Black urban planner in the United States, Samuel Cullers, began his work in the early 1950s. Nearly 70 years later, less than 6% of all urban planners in the United States identify as Black, although these statistics also don’t acknowledge the work conducted by stakeholders and community residents who may not have been formally trained but were active in planning for and shaping their communities.

RPA did not significantly broaden the diversity of the organization until the late 1960s, during its preparation of the Second Regional Plan. A major turning point was its 40th anniversary conference in 1969 when NYC Planning Commission Chair Donald Elliott presented Mayor Lindsay’s proposed master plan as part of the conference’s luncheon program.

During the luncheon at the Hilton Hotel, more than 40 individuals protested, including attorney Fritz Alexander, Damu Hassan Shabaka of the Community Coalition, Morris Gant of the Urban League, and Robert (Sonny) Carson of Brooklyn CORE, along with other white, Puerto Rican, and Black activists. RPA tabled the meeting as demonstrators with bullhorns decried the lack of community participation in the drafting of the plan.

The New York Amsterdam News, New York City’s oldest Black-organized newspaper, observed that residents would no longer sit by while others made decisions for them. The New York Times decried the protestors as militants but did agree there was a lack of consultation by the city.

Events like this reaffirmed to RPA the importance of community consultation and engagement, a value that RPA had expressed in earlier initiatives like Goals for the Region and survey work as early as the 1940s. RPA began preparing for more ambitious community engagement projects, discussed in more detail on our Centennial page, and worked to broaden the diversity of its Board of Directors and staff.

Biographies of select Board and staff members are featured below. This is by no means a complete list. RPA will continue to investigate its history and uplift people of color who have contributed to the organization.

1960s

Alexander J. Allen was the Eastern Regional Director of the National Urban League. He was one of the first Black men on RPA’s Board and joined its Executive Committee, which provides strategic direction for the organization, in 1968. Allen was one of the panelists during the 1969 conference described above. The New York Times reported that Allen met with the luncheon protestors to work with them to identify a spokesperson that day. Allen stayed on the RPA Board until the late 1980s and eventually became the Vice President of the National Urban League. He spent his last years in Jamaica, Queens.

1970s

Anthony Callender joined the RPA staff in the early 1970s. As a junior staff member, he worked with cartographer Jerome Pilchman on Transportation and Economic Opportunity, which focused on transit improvements particularly in South Jamaica, Bushwick, and East Tremont.

H. Carl McCall has been a consequential figure in New York politics for many years. As a young man, he served as President of the Inner City Broadcasting Corp and chairman of the editorial board of the Amsterdam News. He joined the Board of RPA in the early 1970s. When RPA was planning its CHOICES for ​’76 project, Carl and others pushed for the creation of the Committee on Minority Affairs (COMA), which he chaired. McCall and Gustav Heningburg recruited Junius Williams, a Newark at­torney, to lead the community engagement work. COMA provided their own background reading and questionnaires for the town halls focused on housing and poverty, distributed fliers, and made many phone calls on a tight timeframe to encourage Black and Puerto Rican residents in the 31-county region to participate in the project. Carl remained on the Board of RPA until the mid-1970s.

John F. Merchant was the former Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Community Affairs and the first Black graduate of the University of Virginia Law School. He joined the RPA Board in 1971. In addition to his role at RPA, John was a member of the Connecticut Advisory Council of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the Higher Education Center for Urban Studies of Urban America. He was also the first Black member of the U.S. Golf Association’s executive committee.

1980s

Verdell Roundtree was Vice President for National Programs of the United Negro College Fund. During her career, she worked as an educator and served on several boards and task forces in New Jersey, including the New Jersey Tax Policy Commission, NJ Transit, the New Jersey Coalition of 100 Black Women, and the New Jersey State Leadership Commission for the Promotion of Education Excellence. Verdell served on the RPA Board and Executive Committee from the early 1970s to the 1980s. She passed away in 1986.

Gustav ​“Gus” Heningburg joined RPA’s Board in the late 1970s and was a member of the Board and the NJ Committee until the mid-1980s. He helped recruit Junius Williams onto the Committee on Minority Affairs for the CHOICES for ​‘76 project. Heningburg has been described as one of the most influential figures in Newark’s history for the past 50 years. Among other achievements, Heningburg is credited with doing more than anyone else to integrate the construction trade in New Jersey. In the late 1960s, he helped negotiate the Newark Agreements — a set of obligations to Newark which guaranteed jobs to people of color during the construction of what is now the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He would go on to become the first President and CEO of the Greater Newark Urban Coalition, which worked to mobilize government, community, and business leaders to solve urban problems. Heningburg passed away in 2019 at the age of 82.

1990s

Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. joined RPA’s Board in 1991 as President of the Bronx Community College and served on RPA’s Board for over 15 years. Earlier in his life, he was a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen and flew 68 successful combat missions. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in Europe during World War II. Dr. Brown’s contributions to the region were many—from his service at the Bronx Community College, the NYU Institute of Afro-American Affairs, the Center for Education Policy at CUNY, to his radio and TV programs. While on RPA’s board, he was an advocate for racial equity and higher education, and made contributions to RPA’s Third Regional Plan. He passed away in 2016 at the age of 94.

Aldrage B. Cooper, Jr., born and raised in the city of New Brunswick, NJ, was the first Black Mayor of the city. In addition to his time as mayor, he served a variety of roles supporting New Brunswick, including Vice President of the Urban League of Greater New Brunswick, President of the City Council, and numerous civil positions. Later, in the 1990s when he was a senior executive at Johnson & Johnson, Al joined the RPA Board of Directors. Al was an active member during the production of the Third Regional Plan until the early 2000s. He passed away in 2016.

2000s

J. Max Bond, Jr. was a renowned architect and planner who was among the first Black graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A civil rights activist and cousin of Julian Bond, Max worked both on international and domestic projects including Harlem’s Schomburg Center and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. He helped start one of the first community design centers, the Architect’s Renewal Committee in Harlem. Before joining RPA’s Board, he provided advice on the Third Regional Plan, particularly on designs for the Far West Side. Max was on the RPA Board in the early 2000s and served on the Executive Committee. During his time on the Board, he advised on several NJ Mayors Institutes, chaired the resource team for the Newark Draft Master Plan, and played a major role in planning the World Trade Center after 9/11 until his death in 2009.

We thank these individuals for their contributions to RPA. Our organization has become more inclusive and community-focused because of them. As we wrote in 2020, the physical fabric of a community is only as strong as the social contracts beneath it. The field of urban planning needs to eliminate the physical and institutional barriers we have created and ensure that everyone in the New York metropolitan region has the opportunity to a full and healthy life and contribute to the shape and form of the built environment.