What's Happening: An Independent Student Voice Collection

In the Summer of 1965, under the aegis of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited-Associated Community Teams (HARYOU-ACT), the New Lincoln Freedom School hired several teenaged teaching assistants to support summer learning programs. These teaching assistants, supervised by J.H.S. 120 Social Studies and Black History and Culture teacher Elaine Avidon, met each morning of the program to discuss their classroom experiences as well as their personal lives, social issues, and politics. By the summer’s end, six of these teaching assistants, accompanied by Elaine Avidon, decided to travel to Washington, D. C. to attend an anti-war demonstration hosted by the Congress of Unrepresented People (later the Alliance of Unrepresented Peoples).

Motivated by a desire to share their experiences with other teenagers, the students decided to write and publish their own paper. In the final weeks of the HARYOU-ACT summer program, they put together the first issue of their publication, titled, What’s Happening: A Newspaper in Which the Teenagers of New York Express Their Views. As discussed by the paper’s managing editor, Patricia Gordon, in volume 1, issue 5 of What’s Happening, the racial harassment and police brutality the students experienced and witnessed at the August demonstration inspired them to cover topics such as civil rights, race relations, anti-war demonstrations, as well as local issues. 

Originally meeting and operating out of their advisor Elaine Avidon’s apartment, the editorial staff, comprised of Frank E. Campbell, Sandra Fields, Ruth Brown, Catheryn Munnlyn, Otto Grant, and Patricia Gordon, borrowed a typewriter and a mimeograph machine to create an uncensored, student-run publication. They sold subscriptions to the paper at $1.00, while keeping copies free for New York City teenagers. By October of 1965, the paper had one-hundred paying subscribers and expanded its operational capacity to support increased production and distribution by adding ten new student members to their staff, including Donald Morgan, Maurice Jackson, Marjorie Reed, and Dorothy Patterson.

Photograph depicting a meeting of What's Happening staff members. From Series 1, Box 3, Folder 24. Please note that the above image has been altered to remove offensive language. 

Demand for What’s Happening increased throughout 1966, and copies of the magazine reached readers across the United States as well as in Italy, but the staff struggled to fund the publication. By the fall of 1966, the newspaper changed its name to What’s Happening?: An Independent Student Voice, and pursued a more literary focus, showcasing the poetry, short stories, essays, and artwork of teenagers from across New York City. That same fall, Herbert R. Kohl, the founding director of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative, provided What’s Happening with a new office space at the Macy Annex 253 at Teachers College, allowing twenty-three new members, including Nick Levinson, Dewey Higgins, Conrad Graves, Ernestine Graham, and Alvin Curry, to join the editorial staff. 

By 1967, What’s Happening had reached readers in Czechoslovakia (known as the Czech Republic, or Czechia, and Slovakia since 1992), Ghana, and Peru. As the magazine expanded distribution and circulation, media attention increased, and outlets such as WDNT and WBAI hosted segments featuring poetry published in What’s Happening. Additionally, the magazine boasted notable subscribers and readers such as Langston Hughes, Frank W. Cyr, Marylin Stasio, Phyllis Dolgin, Stephen M. Joseph, and Nancy Larrick. That May, the National Self-Government Foundation awarded What’s Happening a $200 grant, which allowed staff to purchase an electric typewriter. In the spring of 1967, members of What’s Happening were also invited to Brandeis University to read their poetry, talk art and politics, and fundraise. The Brandeis trip became a yearly activity until the magazine ceased production in 1970. 

Once again, in 1968, What’s Happening underwent a significant change by incorporating itself into its own company (What’s Happening: An Independent Student Voice, Incorporated). Timothy J. Engel served as the business manager, while the company’s board included Herbert R. Kohl and Clarence Major. The incorporation allowed the magazine to expand its operations and increase its programming, despite its dwindling funds. By May of 1968, What’s Happening had grown from a ten-page publication with an initial circulation of around 500 to a fifty-page magazine with a circulation of around 2,500. Membership had grown from six student members to approximately forty. With the increased staff, including poet Sharón (Ida) Boone, college counselor Carmen M. Martínez, and writing assistant Linda Boyd, What’s Happening grew into a community and a resource that offered writing and drama workshops, peer tutoring, and college counseling. The magazine, as well as its student writers and editors, captured something of the zeitgeist of 1960s America, inspiring writers like Stephen M. Joseph to include poetry from What’s Happening in anthologies such as The Me Nobody Knows: Children's Voices from the Ghetto. Look magazine also published a feature on the student publication. 

Between 1968 and 1969, Sharón Boone, Frank Campbell, Jamie Collazo, Timothy J. Engel, Conrad Graves, Nick Levinson, Carmen M. Martínez, Betty McMillan, Donald Morgan, and Stephen Walker worked on several grant proposals in an attempt to secure more funding for the magazine. What’s Happening was awarded $4,200 in grants later that year, a large portion of which came from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. But the funding was quickly spent on supplies and printing. The demand continued to exceed the staff’s ability to supply the magazine to its subscribers.

By 1969, several of the original members had graduated from high school, moved onto college, or started their careers. The former editorial staff passed the magazine onto the next generation: Craig A. Carter and Sharón Boone. Carter and Boone contended with a lack of funding and the loss of their office space, as the Macy Annex was torn down in the spring of 1969. While the new staff secured a storefront in Tiemann Place, the winter 1970 issue was the last issue of What’s Happening ever printed. In its five-year run, the staff produced twenty-two issues and published the writing of approximately 300 adolescents from across the country. Over 100 different students participated in the making of the magazine during its run. Its readership ranged from Canada to New Zealand; it inspired teachers to include student-produced writing in their curricula; and it inspired similar student-run publications in other states. In the years that followed, the members of What’s Happening moved on with their lives and started their careers, while Elaine Avidon continued working as an educator.