A unique group of friends and former classmates got together this week. They were marking a half-century since a watershed moment in local race relations.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Penfield-Madison Exchange. That was a student-driven attempt at temporarily exchanging students from a school in Rochester, Madison High School, that had mostly African American students, with the all-white student body at Penfield High School.
David Honig was a Penfield student leader then and helped come up with the idea which had 25 Madison students attend Penfield for a week, living in the homes of Penfield students, and the following week, 25 Penfield High students attended Madison, living in those students homes.
For the time, in 1967, Honig says this was a big deal.
“We had no idea at the time, the historical significance of it, which was that the school district had desegregated and peacefully and it was the first time in history that had happened upon the initiative of a student group,” he told WXXI News.
Honig says this initiative eventually helped lead to more African American families living in Penfield.
“African-American families were able to feel that it was ok to move there the school was going to be hospitable to their children; the first such family was Dr. Walter Cooper and his family moved there the next year; the Cooper’s son later became president of the student council, other families moved there and life moved on.”
Honig says the exchange program also paved the way for the current Urban Suburban program. He says a number of the teens who took part in that 1967 program have remained friends.
They got together this week in Rochester to celebrate the 50th anniversary.
