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Fern Kruger Oral History

 Collection
Identifier: QMP-0027

Scope and Contents

Fern Kruger reflects on her time as a student at Queens College in the 1960s, as well as the extent of her participation in the Queens College Jamaica Student Help Project. Kruger was a volunteer in the Jamaica Student Help Project, where she was a tutor to young Black elementary school students in Jamaica, Queens. At its height, the Jamaica initiative of the Student Help Project engaged 500 Queens College students who volunteered to tutor more than one thousand educationally challenged, under-resourced students across New York City. In addition to building playgrounds in predominantly Black communities in Long Beach, New York and serving as a tutor to children in Jamaica, Kruger discusses other student-led activist activities on campus that eventually shaped her career as an educator in several cities across the United States.

Dates

  • 2020-11-6

Creator

Access

This oral history is open for research. Media files and transcript can be viewed and/or requested through the Queens Memory Project on Aviary: https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/r/7w6736mg3h. For help using the site, contact QC.Archives@qc.cuny.edu.

Conditions Governing Use

Interview shared under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Users are free to share or adapt the material for non-commercial purposes, as long as they meet the terms of the license. See license details at https://creativecommons.or g/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

Biographical Note

Fern Kruger was born in Harlem, New York to Lillian and Irving Kruger in 1945. Kruger initially grew up in the Bronx but eventually her family moved to Queens while she was young. After attending Flushing High School, Kruger enrolled at Queens College first as a night school student while she worked in Downtown Manhattan as an assistant to an editor of an audio magazine. Later transitioning to a day-time student, Kruger was active on campus, participating in organizations like the Dew Drop Inn Houseplan, the Iota Alpha Pi sorority, and the South Jamaica Student Help Project. In 1962, Kruger began volunteering as a tutor with the South Jamaica Student Help Project which was an educational initiative that served students from under-resourced schools in New York City. Kruger graduated from Queens College in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education. Later, she attended Hofstra University where she received a Master of Arts degree in Educational Psychology. Kruger spent the majority of her career as an educator in private and public schools, teaching children of all ages from pre-school through high school. She also served in administrative and managerial roles in various schools, colleges, and corporations. Kruger is currently retired and lives with her family in New Orleans.

Extent

1 Digital Files ; Duration: 1:15:50

2.22 Gigabytes

Language of Materials

English

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated to Queens College and Queens Public Library by Fern Kruger and Victoria Fernandez in November, 2020.

Related Materials

The following Queens College collections also include records about the Student Help Project in Jamaica, New York and Farmville, Virginia:

Debby Yaffe Papers

Jean L. Konzal Papers

Michael Wenger Papers

Phyllis Padow-Sederbaum Papers

Rosalind (Silverman) Andrews Papers

Stan Shaw Papers

Finding aids to the collections above may be found in the Civil Rights and Social Justice Collecting Area.

Physical Description

Single MP4 file totaling 2.22 GB and 1 hour, 15 minutes, and 50 seconds in duration.

Processing Information

Oral history conducted as part of the Queens Memory Project (http://queensmemory.org), a collaborative program of the Queens Public Library and Queens College to collect stories, images, and other evidence of life in the borough of Queens. This interview was specifically collected for the Student Help: Lived Experience Project.

Creator

Title
Fern Kruger Oral History
Status
Completed
Author
Victoria Fernandez
Date
December 2020
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Repository Details

Part of the Queens College (New York, N.Y.) Special Collections and Archives Repository

Contact:
Queens College Library, CUNY
Benjamin Rosenthal Library RO317
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Flushing 11367 USA us