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Threats. With all sides in an uproar, Lisser, buoyed by teacher support, said he wanted to withdraw his resignation. Donovan accepted the withdrawal, and pleased teachers reported for work. Negro leaders charged that they had been "doublecrossed," tried to block Lisser's entry into the school, fought with police.
Some of the nation's top Negro radicals eagerly jumped into the dispute. Stokely Carmichael, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, showed up with his black panther sweater and a sign: IN THE SOUTH, IN
THE NORTH, WHERE IS JUSTICE? Harlem CORE Leader Roy Innis threatened violence. "If I were Mr. Lisser, I would not come here—it might not be safe for him." But 453 out of the 560 enrolled children finally entered I.S. 201 past pickets who shouted "Uncle Tom!" at Negro teachers.
The irony of I.S. 201 is that educators have long urged neighborhoods to take a greater interest in schools—but the interest in 201 had degenerated into a mere concern about color. This was discrimination in reverse, and a precedent civil rights groups would hardly endorse elswhere. As New York's highest Negro school official, Assistant Superintendent Margaret S. Douglas, put it: "All our civil rights organizations" would fight "if the situation were reversed and white parents in a white school were turning down a Negro principal just because he was Negro."