Elsie Richardson

Elsie Richardson (February 24, 1922 – March 15, 2012) was a community activist and civil servant in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for founding the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council and contributing to the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, created after she advocated to Robert F. Kennedy.

Early life and education Elsie Eugenia Richardson (née Maynard) was born on February 24, 1922, on the Upper West Side to George and Albertha Maynard. Her parents had immigrated from Nevis in 1911, and raised their four children in East Harlem. They were also followers of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and instilled in Richardson a sense of community and pride in her identity. In 1941, she participated in the Harlem bus boycotts organized by Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

Through the National Youth Administration agency and the help of African-American attorney Simon N. Hillman, Richardson got her first job as a secretary. After the outbreak of World War II, she moved to Washington D.C., where she worked as a secretary for the Office of Defense Transportation, and advocated for more employment opportunities for secretaries of color to U.S. senators James M. Mead and Robert F. Wagner. The couple moved into Albany Houses, a public housing project in Crown Heights. She worked as a secretary at a public school, but also became an active community organizer. In addition to doing youth outreach at the Stuyvesant Community Center, Richardson held a leadership role in the Albany Houses' Tenant Association, whose advocacy work led to the creation of the St. John's Recreation Center, the Crown Heights Health Center, and Public School 243. Left without political power, Black residents created community networks in the form of civic groups, churches, civil-rights organizations, block associations, and parent-teacher associations.

Richardson and the other women from the CBCC faced animosity from R&R chair Thomas Russell Jones and Sonny Carson, both Black men that Kennedy hoped would connect the newly formed BSRC to the male youth of the neighborhood. Jones and Carson felt the women's leadership roles were emasculating, and ultimately R&R was dissolved; while Coursey joined the board of BSRC, Richardson and the other women returned to their work with the CBCC.

The Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation was responsible for the creation of community resources including the Kosciusko Pool, Medgar Evers College, the Billie Holiday Theater, Restoration Plaza and the Pratt Center for Community Development.

Death and legacy In 1998, Richardson was honored by the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation for her work, and by the New York City Commission on Human Rights in 2010. In 2008, she participated in an oral history project with the Center for Brooklyn History, and in 2023, she was featured prominently in an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York.

Richardson died in Brooklyn on March 15, 2012, at the age of 90.