A third generation New Yorker who has lived in Oregon since 1991, Sylvia Hart Wright holds degrees from Cornell, Columbia and New York University. For five years during the Sixties she lived in Berkeley where she was active in the nonviolent anti-war movement. In 1963, she shuttled east briefly to participate in the fabled event where Martin Luther King made his “I have a dream” speech.
During the 1966-67 academic year Wright lived in Panama with her then husband, a zoologist. When that marriage foundered, she moved back to New York with their son and soon landed a job as librarian with a pre-college program for disadvantaged young people; these included a cadre of Black Panthers. Here she set up and headed a collection which attracted national attention for meeting the needs of the program’s often alienated students. Meanwhile she started work on a master’s in sociology. Articles of hers based on this library experience appeared in major educational journals and her master’s thesis, Black Youth, Black Studies and Urban Education, was published as a monograph.
After this pre-college program shut down, Wright moved on to the City College of New York (CCNY). From 1976-1991, she headed the library of CCNY’s School of Architecture and Environmental Studies. While there she authored Highlights of Recent American Architecture (1982) and Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture (1989) and rose to the rank of full professor. She won several academic awards and grants and was listed in Who’s Who of American Women and Who’s Who in the East.
