A 73-year-old civil rights icon who was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and recently met with President Barack Obama lives in relative obscurity in the South Bronx. NY1's Cheryl Wills filed the following report.
Harry Briggs is not a household name but his family and friends put the 73-year-old on a pedestal.
Briggs lives with his second wife Helen on Westchester Avenue in the South Bronx. The apartment is a shrine to his heroic act dating back to the 1950s - an act that's been depicted in many movies like "Separate But Equal" with Sidney Poitier.
When Harry Briggs Junior was 12 years old he was the first to sign a petition in the segregated school district of Claredon County, South Carolina that demanded equal access to education for black students. Their historic case "Briggs versus Elliot" would become one of five cases merged into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which ruled state-sponsored segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
"Beautiful." That's how Harry Briggs describes his meeting with President Obama in 2014 to mark the 60th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. But a massive stroke has severely impacted his speech.
"He don't have a Ph.D. but he opened the doors for many to get it," said Briggs' brother, Nathaniel Briggs.
A picture in the Bronx apartment shows one of many strategic meetings at St. Mark A.M.E. Church in South Carolina, but 60 years later Harry Briggs is just as fearless as he ever was.
"He's a trooper now he's a fighter," said Briggs' wife, Helen Mack-Briggs.
Shortly after the Brown decision, Briggs left South Carolina for the South Bronx and never looked back. He was just 19. And he has refused to leave his adopted hometown even during the worst of times in the 60s and 70s when the Bronx was literally burning. But true to form, Harry Briggs Junior was never one to back down.