This panel explores how race and class-conscious education (literature and television media), recreation, rehabilitation, and social welfare programs shaped the lives of nonwhite youth and challenged political racial biases and inequities in urban cities like Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and New York City from 1931 to 1979. The paper, “Cultivating Potential on the Street Corner: The Wharton Centre’s ‘Operation’ to Eradicate the “Gang Problem” in North Philadelphia, 1931-1969,” describes how social workers and college-aged volunteers at the settlement house, the Wharton Centre used all-city art and music shows, day camps, and home economics classes to nurture, educate, and rehabilitate youth. Their documented efforts of success proved that juvenile crime arose from poor nurturing and neglect in a society of racial segregation and economic exploitation, not from the nature of their being. The paper, “Towards ‘A Better Racial Understanding’: D.C. Public School Teachers and Black Historical Biographies for Children, 1941-1951,” explores how amid school segregation, overcrowding, and racist curricula in city schools, three Black women D.C. public school educators wrote biographies of famous African Americans for children. They engaged in scholarly debates and sought to promote integration, racial harmony, and Black empowerment through race-conscious literature. Furthermore, their struggle against epistemological injustice for the empowerment of marginalized children and racial justice provides an early model for teachers today. And the paper, “‘A Neighborhood to Identify With’: Sesame Street, the City, and the Contradictions of Fuzzy Liberalism” details how in the midst of the urban crisis, producers of the children’s television show, Sesame Street built an urban, NYC-inspired set to target and educate children living in impoverished, urban communities. The producers, informed by urban idealism, nostalgia, and colorblindness, believed the city could be saved, and the show could be its savior. Furthermore, by reconstructing the discourse between set designers, the city street they built, and their urban and suburban audiences, the paper shows how Sesame Street revitalized the city, both on and off-screen. Together, these paper presentations demonstrate how activists and professionals used community outreach and media to cultivate racial justice and equity for youth in 20th century America.