26 New York City Teachers Union: see Zitron, The New York City Teachers’ Union.
27 dismal physical conditions: Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 214.
28 “cautious and conservative”: Zitron, The New York City Teachers’ Union, 21.
29 vote for candidates affiliated with the American Labor Party: See 1945 issues of the New York Teacher News. Tamiment.
30 “The Union’s Stand”: See New York Teacher News, vol. 1, no. 1, November 1935. Tamiment.
31 Though Dewey’s “new education”: The best review of the evolution (often the nonevolution) of public school pedagogy is Larry Cuban’s How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1880–1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993).
32 Yorkville High School: Abraham Lederman, Teachers Union president, to Superintendent William L. Jansen, June 11, 1954. Tamiment.
33 Irving Adler believed: Irving Adler, “Secondary Education,” New York Teacher 2, no. 3 (April 1937): 11–12. Tamiment.
34 In both Bed-Stuy and Harlem, union activists urged: See “Police, Parents in Joint Program vs. Delinquency,” New York Teacher News, March 11, 1944. Tamiment.
35 1950 union study of city textbooks: Teachers Union of the City of New York, Bias and Prejudice in Textbooks (New York: Teachers Union, 1950). Tamiment.
36 A 1943 TU pamphlet: Teachers Union of the City of New York, Safeguard Their Future (New York: Teachers Union, 1943). Tamiment.
37 Earl Browder led the American communist movement: James G. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997).
38 six thousand members by 1940: Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard, 60.
39 “function of a Communist teacher”: C. P. Trussell, “Bella Dodd Asserts Reds Got Presidential Advisory Posts,” The New York Times, March 11, 1953.
40 378 New York City public school teachers: Ralph Blumenthal, “When Suspension of Teachers Ran Unchecked,” The New York Times, June 15, 2009.
41 Alice Citron was especially celebrated: In Morris U. Schappes, “Free Education on Trial,” Jewish Life, December 1950; and Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, 216.
42 no “proof of any specific classroom act”: Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard, 148.
43 “a teacher who consciously subscribes”: “Report of the Trial Examiner” (In the matter of the trial of the charges preferred by Dr. William Jansen, Superintendent of Schools, against David L. Friedman, a teacher in Public School 64, Manhattan, December 11, 1950), 25–26.
44 Bella Dodd testified: Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard, 223; Adler, Kicked Upstairs, 63; and Trussell, “Bella Dodd Asserts Reds Got Presidential Advisory Posts.”
45 “I love Joe McCarthy”: Adler, Kicked Upstairs, 63.
46 Many purged teachers led illustrious second careers: “Children of the Black List: Robert Meeropol,” Dreamers and Fighters Web site, http://dreamersandfighters.com/cob/doc-meeropol.aspx.
47 Lucille Spence: Senate testimony and FBI file provided by the FBI to author via FOIA request, March 13, 2013.
48 “High school teachers are assembly line workers”: Quoted in Daniel H. Perlstein, Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 19.
49 State law said the five thousand strikers could lose: Richard D. Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 47–48.
50 by 1967, 97 percent: Ibid., 60.
51 David Licorish: Quoted in Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, 216.
CHAPTER SIX: “THE ONLY VALID PASSPORT FROM POVERTY”
1 “I have seen the impossible happen”: David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York : Henry Holt, 2000), 557.
2 Ralph Ellison: Quoted in James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), xiv.
3 “martyrs to integration”: Oliver C. Cox, “Negro Teachers: Martyrs to Integration?” The Nation, April 25, 1953.
4 attacking veteran black educators: Michael Fultz, “The Displacement of Black Educators Post-Brown,” History of Education Quarterly 44, no. 1 (2004): 11–45.
5 “I’m against it”: Johnson, Uplifting the Women and the Race, 89.
6 “The whole matter revolves around”: Zora Neale Hurston, “Court Order Can’t Make the Races Mix,” Orlando Sentinel, August 11, 1955.
7 A decade after the ruling: Weinberg, A Chance to Learn, 93.
8 Except in a few high-profile cases: Ibid., 90.
9 Previous efforts to expand Washington’s influence: See Gareth Davies, See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007).
10 The most lasting Great Society change: For a good review of ESEA, see Irwin Unger, The Best of Intentions: The Triumphs and Failures of the Great Society Under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 119–25.
11 “By passing this bill”: Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks Upon Signing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act” (Johnson City, Texas, April 11, 1965).
12 nine months working as a teacher: Recounted in Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Knopf, 1982), 164—73; Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 65–66; and Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 77–82.
13 “the little baby in the cradle”: Caro, The Path to Power, 168.
14 “a magic cure”: Unger, The Best of Intentions, 335.
15 “wishing there was more I could do”: Lyndon B. Johnson, “Special Message to Congress: The American Promise” (March 15, 1965).
16 A 1971 report: Approaches to Learning Motivation: An Evaluation of the Summer, 1971 ESEA Title I Program of Community School District No. 16, Brooklyn, NY (New York: The Human Affairs Research Center, September 1971).
17 “upset our stomach”: Davis, “Elliott Denies Any ‘Deals,’ ” Tuscaloosa News, September 12, 1966.
18 He announced he would use police power: “Wallace Gives Warning on Negro Teachers,” Miami News, September 10, 1966.
19 “We got bonded”: Eunice Pharr, interview #K-0471, April 12, 2001, SOHP/UNC, 4.
20 “I learned them just like I did”: Cleopatra Goree, interview #U-0030, November 13, 2004, SOHP/UNC, 24.
21 First Ward Elementary School: Frye Gaillard, The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina (Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 144.
22 National Teacher Examination: Fultz, “The Displacement of Black Educators Post-Brown,” 27–28.
23 federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare estimated: Ibid., 37.
24 Willie Mae Crews: Willie Mae Lee Crews, interview #U-0020, June 16, 2005, SOHP/UNC.
25 Heath recalled that the white principal at Glenn was racist: Helen Heath, interview #U-0031, November 13, 2004, SOHP/UNC, 8.
26 “stripped of their excellent teachers”: Ibid., 18.
27 “senile” white teachers: Clifton M. Claye, “Problems of Cross-Over Teachers,” Integrated Education 8, no. 5 (1970).
28 Several surveys of southern teachers: see Thomas H. Buxton et al., “Black and White Teachers and School Desegregation,” Integrated Education 12, nos. 1–2 (1974); and Mary Victoria Braxton and Charles S. Bullock III, “Teacher Partiality in Desegregation,” Integrated Education 10, no. 4 (1972).
29 “different values”: Buxton, “Black and White Teachers and School Desegregation,” 21.
30 “It’s not as though we were monkeys”: Gloria Register Jeter, interview #K-0549, December 23, 2000, SOHP/UNC, 1.
31 “The Negro Family”:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, 1965).
32 “Equality of Educational Opportunity”: James S. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1966).
33 “Just as a loaf of bread”: Ibid., 8.
34 “We must not deceive ourselves”: Quoted in Fultz, “The Displacement of Black Educators Post-Brown,” 45.
35 President Johnson, in a speech: Carol F. Karpinski, “A Visible Company of Professionals”: African Americans and the National Education Association During the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 151.
36 “uniquely important place”: Jack Greenberg, “For Integration of Negro Teachers,” The New York Times, August 21, 1965.
37 one black teacher would suffice: Paul Davis, “Elliott Denies Any ‘Deals.’ ”
38 the number of teachers of color nationwide: See Ulrich Bosser, Teacher Diversity Matters (Center for American progress report, November 2011); Sun Times Media Wire, “CPS Teachers Who Lost Jobs File Discrimination Suit,” December 26, 2012; and Sarah Carr, Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America’s Children (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 39. For a review of evidence associating teachers of color with higher student achievement for students of color, see Betty Achinstein et al., “Retaining Teachers of Color,” Review of Educational Research 80, no. 1 (2010): 70–107.
39 a program founded two years earlier: Author interview with Joan Wofford, May 10, 2013.
40 National surveys showed: Robert E. Herriott and Nancy Hoyt St. John, Social Class and the Urban School: The Impact of Pupil Background on Teachers and Principals (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966), 86, 95–97.
41 James Bryant Conant: Conant, The Education of American Teachers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).
42 women’s section profiled: Carolyn Bell Hughes, “Peace Corps Teachers Start Here,” Washington Post, October 13, 1963.
43 Roberta Kaplan: Author interview with Roberta Kaplan, April 19, 2013.
44 As the historian Bethany Rogers has noted: Bethany Rogers, “ ‘Better’ People, Better Teaching: The Vision of the National Teacher Corps, 1965–1968,” History of Education Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2009): 347–72.
45 Jane David: Author interview with Jane David, April 18, 2013.
46 Beverly Glenn: Author interview with Beverly Glenn, April 25, 2013.
47 during the Corps’ first three cycles: Rogers, “ ‘Better’ People, Better Teaching,” 363.
48 “Far from being a threat”: “Teacher Corps,” The New York Times, July 4, 1967.
49 Ronald Corwin published the definitive evaluation: Ronald G. Corwin, Reform and Organizational Survival: The Teacher Corps as an Instrument of Educational Change (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973), 96–97.
50 “status threat”: Ibid., 389.
51 “the greater the difference between interns and teachers”: Quoted in Fraser, Preparing America’s Teachers: A History, 219.
CHAPTER SEVEN: “WE BOTH GOT MILITANT”
1 Al Shanker biographical details: from Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal; Al Shanker (speech to New York State United Teachers Convention, April 27, 1985); A. H. Raskin, “He Leads His Teachers Up the Down Staircase,” The New York Times Magazine, September 3, 1967; and Edward B. Fiske, “Albert Shanker: Where He Stands,” The New York Times, November 5, 1989.
2 a shortage of public school teachers: Christina Collins, “Ethnically Qualified”: Race, Merit, and the Selection of Urban Teachers, 1920–1980 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 107–9.
3 the most unionized profession in America: Jal Mehta, The Allure of Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 114.
4 Teachers with collective bargaining rights: Barry T. Hirsch et al., “Teacher Salaries, State Collective Bargaining Laws, and Union Coverage” (working paper, American Economic Association, San Diego, January 6, 2013).
5 UFT co-founder George Altomare’s high school economics classes: Author interview with George Altomare, June 21, 2013.
6 Freedom Summer: Sandra Adickes, oral history interview, October 21, 1999. USM.
7 School segregation actually deepened: See Annie Stein, “Containment and Control: A Look at the Record,” in Schools Against Children: The Case for Community Control, ed. Annette T. Rubinstein (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970); Doxey A. Wilkerson, “The Failure of Schools Serving the Black and Puerto Rican Poor,” in Rubinstein, ed., Schools Against Children; and Barbara Carter, Pickets, Parents, and Power: The Story Behind the New York City Teachers’ Strike (New York: Citation Press, 1971), 9.
8 “Pygmalion in the Classroom”: Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, “Pygmalion in the Classroom,” Urban Review 3, no. 1 (1968).
9 “disruptive children”: Rhody McCoy, interview by Blackside, Inc., October 12, 1988. Eyes/WU.
10 “Even liberal educators view”: Quoted in Claye, “Problems of Cross-Over Teachers,” 13.
11 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Alternate Ending”: Published in Imamu Amiri Baraka, Three Books (New York: Grove Press, 1975).
12 two major organizational backers of community control, CORE and the Ford Foundation: See Karen Ferguson, Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); and Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal.
13 “to destroy the professional educational bureaucracy”: Quoted in Lillian S. Calhoun, “New York: Schools and Power—Whose?” Integrated Education 7, no. 1 (1969).
14 Stokely Carmichael, a proponent of black separatism: See “Free Huey” and Berkeley speeches published in Stokely Carmichael, Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1971).
15 Martin Luther King called this philosophy “nihilistic”: See excerpts from King’s “Where Do We Go From Here,” published in Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope, ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 586.
16 In Ocean Hill–Brownsville, an economically depressed neighborhood: See Fred Nauman, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989. Eyes / WU.
17 these groups had hoped to address the problem: See Rev. John Powis, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., November 4, 1988. Eyes/WU; Dolores Torres, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., October 31, 1988. Eyes/WU; and Sandra Feldman, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., October 31, 1988. Eyes/WU.
18 “school officials deprived the community”: Carter, Pickets, Parents, and Power, 32.
19 students enrolled at MES schools: Simon Beagle, Evaluating MES: A Survey of Research on the More Effective Schools Plan (Washington, D. C.: American Federation of Teachers, April, 1969); and Samuel D. McClelland, Evaluation of the More Effective Schools Program (Brooklyn: New York City Board of Education, September 1966).
20 “New Federalism”: Unger, The Best of Intentions, 303.
21 “It was a joy”: Rhody McCoy, interview by Blackside, Inc., October 12, 1988. Eyes/WU.
22 One of them was Elaine Rook: Les Campbell, interview by Blackside, Inc., November 3, 1988. Eyes/WU.
23 The morning after Martin Luther King’s assassination: Karima Jordan, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989. Eyes/WU; Fred Nauman, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989. Eyes/WU; and Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal, 91.
24 “Not one of these teachers”: Ibid., 95.
25 12 out of 55,000 teachers: see Carter, Pickets, Parents, and Power, 26; and Jason Epstein, “The Real McCoy,” New York Review of Books, March 13, 1969.
26 “We’ve got to make them learn”: McCoy quoted in Calhoun, “New York: Schools and Power—Whose?”
27 “Teachers have been physically threatened”: Reprinted in Carter, Pickets, Parents, and Power, 69.
28 Art teacher Richard Douglass: Ibid., 83.
29 Rivers concluded that the district’s accusations: Published in Confrontation at Ocean Hill—Brownsville: The New Y
ork School Strikes of 1968, ed. Maurice R. Berube and Marilyn Gittell (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 85–99.
30 When UFT teachers arrived: Sylvan Fox, “Some Hostility Marks Return of 83 Teachers to Ocean Hill,” The New York Times, October 1, 1968.
31 “This is a strike”: Khalenberg, Tough Liberal, 97–98.
32 “You’re a racist, Mr. Shanker!”: Maurice Carroll, “Giant City Hall Rally Backs Teachers,” The New York Times, September 17, 1968; and Robert E. Dallos, “Shanker’s Home Picketed by 150,” The New York Times, November 4, 1968.
33 “What did they feel about coming to work”: Dolores Torres, interview by Blackside, Inc., October 31, 1988. Eyes/WU.
34 replacement teacher Charles Isaacs: Republished in Berube and Gittell, eds., Confrontation at Ocean Hill—Brownsville.
35 “it was like someone was filming a movie”: Karima Jordan, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989. Eyes/WU.
36 “Lots of teachers were pretty racist”: Author interview with Peter Goodman, June 3, 2013.
37 “If African-American History and Culture” and “The UFT says NO”: Quoted in Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal, 107.
38 “To me, the Civil Rights Movement”: Al Shanker, interview by Blackside, Inc., November 15, 1988. Eyes/WU.
39 socialist, anti-Soviet workshops: Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 292.
40 “The proposal seems concerned”: Bayard Rustin, “Articles on Education, 1942–1987,” Bayard Rustin Papers.
41 “sacrificing the needs of the school system”: Raskin, “He Leads His Teachers Up the Down Staircase.”
42 “Listen, I don’t represent children”: Quoted in Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal, 125.
43 “I’m going to produce!”: Quoted in Calhoun, “New York: Schools and Power—Whose?” 21.
44 the years from 1967 to 1969 had been educationally disastrous; “Everyone else has failed”: Carter, Pickets, Parents, and Power, 55, 164–67.
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