Brownsville School Strike

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The Brownsville School Strike , also known as New York Teachers 'Strike was a labor dispute between the teachers' union UFT and the city government under Mayor John V. Lindsay in 1968, which is about racial integration and decentralization of school management in New York City went . As a result of the strike, 85 percent of the city's 900 schools were closed for 55 days.

background

For the American civil rights movement , improving schooling for blacks was a core concern in order to achieve equality for the African American population. The integration of schools was a major concern. Since the beginning of the 20th century, school systems that are strictly separated according to skin color have emerged through the principle of separate but equal . The black school districts had a significantly poorer financial and human resources, so that the educational opportunities for African-Americans, and thus also the chances of economic and social advancement, were considerably limited. The integration of the school system was therefore seen as an essential aspect to increase the educational opportunities for blacks in order to improve their chances of equality in this way. The Brown v. Board of Education led the United States Supreme Court to ban racial segregation in schools . As in the case of the Little Rock Nine, the implementation of racial integration in education often led to considerable disputes.

In New York State, racial segregation in schools existed even before Brown v. Board of Education officially banned, but there was de facto racial segregation due to the fact that the black population was concentrated in some boroughs, so that the local schools were largely attended by blacks. The school bureaucracy, on the other hand, was predominantly white and often Jewish and highly centralized, and black parents complained that they did not have sufficient say. Studies, including by the Ford Foundation, found that it would be psychologically harmful for African-American children if they were faced with an all-white faculty and school administration and called for the decentralization of school administration and stronger participation rights for the local population.

course

John V. Lindsay, the progressive Mayor of New York City, saw the need for a decentralization of the school system and made, among other things, Ocean Hill- Brownsville , two districts in east Brooklyn where the majority of black people live, into a pilot area for school decentralization. The new black district administrator, Rhody McCoy, relocated 13 teachers and six school administrators, most of them Jews, from the school district. The teachers' union UFT ( United Federation of Teachers ), led by Albert Shanker, deemed the transfers illegal and called a strike, during which 85 percent of the city's 900 schools were closed for 55 days. The strike did not end until New York State took control of the school district and suspended McCoy and the local school administration.

consequences

The Brownsville School Strike had a profound impact on the New York City school system and relations between Jews and African Americans . In the course of the school strike, there had been hostility that had both racist and anti-Semitic overtones. The relationship between African Americans and Jews, traditionally allies in the struggle for more civil rights, was permanently disrupted, at least in New York. He strengthened the tendencies in the Afro-American civil rights movement, which instead of integration preferred to distance themselves from the white population, in the spirit of the black power movement.

An essential element of the strike was the retention of power of the school bureaucracy and the UFT union that supports them. In fact, a year after the school strike in 1969, New York State passed a law decentralizing the school system in New York City. The approval of the unions, which had emerged stronger from the school strike of 1968, was achieved by giving the union a great deal of influence over the filling of teaching posts and the school system. The local school boards became centers of nepotism and corruption and the efficiency of the school system in New York City deteriorated dramatically, with consequences that can still be felt today. In 1996, parts of the decentralization were reversed.

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