ABSTRACT

The 1960s and 1970s are often identified as a period of tension and explosive conflict between teachers’ unions and communities of color. Instances of this can be found across the United States: in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, St. Louis, among others. What fails to be documented in the literature are instances of alignment between teachers’ unions and communities of color. The case of the 1970 New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT) is an instance of such an alignment. This article demonstrates that this resulted from New Left teachers taking co-leadership of the NHFT, bringing in ideas of participatory democracy and preexisting neighborhood bonds from prior anti-racist social movement and community organizing work. This distinguished the NHFT from other teachers’ unions of the time period, where the New Left was either absent or marginalized. Whereas teachers’ unions across the United States were often in high pitched conflict with communities of color as most infamously represented by 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville, the NHFT consciously formed an anomalous alliance and an alternative vision of education, pushing for joint teacher-community control of schools. This article thereby demonstrates the importance of radical ideas for decisively shaping the direction of labor unions.

摘要

1960年代和1970年代通常被认为是教师工会与有色人种群体之间紧张和爆发性冲突的时期。在美国各地都可以找到这种情况的实例：在纽约，芝加哥，底特律，费城，纽瓦克，圣路易斯等地。文献中没有记载的是教师工会与有色人种之间的一致性实例。1970年纽黑文教师联合会（NHFT）的案例就是这种结盟的一个例子。本文表明，这是由于新左派教师共同领导NHFT，从先前的反种族主义社会运动和社区组织工作中引入了参与民主的思想和先前存在的邻里关系。这使NHFT与当时的其他教师工会区分开来，新左派缺席或边缘化的地方。鉴于全美的教师工会经常与以1968年Ocean Hill-Brownsville最为臭名昭著的有色社区发生激烈冲突，而NHFT有意识地形成了反常联盟和另类的教育视野，推动了教师与社区的共同控制学校。因此，本文证明了激进思想对于决定性地塑造工会的方向的重要性。