Teachers Union of New York City

TEACHERS UNION OF NEW YORK CITY. One of the earliest Left unions among professionals, the Teachers Union (TU) was also one of the most internally divided. Originally an American Federation of Labor (AFL) union founded by New York City schoolteachers in 1916, it had close links with the Socialist Party, and suffered severe attacks during the 1919–1920 Red Scare. The union was also hard put in early years to overcome the major organizing obstacle posed by widespread belief (encouraged by boards of education) that teachers, as “professionals,” required no unionization.

The TU first experienced rapid growth during the Depression, developing strong locals in such cities as Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta, especially among the underpaid and heavily exploited substitute teachers. College faculty also joined the TU, forming in New York City an independent College Teachers Local. New York City remained the union’s primary center, with about forty percent of its total membership.

The TU rapidly became a factional arena for competing sections of the Left. Many of the new teachers who swelled TU membership, especially in New York, were either Communists or Lovestoneites—both hostile to the long-established leadership of the Socialists. Alarmed but unable to manage a mass expulsion, the old leaders seceded to form the Teachers Guild. With the support of AFL president William Green, and in the atmosphere of the Rapp-Coudert persecutions, the Teachers Guild effected the ouster of the TU from the American Federation of Labor, an effort made possible by the Hitler-Stalin Pact, which damaged left-wing credibility not long before the convention. The TU, however, was promptly granted a charter by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Ironically, the TU split from the AFL and affiliation with the CIO temporarily solidified Left leadership in the TU. Bella Dodd (1904–1969), an Italian immigrant and member of the Hunter College faculty, emerged as one of the rare outstanding Communist women labor luminaries. But as in so many other unions, Left leadership could not survive the onslaught of the Cold War and the competition from mainstream unions. Dodd herself, who openly criticized Communist involvement in the 1948 Progressive Party campaign of Henry Wallace as divisive and tactically hopeless, found herself expelled from the Party in 1949, and she converted to a conservative Catholicism (under the guidance of Monsignor Fulton Sheen). Although a purged TU remained alive, it lost members and prestige to the old Teachers Guild, renamed the American Federation of Teachers. Recognizing in 1964 that hopes of challenging the American Federation of Teachers could never be realized, the TU formally disbanded.

Before and after its ouster from the AFL, the TU pioneered the development of antiracist curricula and teaching materials about blacks and other minority populations, especially in such urban school districts as New York and Philadelphia. This pedagogy, originating largely in the antiracist convictions of Communist teachers, foreshadowed Black History Month. This remained the finest legacy of the TU.

Iverson, Robert W. The Communists and the Schools. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959.

Murphy, Marjorie. Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900–1980. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Teachers Union of the City of New York Records, 1920-1942. Collection # 5445. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, N.Y. https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05445.html

Toloudis, Nicholas (2015). "Teacher Unions Conflict in New York City, 1935–1960". Labor History. 56 (5): 566–586.

Zitron, Celia L. The New York City Teachers Union, 1916–1964: A Story of Educational and Social Commitment. New York: Humanities, 1968.