1968: A Year of Strife, Anger and Fear
CSA turns 50 on Jan. 30, 2012. Each month, the CSA News will highlight a milestone in the union’s history. This month: The strike of 1968.
by Perre Lehmuller
Nearly two generations have graduated from NYC public schools since one of the city’s seminal moments: the 1968 fall school strike that closed the schools for 36 days until nearly Thanksgiving and left New Yorkers bitterly divided.
Set against a tumultuous year in which Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, students took over Columbia and cops beat up protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, an experiment in community control spiraled out of control
when local governing boards attempted to dismiss hundreds of Jewish teachers, Assistant Principals and Principals and hire African-Americans in their place.
The resulting strike, led by the UFT and joined by CSA, saw picket lines outside schools, a mayor under attack and huge demonstrations for and against a community’s right to select staff how it saw fit. The racial divide was ugly but many white and black activists joined together in support of due process for teachers and supervisors.
For CSA, it was a defining moment as well. The fledgling union had just appointed its first District Chairs who were suddenly called upon to be strike captains for their districts. They certainly got more than they bargained for; I was the first CSA Chair in District 8 at the time, and I remember organizing meetings every morning after people
finished picketing their schools.
I also remember organizing rallies with my UFT District Rep in Poe Park in the Bronx, demonstrating vociferously in front of the then-hated New York Times on West 43rd Street, tying up traffic on Fifth Avenue around 56th Street (near Gov. Rockefeller’s office), and picketing City Hall. (Editor’s Note: Mr. Lehmuller says a few sympathetic superintendents brought paychecks past picket lines in front of schools to distribute to striking staff.)
The settlement satisfied no one but allowed schools to reopen. Due process was preserved, and teachers and supervisors got their jobs back. But in the interim, because of the anger and fear for their safety, many staff had secured transfers to other parts of the city. The settlement also included an additional 45 minutes of instruction every day and the elimination of planned school holidays to make up for lost time.
Pierre Lehmuller is the CSA Conference Chair when he isn’t demonstrating against social injustice.
