8 - To Ocean Hill–Brownsville and B(l)ack

Summary

On taking office in 1966, Mayor John Lindsay of New York unveiled an ambitious plan for school decentralization as part of his design to fix the city’s school system. Several districts in predominantly African American and Puerto Rican communities were chosen for pilots of the decentralization plan. Among the selected communities was the Ocean Hill–Brownsville (OH-B) school district in Brooklyn. On May 9, 1968, after some serious deliberation and in line with the powers provided by the mayor, the OH-B school district governing board dismissed ten teachers on charges that they were unable to control their pupils and did not support decentralization. To protest this action, hundreds of teachers in the district, who were union members, went on strike during the latter half of May and the entire month of June, shutting down numerous schools throughout the city. The impact of the strike was devastating (indeed, one author refers to this as The Strike That Changed New York; Podair 2002). In response to these actions, the OH-B governing board refused to reinstate the teachers and banned all who protested the governing board’s actions from returning to their posts in the fall. After an investigation, the ten teachers who were dismissed were cleared of the charges by a trial examiner, but the OH-B governing board still refused to reinstate them.

This led to an extremely explosive situation. On one hand, with the planned expansion of decentralization, the teacher’s union feared that it would lose its hard-won city-wide bargaining rights and would have to negotiate separately with more than thirty local governing boards. On the other hand, the OH-B governing board felt that it was asserting the right of community control over school operations and hiring that it had been promised by the mayor’s plan. Adding to the degree of hostility, the conflict broke down along racial lines, with the predominately white and Jewish teacher’s union as well as the city board of education on one side pitted against the predominantly African American and Puerto Rican district governing board as well as various community leaders on the other. Attempting to resolve the crisis, Mayor Lindsay ordered the teachers back into the OH-B schools. After some initial resistance, the teachers were put back in place. Although an important aspect of the conflict was over, though, the difficult issues brought up by the conflict simmered for quite some time.