Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

Blacks and Jews: The Struggle in the Cities \\ 113
teacher's union called it "decentralization"—reducing bureaucracy and giving
more power to teachers as well as parents. Black parents called it "community
control"—putting the real power in the hands of local parents and residents. To
run the Ocean Hill—Brownsville school district, the new community school board
chose Rhody McCoy, a Black New York school administrator angered by the traditional
exam and seniority system that he believed kept Blacks like himself from
rising in the New York school system. Unlike the Blacks who dominated television
coverage of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, McCoy had long
given up on Martin Luther King and had become interested instead in the philosophy
of Malcolm X, frequently travelling to Malcolm's house for long discussions.
McCoy saw the Ocean Hill—Brownsville experiment as a chance to establish
the first step in a Black-run and Black-controlled school system stretching
from elementary school through college.
McCoy's opponent, the head of the New York Teacher's union, was Albert
Shanker. Shanker, like most of his members, was Jewish. And, like many of his
members, he was a liberal who had long been active in civil rights. In 1963,
Shanker had led a delegation to the March on Washington.
From the start of the experiment, McCoy moved to assert the authority of the
school board. The new board interviewed teachers, quizzing them on their
responsiveness to the problems of Black children, especially poor Black children.
Dissatisfied with the performance often teachers, the board dismissed them in the
spring of 1968, saying they should all be transferred to other districts. At the
time, neither McCoy nor anyone on the board took note that all the fired teachers
were Jewish.
Shanker led the teacher's union out on strike. Within two days, the Board of
Education agreed to guarantee that the ten teachers plus all remaining union
teachers who wanted to go back would be reinstated in Ocean Hill-Brownsville.
But the clay the teachers returned to Ocean Hill-Brownsville, McCoy summoned
them to a meeting in the auditorium of the district's largest school. Supporters of
the community board lined the walls. McCoy told the teachers that they were not
wanted here and would not get class assignments. Outside, pickets yelled taunts
at the teachers. Inside the auditorium, people chanted and jeered. McCoy told the
teachers to go home. They walked out in single file, through a gauntlet of angry
Blacks.
Then New York snapped. For months, Shanker had been concerned by the
persistent reports of anti-Semitism and intimidation in Ocean Hill—Brownsville.
If McCoy could dismiss teachers at his whim, then no teacher's job could be safe,
especially—judging by the tenor of things in Ocean Hill-Brownsville—in a
school system that was more than 50 percent minority and the teachers overwhelmingly
white and Jewish.
Shanker felt he had to protect his people. As the second strike began in mid-
September 1968, Shanker received copies of leaflets that teachers said had been
put in their mailboxes in the Ocean Hill—Brownsville schools. Shanker ordered