Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

216 // PAUL BUHLE AND ROBIN D. G. KELLEY
Chomsky, became stalwart figures of the Left, a handful of Black nationalist leaders
such as Stokely Carmichael began their political careers under the guidance of
Old Left Jews. Perhaps the most important voice in support of Black Power and
against Zionism, Carmichael cut his political teeth in high school through his
relationship with Jewish Communists, notably Gene Dennis, Jr., the son of the
New York Party leader. Through Dennis, he met Black Communists like
Benjamin Davis, who clearly shaped his own socialist politics—indeed, long after
the collapse of SNCC he continued to advocate socialism with the founding of his
All African People's Revolutionary Party. (To compound the paradox: whereas
Carmichaei lived in a predominantly white neighborhood in the Bronx and
attended the highly competitive magnet school, Bronx High School of Science,
his classmate Gene Dennis lived in Harlem.) Eventually, Carmichael became
involved in Left youth organizations, including the Young People's Socialist
League. According to historian Clayborne Carson, Carmichael's first demonstration
was in behalf of Israel. "Someone at the U.N. had said something anti-
Semitic," he told Carson in a 1963 interview, "I can't exactly remember who, but
{the Young People's Socialist League] drew up a big picket-line at the U.N." 50
The crowning incident that brought the issues of Black Power and the Black-
Jewish alliance to a head was the bitter 1968 New York City teacher's strike that
pitted largely Jewish schoolteachers and their Old Left allies against Black
and Puerto Rican communities in the Ocean Hill—Brownsville section of
Brooklyn. The inability of New York City to integrate its schools led residents of
poor Latino and African American communities to push for community control,
which Mayor John Lindsay and the Board of Education granted to Ocean
Hill—Brownsville residents. The newly formed governing board immediately got
into trouble, however, when it attempted to reassign 19 white teachers. Albert
Shanker and the LIFT protested, waging three strikes in the fall of 1968 which
ultimately led to the termination of the community control program and some
limited compromise that gave schools with lower overall reading scores some
flexibility over teacher hiring. The LIFT was especially angry that community
control would erode their ability to protect teachers' jobs—their primary responsibility
as a teachers' union. Moreover, liberal Jewish educators (some of whom
had longtime associations with the Left) felt betrayed by the community control
board, particularly since UFT-affiliated teachers were responsible for developing a
progressive, pluralistic curriculum that celebrated African American history and
honored Civil Rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On the other
hand, community activists and Black teachers affiliated with the African
American Teachers Association (ATA) regarded established white educators and
their programs as paternalistic and out of touch with the social and material realities
inner city children had to face. They rejected the prevailing view of poor
Black and Puerto Rican kids as educationally disaclvantaged or impaired and
believed that teachers of their own race were needed to help build self-esteem and
create a healthier environment for effective learning. 51