Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

244 // EARL LEWIS
and 1943) and in Detroit (1943), Blacks targeted property rather than individuals.
Few publicly assailed Jews because of their religion. Until the late 1960s,
most Americans could accept that religion and race were parts, but not the entire
measure, of the individual. But as the nation made the transition from civil rights
to Black Power, it also shifted from a politics of identity to identity politics. The
latter, unlike the former, assumed that race, gender, sexual orientation, or religious
affiliation were the most important measures of a person; that in the end,
each individual was one thing rather than a complex interaction of many, often
competing, parts.
Moreover, while southern Blacks argued for the attainment of basic civil
rights, northern Blacks stepped up their demands for community control. As
activists in Chicago would demonstrate, one of their first demands centered on
control of local schools. Although the Chicago example had more to do with
destablizing the absolute hold that Mayor Richard Daley had over city affairs, it
served as a real primer for launching broader confrontations. In Chicago, Blacks
worked to unseat the school superintendent and to shift the balance of power to
community groups professedly interested in the educational aspirations of Black
children. 41
A similar emphasis took shape in New York City. When it was projected to
become an overwhelmingly Black and Puerto Rican school district by 1970,
Black parents and civil rights activists demanded more control over local school
districts. Black parents first raised the issue in the spring of 1966; upset over
terms under which Intermediate School 201 would open, they threatened, and
then led, a school boycott. By the fall, increasing demands for more community
control pitted parents against teachers, their union (United Federation of
Teachers), and LIFT President Albert Shanker. More than a localized effort, the
quest for community control thrust residents and local governments into the vortex
of a national movement. By February 1967, with emotions still raw, the city
school board agreed to a pilot. Several experimental districts were to be set up
across the city. The state followed in April with instructions for the Mayor to produce
a decentralization plan by December. Sensing a general shift, New York
Mayor John Lindsay sought assistance from Ford Foundation head McGeorge
Bundy. A former official in the Kennedy administration, Bundy proposed a plan
to cede considerable power to a series of community-based school boards. 42
The basic outline of the first months of what became known as the Ocean
Hill—Brownsville controversy not only strips the encounter of its high drama but
fails to explain why this affair became viewed as a confrontation between Jews and
Blacks. Although members of both communities publicly disagreed over affirmative
action in higher education and other issues, the 1960s are conventionally
viewed as a crowning moment of intergroup cooperation. Nonetheless, the
tremors of change were everywhere. In Boston, the lending habits of banks and
mortgage companies sowed the ground for conflict. Believing the Jewish community
more liberal and politically less potent, financial institutions created a