Subtitle: Hopes on the Line
Author: Steve Golin
Subject: New Jersey and the Region/Education
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-3057-1
Pages: 336 pp., 8 b&w illus.
Description: The dramatic story of the teachers who changed the face of education during the 1970 and 1971 teacher strikes in Newark, New Jersey
Winner of the Richard P. McCormick 2003 Prize for Scholarly Publication, given by the New Jersey Historical Commission
For three weeks in 1970 and for eleven weeks in 1971, the schools in Newark, New Jersey, were paralyzed as the teachers went on strike. As a result of the strikes, almost two hundred were arrested and jailed. The Newark Teachers Union said their members wanted improved education for their students. The Board of Education claimed the teachers primarily desired more money. After interviewing more than fifty teachers who were on the front lines during these strikes, historian Steve Golin concludes that another, equally important agenda, ignored until now, was on the table. These professionals wanted a voice in the decision-making process.
Through these oral histories, Golin examines the hopes of the teachers on the picket line, who risked arrest and imprisonment. Why did they strike? How did the union represent them? How did their actionand incarcerationchange them? Did they continue to teach in impoverished districts? Golin also probes the tensions between teachers during that period. These arose from differences in attitudes toward unions among Black, Jewish, and Italian teachers; different organizing strategies of men and women; and conflict between teachers professional and working-class identities.
The first part of the book explores the experience of teachers in Newark from World War II to the 1970 strike. After covering both strikes, Golin brings the story up to 1995 in the epilogue, where he traces the connection between educational reform and union democracy. The Newark Teacher Strikes enhances our understanding of what has worked and what hasnt worked in attempts at reforming urban schools. The teachers vivid words and the authors perceptive analysis enable us to view the struggles of not just Newark, but the entire United States during a turbulent time.
Steve Golin is a professor of history at Bloomfield College, New Jersey. He is the author of The Fragile Bridge: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913, which won the 1990 Richard P. McCormick Prize of the New Jersey Historical Commission.
Excerpt from The Newark Teacher Strikes
"Teachers on both sides carried weapons because they were afraid. People on the picket line, and people crossing it, felt less vulnerable if they were armed with a weapon of some kinda sharp or blunt instrument in their pocket, purse, or car."
