Community Control

The decade of the 1960s was a period of social turbulence in the United States. It witnessed the assassination of a popular young president, John F. Kennedy, and the murders of his brother, Robert Kennedy, and the civil rights leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a time of marches and other actions on behalf of civil rights, protests against the nation's military involvement in Vietnam, riots in the nation's large cities, and other social upheavals. Educational institutions were not spared. Urban public schools were seen by some as rigidly bureaucratic, oppressive, and racist, and unrepresentative of the people they served. There was a feeling on the part of some, especially in the large cities, that reform, in the shape of decentralization, was needed. The “community control” conflict in New York City stands as the most glaring episode of the call for reform in organization and decision making, including the choice of professional personnel, in the conduct of urban schooling. In this instance, there was an overwhelming majority of poor African American (Black) and Puerto Rican citizens who felt that they were excluded from taking part in educational decisions that directly involved their children.

The New York City Board of Education had been centralized since the demise of the ward school boards in the late 19th century. Mayor John Lindsay believed that decentralization was needed, and he received the support of the Ford Foundation. The population of northern cities, including those in the New York City area, had changed drastically due to the migration of African Americans from the rural South. For instance, in 1910, 91% of the nation's 9.8 million African Americans lived in the South, and 27% lived in cities of 2,500 or more. By 1966, the nation's Black population had reached 21.5 million, with their numbers outside the South increasing from 885,000 to 9.7 million; those living in metropolitan areas rose from 2.7 million to 14.8 million. The New York City area was substantially affected by the influx of many of these migrants and by the immigration of Puerto Ricans.

The trouble began in the Ocean Hill–Brownsville district of Brooklyn, peopled by many poor African Americans and Puerto Ricans, when the personnel committee of the local community governing school board attempted to transfer 19 teachers in that school district out of the district, because they were deemed unsatisfactory. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) union objected, arguing that the local board's action was not in accord with the UFT contract with the New York City School Board. The community activists, members of the local governing board, one of whose leaders was the administrator of the Ocean Hill–Brownsville district, Rhody McCoy, maintained that they were within their rights in ridding the district of what they felt were unsatisfactory teachers. The conflict brimmed with racial overtones, because the transferred teachers were White, many Jewish. Charges of anti-Semitism were levied in response to allegations that many of the teaching force were racist. The local governing board was in conflict with both the UFT and the central school board of New York City. The local board refused to relent, which resulted in a citywide strike by the UFT against the public school system of New York City, which led to the closing of the city's public schools for more than a month.

...