Book Review Part 2

Book Review Part 2: 

Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education, 1929 - 1970

By John Lyons

John Fewkes was the first CTU President

This is the second part of our 4-part series on the history of the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Public Schools. We now take a close look at the 1930s and 1940s and the union's dilemma of fighting or joining the Chicago Machine. The CTU also joined the fight to purge communists. This is based on the book Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education 1929 - 1970 by John Lyons.

They say history repeats, and boy is this true for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). 

In the recent May election teachers voted either for the Members First caucus who focus on pay and benefits v. CORE, who want to fight for progressive legislation and social justice. It was the same choice for teachers after the CTU formed in 1937. The President was John Fewkes and he showed little interest in political and educational reform and wanted the union to focus on better salary and working conditions v. the new union executive secretary Kermit Eby who wanted the CTU to play a major role in Chicago politics and reform the public school system.

The CTU was formed under Mayor Edward Kelly who built one of the most powerful political organizations in U.S. history. His democratic machine took control of Chicago politics and public education in the mid 1930s. He was in office from 1933 - 1947. He and Patrick Nash who was head of the Cook County Democratic Party enjoyed popular support from President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to put people back to work during the Great Depression.

Mayor Kelly appointed seven new members to the 11-member Chicago Board of Education made up of trustees who were self-made businessmen with little experience in education and did not live in Chicago or send their kids to the city's public schools.

Mayor Kelly saw the schools as a vital source of political patronage. To overcome tenure so they could hire their friends, the board issued temporary teaching certificates to political contacts. The Board of Ed only hired teachers from the Chicago Teachers College who gained admission if they had ties to the political machine. 

How corrupt was Chicago? In 1939 Chicago was 14th of the 15 largest cities on per pupil spending on instruction, but No. 1 on spending on the schools' construction and maintenance! They hired their friends at inflated prices to work on the schools. Kelly tried to get the state to fund the city education, but just like today, the state refused, and both the city and state refused to raise taxes. So the teachers paid for it. In 1937 Chicago teachers suffered a 23 percent pay cut, while St. Louis teachers had only 4 percent cut. And the Board of Ed increasingly told teachers what to teach and supplied all the textbooks without input from the teachers. Teachers who opposed the board's patronage system were either demoted or transferred.

The conservative board trustees claimed that there were too many communists teaching the students in Chicago. The state and city politicians campaigned to enact the law of loyalty oaths for Illinois schoolteachers. Chicago was the birthplace of the U.S. Communist Party in 1919, but there were few communist teachers in Chicago, unlike NY City, and union leaders shunned communists. Chicago teachers were mostly native born of Irish, British or German, with long traditions of unionism but not communism. Poor immigrants and African-Americans were more likely to join the Communist Party.

President Roosevelt was against the teachers union and all public sector unions from achieving collective bargaining and the strike. In the 1960s the CTU finally achieved collective bargaining rights that it regained today.

Many schools at this time refused to hire married women teachers and the CTU supported legislation to discriminate against married teachers whose husbands earned more than $1500 per year. Women teachers played an active role in the union. Like today, religion played a big role for the first CTU VP Mary Herrick who was a liberal protestant who espoused egalitarianism and she elevated the CTU to national status. She taught at Phillips and DuSable High Schools and promoted racial justice. (She also wrote an excellent book The Chicago Schools.)

To encourage women to join the union, the CTU hosted tea parties, card parties, picnics, golf tournaments, dances, operettas, and movie shows. The CTU ran its own bowling league, which was a big sport in the city back then, its own dance, theater, choral and writer groups.

The CTU at this time did little to challenge racial discrimination that forced black teachers to work for less pay as subs in overcrowded black schools on the Southside. There were few black teachers in the CTU in the 1940s.

The CTU formed the Citizens School Committee (CSC) in 1933 to oppose the educational cuts and they formed strong relations with influential civic organizations including Hull House, Chicago Women's Club, and League of Women Voters, and support of Chicago churches. The CTU issued daily press releases, had a weekly paper, monthly magazine, weekly radio talk and spoke at PTAs, women's clubs and unions to shift the ideological debate and war with the Kelly-Nash Machine over education cuts and payless paydays. But they hoped the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) would put political pressure on the Mayor. The CTU supported Paul Douglas to become the 5th Ward Alderman in 1939 and he in turn became the only alderman to vote against Mayor Kelly in the City Council. The CTU tried hard to get Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior for Pres. Roosevelt, to run against Kelly for Mayor, but the residency rule where he had to live one year before running prevented him from being a candidate. The union encouraged its teachers to vote for candidates who supported smaller class sizes, restore teachers' pay, support collective bargaining, and uphold the merit system and asked committeemen to not use political influence to hire or promote teachers.

In June 1937 Fewkes and teachers staged a two-hour sit down in the office of the board president demanding restoration of pay, and after Fewkes threatened to send hundreds of teachers to Board of Ed every week, the president met with CTU. Fewkes was a militant union leader before he became president and was known for leading massive protests. The teachers also sent letters to the Mayor, Governor, Board of Ed members requesting restoration of pay. The Board then announced its first partial repayment to the teachers' pay. In a concession to the union over corrupt patronage, the Board appointed an independent group to control the oral part of principals' exam and entrance exam to the Chicago Teachers College.

The issue of the deteriorating conditions of the public schools and political control was the biggest topic in the 1939 Mayor Election, and all 4 candidates including Kelly agreed to eliminate politics from school administration. With Kelly about to lose, he made concessions to CTU, including more pay and more say in who is appointed to the Board of Ed, and in return CTU stopped criticizing Kelly. Kelly won in the primary and promptly sponsored a bill to restore teachers pay and teachers on maternity leave would keep their positions open for two years.

But after Kelly's re-election, the board turned against the CTU. They refused to negotiate and relations deteriorated. The Chicago Machine was still too powerful and the electorate was increasingly homeowners and parents of Catholic School kids who supported Kelly's stance on lower taxes. Catholics made up more than half of the Chicago population by the late 1930s. The CFL was close to the machine and benefited from political patronage jobs.

But as the Board paid teachers regularly now and rescinded much of their salary cut, teachers became less interested in wider educational reform. The CTU in 1940 saw its membership decrease to 56 percent of the teachers. 

Fewkes and Herrick helped to expel the communist-dominated NY and Pennsylvania teacher union locals from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Fewkes believed that rather than continue to fight the political machine through public pressure, the CTU should follow the example of the building unions and seek political patronage through the CFL. Others like Kermit Eby opposed the Kelly-Nash machine and advocated an alliance between the teachers and the wider community.