Book Review Part 3

Book Review Part 3: 

Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education

By John Lyons

Mayor Martin Kennelly had a good relationship with the CTU.

This is the third part of our 4-part series on the history of the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Public Schools. This part will look at how the union worked with the City Machine and the huge difference between two mayors and their relationship to the CTU. We also highlight the fight for equal pay between elementary and high school teachers and the beginning of segregation. Our report is based on the book Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education 1929 - 1970 by John Lyons.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 9, 1941, the CTU pledged to fully support the war effort and several Chicago Public High Schools were turned over to the National Defense Training Program to prepare thousands of people to work in the defense industry. Staff and students collected scrap metal and grew food in 'victory gardens' on school grounds. In June 1942 the CTU and CPS staged a Flag Day parade of 400,000 people that stretched over 50 miles throughout the city.

Ira Turley became the next CTU President and continued John Fewkes focus on pay and benefits. He agreed to not criticize Chicago Machine Mayor Ed Kelly who in return would rescind teacher pay cuts. While the AFT and CTU agreed to not strike during the war and did not defend its members, there were many strikes in the country. The CTU fired its reform activist executive secretary Kermit Eby to allegedly appease the Mayor who then restored the final part of the teachers' pay that had been cut during the Depression and beefed up police security at schools with violent student behavior.

The next fight was the demand for elementary school teachers to be paid the same as high school teachers which the CTU was reluctant to support. In the 1943 CTU election Susan Scully, a member of CTU Executive Board, ran on single salary schedule and won 48%. The union then fought for equal pay which many male high school teachers opposed. The Mens Teachers Club MTC fought against equal pay by blaming 'feminist groups' and declared equal pay 'Communist'. By 1952 only Chicago and Boston with strong men teacher unions were large cities with no equal pay. The Chicago Board of Education finally adopted equal pay for elementary and high school teachers in Jan. 1954.

Arthur Walz became next CTU president and was close to Fewkes and Turley and preferred to work with the Mayor.

From 1940 - 45 the school enrollment dropped with fall in birth rate, rise in Catholic schools and migration to suburbs.

Union membership reached 14.5 million after the war, and all-time high of 35 percent of the labor force in the country.

Teachers saw their living and working conditions decline after the war: "How can teachers teach democracy to children when they themselves have no opportunity to take part in any decisions as to school policy ..."

Decade after WWII led to rapid population growth and huge school enrollment increases and the Red Scare during the Cold War sought to limit academic freedom and promote conformist attitudes in classroom. The AFT condemned communism in schools and concentrated on bread and butter issues.

The National Education Assoc. NEA made a report that showed how the city politicians used the public schools for their own needs, getting jobs through political connections and how the board transferred or demoted teachers who opposed the Mayor and giving favors to union leaders. The explosive report forced Mayor Kelly to not run for re-election. The CTU did nothing to get Kelly out.

Mayor Martin Kennelly was against the Chicago Machine and promised to keep the schools free of political influence and teachers no longer depended on political connections to get a job. The new board president Harold Hunt worked with the CTU and gave more classroom autonomy to teachers and allowed committees made of principals and teachers to choose textbooks. He even appointed union members and critics to his administration.

In 1947 Arthur Walz stepped aside to allow John Fewkes to be CTU president again after he had returned to the classroom to be a P.E. teacher at Tilden High School. He received 64% of the vote. In Nov. 1950 the delegates amended the CTU Constitution and removed the restriction that the president could succeed himself only once. Fewkes was elected nine more times and served until 1966.

Fewkes worked with Mayor Kennelly and got a teacher raise. Paid sick leave increased from 5 days to 10 days in 1955 and accumulated sick leave total increased from 15 days to 120 days in 1960.

The insanity of the Red Scare was highlighted when Chicago aldermen, local press and white resident associations accused Chicago Housing Authority and its head Elizabeth Wood of communism for allocating public housing to black families in previous white neighborhoods. Today the CTU lists housing as a mayor platform to fight for. The Chicago Tribune condemned communist teaching and campaigned to remove liberal textbooks from the public schools, many that were pro-union and pro-New Deal. The Trib campaigned to remove a book edited by former AFT president George Counts called I Want to be Like Stalin, but which condemned the Soviet Union. In one case a teacher was accused by students at Senn High School of being a communist, even though she was just a liberal and Roosevelt supporter; students and faculty defended her and Board President Hunt supported her. Using informants and police detectives, the Chicago Police Dept. Red Squad compiled files on teachers' political beliefs and passed them to the Board of Education. The CTU defended CPS curriculum from anti-communist attacks while always pointing out their opposition to communism. The CTU supported an AFT vote to not defend any teacher proved to be a communist, but opposed any kind of loyalty oath.

Mayor Richard J. Daley defeated Martin Kennelly and restored the Chicago Machine in 1955. He served until his death in 1976 at a time when the city schools became segregated as the black population greatly increased. A minority of Chicago teachers aligned with the Civil Rights, but most white teachers saw civil rights movement and school integration as a threat to classroom autonomy. While demanding he improve conditions for black people, Mayor Daley agreed to give teachers collective bargaining rights.

Black school enrollment increased from 21 percent in 1950 to 47 percent in 1963. Both the students and teachers attended highly segregated schools. The black schools suffered greater overcrowding and poorer conditions compared to white schools. Mayor Daley opposed integration of the schools. Daley felt black people moving into white neighborhoods threatened to push white residents, his electoral power base and main source of tax revenue, out of the city. He appointed members to the Board of Education who supported segregation. To keep the schools segregated, the board shifted attendance boundaries, issued transfers to white students and built new schools and additions. CPS Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis who replaced Hunt was the symbol of segregation and racism. His legacy lives on today when we see mobile units called Willis wagons on school grounds that were additions built during his time in order to prevent black students at overcrowded schools from transferring to a white school. Chicago built 208 new elementary schools, 13 high schools, a junior college and new teachers' college between 1953 to 1962, earning Willis the title "Ben the Builder."

He built the schools to keep black and white students separate!