Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Fifty Years Later
On the fiftieth anniversary of the “strike that changed New York,” the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers strikes have much to teach us about building a strong anti-racist labor movement made up of both workers and community members.
Police block teachers and students from entering JHS 271 in Ocean Hill-Brownsville on December 3, 1968.CUNY
On the first day of school in September 1968, New York City’s teachers, represented by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), began a series of three citywide strikes that would transform the city’s politics for decades to come.
The immediate grievance was the dismissal of teachers without due process from an experimental school district in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, an overwhelmingly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn.
But the firing of teachers became a stand-in for much larger issues. What was really at stake in the 1968 strike was control over New York City’s public school system.
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