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Black Power part 6
The chapter also continued its fight against the Board of Education and the UFT by focusing on the school where Les Campbell worked as a social studies teacher, JHS 271 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, considered a 'flagship school of the project' for community control.
Showdown at JHS 271 (Jah has spoken...)
The Ocean-Hill Brownsville governing board which oversaw JHS 271 had a number of teachers it did not want because of their performance and would not allow them back in the school. Shankar threatened a strike if the teachers were not reinstated. The governing board's actions were labeled illegal by the BOE. At issue was whether or not the Black and Latino community could exercise complete control over its schools and transfer teachers who were rejected.
On September 11, 1968, members of the governing board, the local community including school parents, the Black Panther Party and Brooklyn CORE physically blocked the entrance of the school and refused to allow dismissed teachers back into the school. This action corresponds to BK CORE's 1962 campaign against the BOE on behalf of Leonard Morris and its blocking of the entrances to the BOE's building.
When the cops tried to clear steps, an all out brawl erupted. Even when the teachers finally got in the building with the help of the police, they were confronted by another group of BK CORE people who had snuck in the school earlier. Among those arrested were BK CORE members Irv Joyner, Larry Edwards and Dorothy Morrow.
The next day, the UFT went on strike... again.
While BK CORE were not the initiators of the school protests, Carson and the chapter were named and blamed for the teachers being harassed and threatened in the school. The New York Times went so far as to call Carson 'terrorist in his inclinations'. Its members were again among those who filled in for the striking teachers and staff in order to keep the school open.
The BOE eventually stepped in, superceded the governing board's wishes and reinstated the dismissed teachers. Opponents argued the mostly 'White union and power structure... were refusing to let Blacks and Latinos 'exercise right to self determination'.
The teachers' presence only exacerbated the tension. Approximately fifty to three hundred protesters would be outside picketing everyday since the school year started. Carson had invited parents to come down to the school to review the situation for themselves but by some point in October, though, Carson and chapter members made their presence less known.
As professor Clarence Taylor wrote, "Al Shanker's attempt to play on the fears of teachers by falsely painting a picture of the whole community control movement as anti-Jewish and out to remove Jewish teachers from their position further heightened the tension and distrust between the Black and Jewish communities. "
It should be noted that there were White members of CORE like freedom rider Al Gordon and associates like Mark Levy of the Freedom Summer project who were once members of the UFT but did not support the strike. Alan Gartner of national CORE, who had worked with Shankar closely over the years, went so far as to call Shankar's actions not just racist but 'fucking racist.'
The story is further complicated by the fact that Shankar himself had previously participated in CORE protests like the 1960 Woolworth's campaign. As head of the UFT, he had often worked in alliance with CORE and CORE chapters on other campaigns and encouraged others from the UFT to do the same. His protege, Sandy Feldman, had once been an active member of East River CORE and was essentially given the thumbs up at the time by Les Campbell who as late as 2008 still referred to Shankar as 'the enemy'.
The animosity between the two sides led to the superintendent of schools shutting JHS 271 down for two days to talk to all the teachers. During one of the meetings, Carson led well over one hundred students from JHS 271 to the BOE's office. According to the NY Times, the superintendent and his secretaries ran and locked themselves in their offices once they saw Carson and his crowd who then held an impromptu demonstration in the main office. This is one of the earliest incidents in a series of student rebellions at high schools throughout the NYC metropolitan area in which CORE people played a background but central organizing role.