photo of East River CORE member Sandy Feldman with Albert Shanker, head of the United Federation of Teachers.

photo of East River CORE member Sandy Feldman with Albert Shanker, head of the United Federation of Teachers.

This is a photo of East River CORE member Sandy Feldman with Albert Shanker, head of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The photo illustrates one of the stranger aspects of the history of Harlem CORE and the history of CORE in New York City. In the middle of the many fights CORE had with the UFT in its battles over Blacks and Latinos on the public school system was this relationship in which Shanker was the mentor of Feldman.
A grammar school teacher, Feldman was also Shanker's right hand in the UFT during the mid-late 1960's. Amazingly, she was caught in the middle of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville demonstrations as a UFT liaison and walked away with the respect of both sides of the conflict. Even Sonny Carson, chairman of Brooklyn CORE, spoke of her in favorable terms in his autobiography.
She not only went on to succeed Shanker as president of the UFT in 1985, she also became president of the larger national union, the American Federation of Teachers in 1997.

As head of the UFT, she would go on to play a significant role in the election of NYC's first Black mayor, David Dinkins in 1989. From the New York Tines obituary: "She put the power of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York local, with 110,000 members at the time, behind the election of David N. Dinkins as mayor in 1989, an effort that helped him garner white votes. "

My thanks to Susan Brownmiller for pointing out Sandy Feldman to me early on my research.