This page serves as a forum for you to share your thoughts about the NYC Teachers Union and post notes about your colleagues, friends or teachers who may have been affected by the blacklist. Please e-mail us at dreamersandfighters.com with questions, comments, or any information you'd like to post. Our email address is info@dreamersandfighters.com

We Need Your Material 

Do you have Teachers Union memorabilia? If you have membership cards, programs or photos from TU events, photos of the Union building on 15th Street, copies of Teacher News or anything else, would you share them with us?

The actual items will be filmed for use in the documentary, then we'll display them for you to see here on the Multimedia Archive page.  We'll return all items you'd like back.

Just e-mail us first to tell us what you've got and we'll contact you to make arrangements.

Thanks!
The Dreamers and Fighters Crew

Message From Marjorie Heins

I’m a former ACLU lawyer and the author of several books on censorship, and am currently working on a book that will focus on the courts’ response to the witch hunt against New York teachers and professors in the 1950s. The book’s story will be bracketed by the two cases that challenged the Feinberg Law, one unsuccessfully (Adler v. Board of Education, decided by the Supreme Court in 1952), and one 15 years later that overruled Adler, struck down the Feinberg Law, and established academic freedom as a “special concern of the First Amendment” (Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 1967).

I’m interested in interviewing people who have recollections of, or documents relevant to, the Adler litigation (which was supported by the Teachers Union), or any of the other cases filed in the NY courts to challenge the city Board of Education or Board of Higher Education purges, including the Mauer and Nash cases challenging the Board of Ed’s policy of requiring people to become informers in order to keep their jobs. This of course includes children of blacklisted teachers who have memories, or memorabilia, or heard their parents talk about these cases. Please call or send me an e-mail if you would be willing to be interviewed. An article that I wrote on loyalty oaths, including those of the Cold War era, was published by Dissent last year, and is now available on my website, http://www.fepproject.org/commentaries/dissent-HeinsLoyaltyOaths.pdf

Thanks,
Marjorie Heins
margeheins@verizon.net
917-566-1659
www.fepproject.org

News about Filmmaker Joel Katz's Documentary Strange Fruit

In concert with reading about Abel Meeropol's song, Strange Fruit, please link to these sites about our friend, Joel Katz's compelling award-winning documentary, Strange Fruit. It addresses the history prompting Meeropol to compose it and the controversy the song provoked.

The story is told in part by jazz performers, historians and activists as well as their sons, Michael and Robby Meeropol. Pete Seeger, Henry Foner, and Honey and Bernie Kassoy also offer their personal remembrances of their New York City Teachers Union friends, Anne and Abel Meeropol.

The documentary on DVD is available for purchase from these two Web sites.
Independent Lens
California News Reel

Message From Carol Smith

We just spoke with former CCNY Associate Professor, Carol Smith, who curated the very informative online exhibit entitled:

The Struggle for Free Speech Web Site at CCNY, 1931 - 1942

Professor Smith generously shared the link that provides further information about Teachers Union members, Henry, Jack, Moe and Phillip Foner, Morris Schappes and the other victims of the Rapp-Coudert Committee (1940-42).

The beginning of the first wave of investigations that our documentary Dreamers and Fighters: The NYC Teacher Purges addresses, started with the Rapp-Coudert dismissals.

Rapp-Coudert Committee Discussion on the CCNY Web Site

As Henry Foner wrote:

"Those stories began in 1940, when the New York State Legislature created the Rapp-Coudert investigating committee, whose repressive techniques cost about 50 college teachers and staff at City College their jobs in 1941 – the single largest purge of college teachers in U.S. history. It laid the basis, after WWII, for the McCarran Committee to use the Rapp-Coudert Committee’s list and techniques to carry out the extensive witch hunt that plagued the New York City schools during the 1940s and 1950s, and from which they have still not recovered."

Carol Smith’s online site is based on the exhibition,  "Protest and Repression: The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY, 1931-42," mounted at The Graduate Center, CUNY, February 4 to March 4, 2005.