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Unionised faculty and the politicalleft: Communism and the AmericanFederation of Teachers on the eve ofthe Second World WarTimothy Reese Cain aa Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership ,University of Illinois , Urbana-Champaign , USAPublished online: 14 Jun 2012.

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Unionised faculty and the political left: Communism and theAmerican Federation of Teachers on the eve of the Second WorldWar

Timothy Reese Cain*

Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership, University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign, USA

(Received 18 December 2010; final version received 24 January 2012)

During the contentious late 1930s and early 1940s, American education andAmerican labour struggled with both internal and external concerns over Com-munist infiltration. These struggles converged on the American Federation ofTeachers (AFT), a union of 30,000 K–12 and college teachers. Through itsfocus on leftist politics and organised college faculty, this article contends thatcollege faculty played critical roles in the debates over Communism within theunion, that the end of the Popular Front fundamentally weakened the collegelocals and that the ultimate purge of Communist locals had devastating effectson faculty unionisation.

Keywords: labour; higher education; politics

In the late 1930s, the United States was deep in the throes of an educational redscare. William Randolph Hearst’s publications repeatedly warned of Communistinfiltration in American schools, drugstore magnate Charles Walgreen famouslyremoved his niece from the University of Chicago to protect her from supposedCommunist indoctrination and 21 states required that teachers sign oaths attestingto their loyalty to the United States.1 At the same time, the American labour move-ment was struggling over the alleged Communist Party (CP) membership of someunion members and feared Communist efforts to control union locals and nationalsfor their own political ends. These issues converged on the American Federation ofTeachers (AFT), a union of K–12 teachers, college faculty and related educationalpersonnel. At the union’s contentious 1937 convention, Chicago high school teacherand convention delegate James A. Meade shouted at former Yale professor andAFT president Jerome Davis, ‘You represent the C. P. but I don’t know whether

*Email: tcain@illinois.edu1George R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 tothe War on Terrorism (New York: Norton, 2004), 317–18; American Civil Liberties Union,Gag on Teaching (New York: ACLU, 1937), 21–8, 30–45.

History of EducationVol. 41, No. 4, July 2012, 515–535

ISSN 0046-760X print/ISSN 1464-5130 online� 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2012.671619http://www.tandfonline.com

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that stands for “college professors” or “Communist Party”’.2 Meade’s specific cri-tique related to Davis’s embrace of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),which had recently separated from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), buthis eruption spoke to a larger divide within the union and deeper concerns aboutthe roles and politics of its college faculty membership.

Through considerations of archival evidence and published materials, this articleexamines the roles of and debates around allegedly leftist and Communist facultymembers in the AFT in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was a crucial period inthe union’s development and a period in which, according to one institutional histo-rian, there were ‘a number of large centers of learning wherein symptoms of discon-tent with the prevailing order of things appeared’. Discussing the University ofMichigan, he noted with alarm, ‘Among the younger instructors there were manywith radical views. It was regarded as fashionable and somewhat clever at that timeto belittle the so-called “American Way” and praise the regimes of dictatorsabroad…. The older members of the faculty were convinced that some of the newerinstructors were actually card-carrying members of the Communist party.’3 Numer-ous universities expelled Communist or radical organisations and their studentmembers.4 Institutions such as the University of Texas, Yale University and HarvardUniversity dismissed leftist faculty members in high-profile incidents that led toallegations of politically motivated dismissals and resulted in investigations intoviolations of academic freedom. More dramatically, close to 40 faculty memberswere dismissed or resigned from the City College of New York during a purge ofalleged Communists. One of the dismissed professors, Morris Schappes, spent morethan a year in prison after being convicted of perjury for denying knowledge ofactive Communists on staff.5 The AFT was implicated in some of the prominentdismissals but itself was divided over how best to respond to allegations of Com-munism within the union and in education more broadly: New York College Teach-ers Union (AFT Local 537) led the AFT’s defence of leftist college faculty such asSchappes and Jerome Davis but, two years after Davis was defeated in his bid forre-election to the AFT’s presidency, the AFT expelled Local 537 and two otherlocals (New York Teachers Union, AFT Local 5; and Philadelphia Teachers Union,AFT Local 192) due to alleged Communist domination. Importantly, college facultyplayed crucial roles on both sides of these debates, with Davis’s successor, Colum-bia University professor George S. Counts, the key figure in leading the purge.

2This comment was reported in news coverage but was left out of the convention’s proceed-ings, which only paraphrased Meade. ‘Education: Two horses’, September 6, 1937. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,758164,00.html (accessed May 7, 2010). A yearearlier, during debates about how to respond to the anticipated expulsion of the CIO fromthe AFL, Meade was an outspoken critic of the CIO and its leader John L. Lewis. ‘Discus-sion of the CIO Controversy’, in Report of the Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conven-tion of the American Federation of Teachers (Chicago: AFT, [1936]), 77–93.3Kent Sagendorph, Michigan: The Story of the University (Dutton, 1948), 332–3.4Robert Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America’s First MassStudent Movement, 1929–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 98–133; PhilipG. Altbach, Student Politics in America: A Historical Analysis (New York: McGraw-Hill,1974), 60–1.5Ronnie Dugger, ‘Nobel Prize Winner Purged at the University of Texas’, Southern Expo-sure 2, no. 1 (1974): 67–70; Ellen W. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and theUniversities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 63–83.

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This article argues that, although college faculty were frequently at the left edgeof the union, that edge was a contested space which included members of the CPand its allies, anti-Stalinist Marxists and socialists, among others. Just as impor-tantly, it demonstrates that the struggles over Communism had a devastating effecton faculty unionisation and revealed tensions between K–12 and college membersof the union. In doing so, it provides insight into the history of anti-Communismwithin educational unions, places emphasis on issues outside New York and pro-vides new understandings of the battle that almost destroyed the AFT on the eve ofAmerican entry into the Second World War. Importantly, this article does notattempt to offer a definitive discussion of which locals were dominated by Commu-nists or to determine which members of the union were simultaneously members ofthe CP. It also does not assert that college faculty were the only AFT members whowere part of the Popular Front, sought a social activist union, were intrigued byMarxism or joined the CP; the roles and experiences of Works Progress Administra-tion teachers and of public school teachers in New York, Philadelphia and else-where would easily disprove such a claim. Indeed, of the three locals expelled foralleged CP control in 1941, only one was a college local and it was the smallest ofthe three. Rather, this article offers insight into the debates around and issues con-cerning leftist faculty and unions in the era and shows that among the many con-tested issues of the era were the roles played by college faculty in the larger union.The college locals were politically active unions that impacted local and nationalscenes but also experienced the deep fissures of the larger American left in 1939and beyond.

Historiographical considerations

This article sits at the intersection of several streams of literature – those on anti-Communism between the wars, the history of the AFT and early faculty unionisa-tion. Importantly, while each of these has useful individual pieces, none is robust;far more is unknown than known about anti-Communist activity, college facultyunionisation and internal AFT dynamics during the period under consideration.Most standard considerations of faculty unions date them to the mid-1960s, thusignoring the more than 100 faculty locals formed on college campuses before thattime. The most comprehensive source on the issue is Jeannette Lester’s 1968 disser-tation, which provided a descriptive overview of the rise of unions identified inAFT documents as ‘college locals’ – a reasonable approach, but one that missedthe dozens of other locals made up largely or exclusively of college faculty thatwere mislabelled by the AFT in the 1930s and 1940s. Lester noted that facultyjoined the union for a variety of reasons, including some as an outlet for their socialand political activity.6 Histories of the AFT largely ignored college faculty in thisperiod, with only few exceptions. Marjorie Murphy’s Blackboard Unions is themost thorough and useful history of the union, but even it ignores college facultybeyond calling Davis naïve and noting a few key professors. Though useful inmany ways, Murphy’s focus and approach preclude consideration of the role that

6Jeannette Lester, ‘The American Federation of Teachers in Higher Education: A History ofUnion Organization of Faculty Members in Colleges and Universities, 1916–1966’ (EdD dis-sertation, University of Toledo, 1968), 84–141. The confusion over college locals results, inpart, from the AFT’s part-time assistant in the era labelling only unions with either of thewords ‘college’ or ‘university’ in the title as consisting of faculty.

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college faculty played as college faculty in the union, including how Communismand anti-Communism were intertwined with these roles.7 Finally, some more local-ised attention has been focused on the specific struggles in New York City, includ-ing those at its City College.8 These studies offer useful insights into the localsituations, including the purges related to the legislative investigations that led tothe firing of Schappes and others. This article, though, takes a different approachby looking at the national issues, considering how they affected the AFT and inter-preting what they say about the internal dynamics of the union and the teachingprofession.

Most of the limited literature concerning Communism and higher education inthe period approaches the topic either from the perspective of 1950s McCarthyismor as part of examinations of early student movements. Robert Cohen’s importantWhen the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America’s First Mass StudentMovement, 1929–1941, is an ideal example of the latter. His discussion of studentpolitical activity includes the interpretation that conservative academic administra-tors posed the greatest threats to faculty academic freedom in the era. It wasbecause these administrators were so effective in their anti-Communist purges thatseveral legislative investigations in the later part of the decade failed to uncoverCommunism among the faculties of public universities.9 In No Ivory Tower:McCarthyism and the Universities, Ellen W. Schrecker offers the most completediscussion of Communism and academic freedom in the 1930s. Similar to Cohen,Schrecker located the challenges to academic freedom in the red scare politics ofthe decade. She argued that the growth of the CP, combined with its increaseddemonisation in conservative circles and the corresponding belief that leftist facultymembers were secretly intent on overthrowing the government, posed the greatestthreats to professorial freedom. She noted:

Though the academy then tolerated more left-wing activity than it did either earlier orlater, it did not welcome it. Nor did radical teachers or students feel completely securein their double commitment to scholarship and left-wing politics. They knew that werethey to reveal themselves as Communists in public they might well be expelled or losetheir jobs. There were enough dismissals during the 1930s to give substance to suchfears.10

As part of his larger analysis of Communism in American education from the1910s to the 1950s, Robert Iversen’s 1959 The Communists and the Schools like-wise provides a discussion of higher education, teacher unionism and the AFT. Iver-sen detailed the internal dynamics of teacher unionism in the era and explained theinner debates of the New York locals as they struggled over factionalism. Iversen

7Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900–1980 (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1990), 131–74.8See, for example, Stephen Leberstein, ‘Purging the Profs: The Rapp Coudert Committee inNew York, 1940–1942’, in New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism, ed.Michael E. Brown, Randy Martin, Frank Rosengarten and George Snedeker (New York:Monthly Review Press, 1993), 91–122; Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Commu-nism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2011), 11–74.9Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young, 148–223.10Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 63.

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similarly noted the role of leftist politics in the national union’s intrigue.11 Myexamination of the AFT’s approach to academic freedom raises issues of Commu-nism and college faculty but emphasised the organisation’s approach to defendingprofessorial rights and its interactions with the American Association of UniversityProfessors (AAUP).12 This article builds off these earlier works by making the link-ages among college faculty, Communism and the AFT more explicit. By the late1930s, college faculty frequently joined New York teachers on the left edge of theunion, and anti-radical sentiment could combine with an anti-faculty outlook. Still,the roles of faculty in the union were complicated and diverse, as were the politicalperspectives that they held. Moreover, a split of college faculty unionists followingthe Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 had important implications for theunion.

AFT on campus

In 1916, with recognition from the AFL and support from teachers in additional cit-ies, representatives from four teachers’ unions met in south Chicago and officiallyfounded the new national union. Despite Columbia University professor JohnDewey’s holding of AFT card number one, the union was primarily composed ofand was designed for K–12 teachers. At its third convention in 1918, though, theAFT loosened eligibility guidelines, including allowing for the formation of localson college campuses. Beginning with the founding of the Howard University Teach-ers Union (AFT Local 33) later that fall, college faculty formed locals on 20 collegecampuses in the late 1910s and early 1920s for a variety of institutional reasons.13

At Howard University, for example, faculty were concerned about the ‘degradationof the professors in University affairs’.14 At the University of Illinois, home of thesecond college local, one important argument for unionisation was financial: realsalaries had plummeted since the years before the First World War and little reliefwas in sight. At Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, the union was formed indirect response to President Parley P. Womer’s dismissal of John Ervin Kirkpatrick,a senior faculty member who sought changes in institutional governance.15

Although these early locals raised important issues and garnered both local andnational attention, they failed to attract large numbers of faculty due in part to aperceived divide between blue-collar workers and the professoriate. Moreover, mostcollege and university administrators who expressed an opinion on the topic wereopposed to faculty unionisation; others who proclaimed neutrality secretly workedagainst the unions. In summer 1919, the First Red Scare took a toll on facultyunions – the Howard University Teachers Union’s struggles can be traced to threatsto federal funding over alleged Communism on campus – and, in the face ofinstitutional and political pressures, all but one of these early locals failed by the

11Robert W. Iversen, The Communists and the Schools (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).12Timothy Reese Cain, ‘“For Education and Employment”: The American Federation ofTeachers and Academic Freedom, 1926–1941’, Perspectives on the History of HigherEducation 26 (2007): 67–102.13Timothy Reese Cain, ‘The First Attempts to Unionize the Faculty’. Teachers CollegeRecord 112, no. 3 (2010): 875–913.14Walter Dyson, Howard University: The Capstone of Negro Education (Washington, DC:The Graduate School, Howard University, 1941), 96.15Cain, ‘First Attempts’, 889–90.

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mid-1920s. These difficulties were not unique to college locals, as the larger AFTalso suffered from attacks on its membership, aggressive recruiting from theconservative National Education Association, red scare politics and the AFL’s with-drawal of support for organising activities. AFT membership peaked at 10,000 in1919 before receding to just over 3000 in 1921. Through the mid-1920s, the AFTstruggled with internal divisions, external challenges and low regard by the AFL.Only late in the decade and, more so, in the 1930s did the union rebound, growingto 7500 members in 1934 and more than 30,000 in 1940. And yet, even with thisgrowth, factionalism, struggles with purpose and battles over Communismcontinued to trouble the AFT.16

College faculty played a key role in this resurgence, through both their member-ship and leadership. When, in 1927, Dewey made a special appeal to college teach-ers to join the New York Teachers Union, he was one of few faculty members inany local across the nation.17 The only remaining local on a college campus hadfewer than 10 members and was inactive. His appeal was met with increased inter-est on college campuses and, beginning with the founding of the Yale UniversityFederation of Teachers (Local 208) in 1928, faculty slowly began to found theirown unions for social, educational and economic reasons. By 1935, faculty-centriclocals existed on 13 campuses and faculty played significant roles in at least 10more unions. By the end of the decade, locals had been formed on more than 50campuses and faculty prominence grew in other locals as well. These appearedacross the country and in various institutional types, including teachers colleges,elite public and private universities, historically black colleges, liberal arts collegesand regional state colleges. At first, many of the locals focused on social and socie-tal issues, including advocating for K–12 teachers and supporting the larger labourmovement. Indeed, for some college locals, the sole purposes were improving theconditions of K–12 education and offering support for unionisation among schoolteachers. As the decade progressed, more attention was paid to issues involving fac-ulty working conditions, including salaries, academic freedom, and even the circum-stances of instructors and graduate student teachers. Still, leftist political activitywas central to these faculty unions. Their growth and expansion corresponded withthe rise of faculty leadership in the national union and a corresponding leftwardshift.18

Of course, the growth of teachers’ unions also coincided with other, largerchanges in American society. The trials of the Great Depression, the competing eco-nomic and political visions for the United States, and the enflamed internationalpolitical scene all affected the debates over and efforts to unionise educators at alllevels. At the same time, there were broad shifts in American labour and substantialgains by unions: between 1930 and 1940, the percentage of the labour force in

16Cain, ‘First Attempts’; Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 107–8.17John Dewey, ‘Why I Am a Member of the Teachers Union’, American Teacher 12, no. 5(1928): 3–6.18Timothy Reese Cain, ‘“The College Teacher and the Trade Union”: Faculty Organizing inPamphlets, Articles, and Actuality’ (paper presented at the History of Education SocietyAnnual Meeting, Cambridge, MA, October 2010).

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unions jumped from 12.3 to 27.6, with much of the change occurring after the1935 National Labor Relations Act (commonly called the Wagner Act) establishedthe rights of workers to form unions and collectively bargain.19 Dramatic strikes inthe late 1930s, as well as the formation of the Committee of IndustrialOrganizations and its ultimate separation as the independent Congress of IndustrialOrganizations, affected the nature and experience of unionisation. These events alsoinformed college educators’ decisions on whether to join the AFT. College facultywho did join were often on the progressive wing of the teachers’ union andfrequently considered CIO-style industrial approaches to organisation. As notedabove, faculty played key roles on both sides of the debates that defined the unionin the years before the Second World War and resulted in the expulsion of threeAFT locals (Locals 5, 192 and 537) for Communist domination.

Rise of the left and fears of Communism: New York and beyond

External allegations of Communism and internal efforts to demonstrate loyalty hin-dered the AFT in both K–12 and higher education in the late 1910s and early1920s. Still, though these early faculty unions were frequently organised by andthen attracted progressives and socialists, there is no evidence of actual Commu-nism outside of New York. In 1922, New York Teachers Union leader Henry Lin-ville first became concerned about Communist influence in his local; by 1925,Linville and others had temporarily put aside the concern and, in Iversen’s terms,the local ‘had virtually rid itself of its communist minority’.20 By the early 1930s,Linville’s fears had returned, were more pronounced and were more widely shared,though still at first localised in New York. New York Teachers Union was highlydivided and Linville and his allies were increasingly unable to steer the local towardtheir professional, if progressive, agenda. Between 1933 and 1935, Linville and hissupporters battled against the Communist groups whom they believed were attempt-ing to subvert and control the local for their own purposes, rather than for unionends. They enlisted Dewey’s support in the form of an investigation into factional-ism and unsuccessfully attempted to expel several members in a highly contestedparliamentary battle featuring accusations of impropriety on both sides. In 1935,Linville took his concerns to the national convention and urged the AFT to revokeTeachers Union’s charter and reorganise the non-Communist members in a newlocal. Despite significant support for revocation, the effort failed due to ongoingdisputes, concerns that progressives were being silenced and rumours that the AFLwould expel the AFT if it did not did not remove Communist locals – rumourswhich hurt rather than helped the cause. College faculty including socialistUniversity of Chicago economist Maynard Krueger and Communist Johns HopkinsUniversity instructor Albert Blumberg helped broker the deals that sealed Linville’sfate and sustained Local 5, ultimately leading to a mass resignation of Linville andother anti-Communist members from the local. These struggles, which furtherincluded the union’s failure to defend the academic freedom and tenure of rank-

19John T. Dunlop and Walter Galenson, eds., Labor in the Twentieth Century (New York:Academic Press, 1978), 31, as cited by Robert VanGiezen and Albert E. Schwenk, ‘Compen-sation from World War I through the Great Depression’, Compensation and Working Condi-tions 6, no. 3 (2001): 17–22.20Henry R. Linville, Communists at Work, Chapter 6, Henry R. Linville Collection [hereafterLinville Collection], Box 1, Archive of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library,Wayne State University [hereafter ALUA]; Iversen, Communists and the Schools, 23.

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and-file such as faction leader Isidore Begun, portended a larger divide that wouldexpand beyond New York and to the national union.21

Of course, these shifts implicated larger national political developments, includ-ing the growth of the Popular Front, a coalition of leftist organisations, individualsand labour unions. The Popular Front was, according to historian Michael Denning,‘an insurgent social movement’ that ‘became a radical historical bloc uniting indus-trial unionists, Communists, independent socialists, community activists, and émigréanti-fascists around laborist social democracy, anti-fascism, and anti-lynching’.22

Though, as Denning argued, the CP elements of the Popular Front have assumedtoo great a role in many historical considerations of the political left in the late1930s, they were significant, including on college campuses. As Schreckerrecounted, academics and intellectuals across the nation were increasingly attractedto leftist politics and some to the Communist Party. The rise of fascism in Europe,and especially the Spanish Civil War, caused many to reconsider their beliefs and asmall but significant minority to join.23 On some college campuses, it was thesevery same faculty who were most interested in the AFT’s approach to socialunionism. Indeed, evidence indicates that teachers’ unions were often the locus ofPopular Front activity on campuses with locals and brought together CP members,anti-Stalinist leftists and others in their pursuit of social goals.

Notable among the activist unionists was a group of faculty at Howard Univer-sity who argued for social change and campaigned for social justice in Washington,DC, and beyond. Due to White institutions’ continuing refusal to hire African-American scholars – it was not until the 1940s that an African-American held a reg-ular faculty appointment at a White college or university24 – Howard was able togather an elite group of faculty, especially in the social sciences. The institutionwas, in the period, awash with political activity, with Marxist ideas and CP influ-ences implicated in some of the endeavours. Federal officials alleged and investi-gated Communist infiltration at the institution, including in the aftermath of itshosting of the 1935 conference on ‘The Position of the Negro in Our National Eco-nomic Crisis’, out of which the National Negro Congress was formed. In 1936,scholars and activists including Ralph J. Bunche, Alpheus Hunton and EugeneHolmes were instrumental in founding a new Howard Teachers Union (AFT Local440), thereby offering the already engaged group of scholar-activists a new venuefor their efforts for change. The local worked with other labour organisations, sup-ported student political activity, protested against American neutrality in the SpanishCivil War and campaigned for tax reform. Still, the central social activity wasprotesting segregation in Washington, DC, and beyond. And yet, as with many ofthese locals and the Popular Front more broadly, the local lacked unanimity on

21Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 151–61; Iversen, Communists and the Schools, 36–47, 53–5;Commission on Educational Reconstruction, Organizing the Teaching Profession: The Storyof the American Federation of Teachers (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1955), 233–8; PhillipTaft, United They Teach: The Story of the United Federation of Teachers (New York: Nash,1974); Celia Lewis Zitron, New York City Teachers Union: 1916–1964 (New York: Humani-ties Press, 1968), 179; Cain, ‘For Education and Employment’, 75–7.22Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the TwentiethCentury (New York: Verso, 1997), 4.23Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 24–62.24James D. Anderson, ‘Race, Meritocracy, and the American Academy during the ImmediatePost-World War II Era’, History of Education Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1993): 151–75, 153–4.

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these issues, especially as the decade progressed. The increasingly leftward shift ofthe local’s leadership – local president and national vice-president Doxey Wilkersonwould eventually resign from Howard and declare his membership in the CP –combined with larger national events to foster internal rifts that both damaged thelocal and impacted national manoeuvring, as is discussed below.25

The University of Washington Teachers Union (Local 401) was similarly noted– and critiqued – for its social activism and leftist political activity. Certainly, manykey members were part of the Popular Front; a number were later accused of beingCP members, including the faculty who were investigated by the state and theinstitution in the late 1940s, three of whom were dismissed. Melvin Rader, one ofthose investigated by the state’s Joint Legislative Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, known as the Canwell Committee after its chairman AlbertCanwell, called Local 401 ‘the most left-wing faculty organization on the campus’and described his membership in the union as his ‘first active participation’ in thePopular Front.26 AFT Vice President Harry C. Steinmetz noted at the 1936 annualconvention that Local 401 was the ‘outstanding’ local in the state with 100 mem-bers out of the 500 teachers at the institution. He continued, ‘The Union is politi-cally active in ways that it would not be expedient to describe’.27 Steinmetz himselfwas a San Diego State College faculty member who ran for mayor as the SocialistParty candidate and was, in the 1950s, dismissed for his refusal to answer questionsabout his alleged CP membership. His interrogation centred on his activities as aleader of the San Diego AFT local and on allegations that he had used the post toinculcate Communism in the teaching profession.28 The Cambridge Union ofUniversity Teachers (AFT Local 431) – founded in late 1935 for faculty at HarvardUniversity, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University – wassimilarly aligned; according to Local 431 executive committee member John Rack-liffe, the Popular Front was ‘represented at Harvard by the Teachers’ Union’.29 At a1975 conference on political activism at Harvard during the late 1930s, participantsagreed that the faculty outlet for and central force on behalf of leftist politics wasthe union, with one noting that some were ‘under a vague Stalinist influence’ andthat his active membership was ‘as close as I can remember coming to the

25Timothy Reese Cain, ‘“Only Organized Effort will Find the Way Out!”: Faculty Unioniza-tion at Howard University, 1918–1950’, Perspectives on the History of Higher Education 29(Forthcoming 2012).26Melvin Rader, False Witness (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 7, 31. Formore on Local 401 and Communism, see Andrew Knudsen, ‘Communism, Anti-Commu-nism, and Faculty Unionization: The American Federation of Teachers’s [sic] Union at theUniversity of Washington, 1935–1948’, The Great Depression in Washington State Project.http://depts.washington.edu/depress/AFT_Local_401.shtml#_edn56.27Harry C. Steinmetz, [Sectional Report], Report of the Proceedings of the Twentieth AnnualConvention, 29–30, 29.28Paul J. Eisloeffel, ‘The Cold War and Harry Steinmetz: A Case of Loyalty and Legisla-tion’, Journal of San Diego History 35, no. 4 (1989). https://www.sandiegohistory.org/jour-nal/89fall/cold.htm.29John Rackliffe, ‘Notes for a Character Study’, in F.O. Matthiessen (1902–1950): A Collec-tive Portrait, ed. Paul M. Sweezy and Leo Huberman (New York: Henry Schuman, 1950),76–92, 78. The local changed its name to the Harvard Teachers Union in 1940 when theMIT members chartered their own local.

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Communist Party while I was at Harvard’.30 Though the Communist element wasreal in the union and would eventually become dominant, the majority was, as oneexecutive committee member described it, ‘liberal … and drifting to the left’.31

These and numerous other college locals and members frequently dedicated theirmeetings and efforts to progressive political and social causes, putting them outsidethe mainstream of their faculty colleagues and, frequently, the larger AFT.

The CIO and national battles

Despite the fact that their politics were frequently more progressive than those ofmany members of the AFT outside New York and Philadelphia, and, in fact, thatthey often joined for different reasons than many members, college faculty wereattractive to the AFT in the early and middle 1930s. The union believed that facultymembership, especially the membership of professors at elite institutions, offeredpublic relations boons and helped legitimise the union. Dewey’s membership hadlong been celebrated and, in 1928, the national bent its rules on membership to beable to announce the forming of a local at Yale.32 The Yale local was founded asan expression of sympathy for the labour movement. Just as often, college localswere formed to support K–12 teachers, and to help organise educators in areaschools. In 1936, the AFT was proudly trumpeting the Cambridge local, claimingthat it signalled a new era in organising, one that would break down barriers, morefully bring faculty into the union and lead other educators to join, as well.33 By theend of that year college faculty assumed more importance than they previously hadin the AFT. At the August 1936 convention, Yale’s Jerome Davis was elected asthe union’s national president. This set the stage for the brief period of faculty’sgreatest influence in the union, but one that was conflicted as factionalism andpolitical intrigue plagued the union.

One key issue in these years was the union’s tense relationship with the AFL,including due to the AFL’s concerns over Communism in the union and to publicstatements by teachers’ union leaderships in support of the CIO. The larger split inAmerican labour dated to 1935, when United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)president John L. Lewis and other union leaders formed the Committee of IndustrialOrganizations in an attempt to reform the AFL, increase its activism and furtherorganise it along industrial rather than craft lines. Within a few years, the fissures thatled to the group’s formation revealed wider fractures, and, in 1938, the Committee ofIndustrial Organizations became the independent Congress of IndustrialOrganizations. The CIO changed the nature of organising in the United States, with a

30Henry Nash Smith, ‘A Texan Perspective’, in A Symposium on Political Activism and theAcademic Conscience: The Harvard Experience, 1936–1941, ed. John Lyndenberg (Geneva,NY: Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 1977), 43–54, 53.31Harry Levin, ‘A View from Within’, in Lyndenberg, Symposium on Political Activism,1–7, 5.32Florence C. Hanson to Davis, April 24, 1928, AFT Inventory Part II, Series XII–Locals[hereafter AFT Locals], Box 11, Folder Yale Federation of Teachers Local 204, ALUA; Han-son to Davis, May 11, 1928, AFT Locals, Box 11, Folder Yale Federation of Teachers Local204, ALUA; Davis to Hanson, October 1, 1928, AFT Locals, Box 11, Folder Yale Federa-tion of Teachers Local 204, ALUA.33‘The College Teacher and the Trade Union’, The College Section of the Teachers Union,New York, n.d. [1936].

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‘crusading zeal’ and ‘a distinctively egalitarian approach to organizing drives andworkplace protests’.34 The CIO both offered new possibilities for workers and revita-lised the AFL, including around issues involving racial discrimination. At the sametime, it also splintered the labour movement and left individual unions up for grabs.

Set against this larger battle within American unionisation was the AFT’s ownstruggle with the AFL, much of which centred on the AFL’s concern overCommunism within the AFT and its corresponding lack of support for teachers’unionisation. In 1935, the AFL pushed for the expulsion of Local 5 but itsintervention damaged, more than helped, the cause. The following year, the AFLinvestigated Local 5 on its own and again recommended AFT action but stoppedshort of acting on its own. By the 1936 AFT convention, relations between theAFT and AFL had degenerated as AFT leadership moved further left. At the con-vention, the AFT resolved in support of the CIO and called on the AFL to preservelabour unity. The following year, as the left wing increased its control over theunion’s executive committee (with the backing of faculty locals in addition to thatof WPA locals and the New York and Philadelphia Teachers Unions), the CIO issuewas at the fore from the convention’s beginning.35 When Henry Ohl, president ofthe Wisconsin Federation of Labor, used his opening welcome to lambast the CIO,Davis, who had already been publicly criticised by AFL president William Green,responded with his presidential address. He lauded the CIO, its progressive stancesand its organising successes, declaring, ‘We believe that the A.F. of L. has renderedgreat service over the years, but we stand squarely behind the C.I.O.’.36 Davis’sspeech was met with both jeers and exuberant applause. When college faculty HughDeLacy, Dorothy Douglas and George Axtelle moved to have the speech printedimmediately, Chicago’s Meade dissented.37 In his aforementioned outburst, heclaimed that the membership of the union disagreed and that the CIO’s support wasfrom the Communists and college faculty.38 The convention’s election of new lead-ership centred on the CIO question. Two slates of candidates, one supporting theCIO and one opposing it, were nominated. The convention widely supported theformer, with Davis defeating long-time conservative Chicago union leader CharlesStillman to retain his presidency. Ten of the 15 vice-presidencies went to the CIOsupporters, including seven college faculty members.39 For the rest of hispresidency, Davis enjoyed majority support of an executive committee largely onthe left edge of a divided national organisation.

In 1938, the union again prepared for a showdown. Mary Grossman, thepresident of Local 192 who later lost her teaching position for allegedly leading a

34Robert M. Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 106.35Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 156–64.36Elizabeth Clarke, ‘On the Floor at the A.F. of T. Convention’, New York Teacher (October1937): 7–9, 7.37Dodd later identified DeLacy and Douglas as among the ‘score of brilliant left-wingers’from college faculties who became quite influential in the union in the late 1930s, especiallyat the conventions. She continued that DeLacy ‘was a valuable addition to the communistcause’. Bella Dodd, School of Darkness (New York: Kennedy, 1954), 105.38A substitute motion to mimeograph rather than print the speech, offered by a high schoolteacher, was passed instead. Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Convention of theAmerican Federation of Teachers (Chicago: AFT [1937]), 3, 6.39‘Election to Test Teacher Views on CIO; AFL Man Nominated Against Dr. Davis’, NewYork Times, August 26, 1937.

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Communist cell, wrote to Davis, ‘I have heard that the opposite camp is gunningfor you with the help of the American Federation of Labor. This is serious and tomeet it requires careful preparation.’40 Two days later, she warned Steinmetz, ‘Wehave information that the Chicago gang is particularly after Davis, DeLacy, andSteinmetz. It would appear that our strength may not match proportionately thatwhich we had last year, therefore, our plans must be carefully made.’41 Indeed,plans were carefully made as Grossman, Davis and their allies turned to charismaticfellow-traveller and Hunter College instructor Bella Dodd (who later admitted CPmembership; became a national leader in the party; and then, in the 1950s, turnedinformant against it) to marshal the left against Chicago teacher Lillian Herstein’scandidacy. Davis was overwhelmingly returned to the presidency with much of theExecutive Committee intact. Still, while the AFT again passed resolutions in sup-port of both the CIO and labour unity, and empowered the Executive Committee tohold a referendum on affiliation, little was solved at the national convention. Davismaintained his support for the CIO but was unwilling – and perhaps unable – tolead the AFT out of the AFL once the split was formal. He instead hoped that theAFL would adopt CIO policies and the national schism could be healed. Davis wasa fellow traveller but not a CP member;42 the Communist locals were even morecommitted to remaining in the AFT. Though they advocated industrial unionism,praised the CIO, and critiqued the conservatism of the AFL, the CP did not wantthe AFT to leave the AFL. The party was well established in the CIO but viewedthe AFT as its best hope for influence in the AFL.43

Academic freedom, patronage and the divided union

Davis was central to the intrigue not only due to his presidency but also due to hispublic battle to retain his faculty position at Yale. An outspoken advocate for socialcauses, Davis had long drawn protests from some in the Yale community, includingfor taking students to visit the local CP headquarters. Davis had recently publishedCapitalism and Its Culture, which described capitalism as anachronistic, exploitativeand doomed. In the vein of Thorstein Veblen’s The Higher Learning in America: AMemorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men and John ErvinKirkpatrick’s The American College and Its Rulers, the book also critiqued a con-servative corporate influence on education.44 In 1936, the faculty of the Yale Divin-

40Mary Foley Grossman to Jerome Davis, June 9, 1938, Mary Foley Grossman Papers [here-after Grossman Papers], Box 1, Folder 12: Correspondence AFT Convention 38, TempleUniversity Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, PA. On the investigation of Grossman,see United States Congress House Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation ofCommunist Activities in the Philadelphia Area – Part 3 (Washington, DC: United StatesPrinting Office, 1954).41Mary Foley Grossman to Harry Steinmetz, June 11, 1938, Grossman Papers, Box 1, Folder12: Correspondence AFT Convention 38.42In 1939, the Saturday Evening Post called Davis a Communist. Davis’s libel lawsuit inresponse was eventually settled in 1943. Cain, ‘For Education and Employment’, 94–5.43Iversen, Communists and the Schools, 109–13; Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 159; Dodd,School of Darkness, 104–5.44Jerome Davis, Capitalism and Its Culture (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1935), 335–71;Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Uni-versities by Business Men (New York: Huebsch, 1918); John Ervin Kirkpatrick, The Ameri-can College and Its Rulers (New York: New Republic, 1926).

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ity School recommended that Davis be granted a three-year contract but declined torecommend promotion to full professor. The Yale Corporation, the institution’s gov-erning board, instead claimed financial difficulties in providing Davis with a termi-nal one-year contract and refusing to take action on several requests forreconsideration. Davis and his supporters believed that it was his political activism,rather than budgetary issues, that had caused his non-renewal.45

Both the AFT and the AAUP took up Davis’s case; their different actions pointto differing approaches to academic freedom and competing conceptions of appro-priate professional behaviour. The AAUP negotiated behind the scenes with Yale’sadministration and eventually declared that his tenure had been violated but his aca-demic freedom had not. The AFT, though, took Davis’s case head-on, includingorganising a picket of 250 cap-and-gown-clad educators at a meeting of Yale’strustees. Led by New York unionists Arnold Shukotoff of City College and Dodd,and with the support of an investigation committee led by Shukotoff and AmherstCollege’s Colston Warne, the union aggressively defended Davis, claiming that hisdismissal was due to his progressive political opinions and was a clear violation ofacademic freedom. The Davis defence was the first to make use of the AFT’s newNational Defense Fund for academic freedom cases and garnered a great deal ofattention. The union used the Davis case to attract new members and push forgreater protections for academic freedom. In the aftermath, they similarlyapproached several other high-profile cases, notably those of Harvard instructorsand unionists Alan Sweezy and J. Raymond Walsh, who claimed that they, too,were dismissed for their leftist political activity.46

These defence efforts on behalf of leftist educators at the end of the decade wererarely successful in helping aggrieved educators, though they often played a role inchanges at both the national and institutional levels. At Harvard, for example, theprotests never returned Sweezy and Walsh to their positions, but they did lead torefined and improved tenure policies. Similarly, at Howard, AFT protests over thedismissal of Arthur Callis yielded no help for Callis but did result in a written ten-ure policy. In New York, the union spearheaded efforts that resulted in greatershared governance and, in 1936, successfully fought for Schappes’s position whenit was endangered due to his leftist activity. At the end of the decade, however, theunion was unable to protect Schappes and his colleagues, who were purged fromthe college in the face of anti-red political pressure and investigation. At thenational level, the AFT’s work for Davis and in other prominent cases served as aspur in the AAUP’s negotiations with the administrator-led Association of AmericanColleges, eventually resulting in the ‘1940 Statement of Principles on Academic

45Cain, ‘For Education and Employment’, 79–84.46‘Yale on Trial’, New Republic 89 (November 18, 1936): 85–92; Arnold Shukotoff, ‘YaleCorporation vs. Freedom’, American Teacher 21, no. 2 (1936): 5–7; American Federation ofTeachers, The Jerome Davis Case: Final Report of an Investigation Conducted by the Amer-ican Federation of Teachers into the Proposed Dismissal of Professor Jerome Davis fromthe Stark Chair of Practical Philosophy at the Yale Divinity School (Chicago: American Fed-eration of Teachers, 1937); Cain, ‘For Education and Employment’, 68, 79–84.

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Freedom and Tenure’, the basis for modern academic freedom and tenure policiesin the United States.47

Still, these efforts proved problematic and exacerbated divisions within theunion. Davis’s case was at first handled outside of formal AFT mechanisms. WithDavis’s consent, the defence work was coordinated by Shukotoff’s self-anointedCommittee on Academic Freedom in the Colleges. Shukotoff battled with BenDavidson, the chairman of the AFT’s National Academic Freedom Committee(NAFC), over jurisdiction and whether Shukotoff’s committee even was authorisedto exist. For the two New York educators, the issue ran deeper than control overacademic freedom work. Shukotoff was a leader of the rank-and-file Communistfaction; as a follower of Jay Lovestone’s, Davidson was opposed to the Stalinists inthe Communist Party. While Davidson and the Lovestonites had joined with therank-and-file to defeat Linville in 1935, by 1937, they were deeply at odds. David-son, a member of the United Progressive group within Local 5, was among thosetrying to oust the CP from the union. Shukotoff was supported by Davis and hisexecutive committee and, when Davidson resigned in protest at Shukotoff’s activi-ties, was named the new chair of the NAFC. With Shukotoff in control, the NAFCincreased its efforts at the end of the decade but also furthered the divides withinthe union. He used the National Defense Fund for political purposes and increas-ingly raised the ire of many in the AFT. The NAFC often focused its efforts oncases affecting allegedly Communist educators and on those involving college fac-ulty, even though these were in the minority of all cases brought before it. Theunion’s work on behalf of leftist faculty both made headway in larger struggles foracademic freedom and furthered organisational strife: K–12 teachers complainedabout the political perspectives being protected and that the limited defence fundswere being disproportionately spent on college faculty rather than classroom teach-ers, as AFT secretary-treasurer Irvin Kuenzli repeatedly pointed out to Shukotoff in1939.48 Faculty brought prestige to the organisation and professors such as Deweyand Counts, both renowned for their progressive educational stands and scholarship,held particular sway with many classroom teachers. Yet, to a growing number ofteachers, college faculty such as Davis and Shukotoff were harming the union morethan helping it.49

Further divisions and the purge

By 1939, Counts gave up hope of wresting control of the New York unions fromwithin – his campaign to assume leadership of the New York College TeachersUnion failed by a five-to-one margin – and, with AFL backing, set his sights onchallenging Davis for the AFT presidency. Under the leadership of Wilkerson, theHoward Teachers Union responded to the impending fight by proposing andlobbying for two amendments to the AFT Constitution aimed at countering the

47F.O. Matthiessen, From the Heart of Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948),77–8; Cain, ‘For Education and Employment’, 84–105; Abraham Edel, The Struggle forAcademic Democracy: Lessons from the 1938 ‘Revolution’ in New York’s City Colleges(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).48See, for example, Arnold Shukotoff to Irvin R. Kuenzli, February 21, 1939, AFT NationalDefense Fund Collection, Series II: Defense Fund Office Files, 1937–1964, Folder 14-6,ALUA.49Cain, ‘For Education and Employment’; Iversen, Communists and the Schools, 166–9.

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anti-Communist forces within the union: one to include the prohibition of discrimi-nation based on ‘political activities or belief’, and the other to make it more diffi-cult to suspend or expel a local. Wilkerson argued that they were intended toformalise existing ‘democratic trade union practices’ and to thwart minority effortsto the contrary. Set against the larger battles over Communism in the union, inwhich Wilkerson was a participant, the effort was resisted by the AFT nationaloffice. Eventually, Wilkerson was able to force the issue and both amendmentspassed, temporarily providing reassurance to the Communists in the union.50

On 21 August 1939, the AFT opened its annual convention in Buffalo, NY, withCounts preparing to challenge Davis for the presidency. Counts benefited from hisreputation as a progressive educational thinker and Teachers College professor; hishopes relied on a diverse coalition that included old-guard liberals and the membersof the left who had grown disenchanted with the CP, including New York’s David-son and like-minded anti-Stalinists. Crucial, too, was the support of teachers fromthe Midwest, especially Chicago teachers, who in 1937 had combined the existingK–12 locals into the Chicago Teachers Union (AFT Local 1). Once unified, CTUwas both the largest AFT local and a more conservative and professionally focusedcounter to the New York locals. Counts’s efforts were further aided by the RedScare politics of the day and the specific attacks of the Rapp-Coudert Committee’slegislative investigation into Locals 5 and 537, which drained time, money andenergy from the locals and their supporters. Just as importantly, on 23 August, ascompeting factions wrestled for control of the AFT, Germany and the Soviet Unionagreed to their Non-Aggression Pact, with debilitating effects for AmericanCommunists and the Popular Front. The news of the treaty roiled the convention,disarmed the Communists and hamstrung CP members’ efforts. Iversen noted animmediate ‘wave of defections from the ranks of the sympathizers’ at the conven-tion and, while Schrecker has argued that the treaty had little impact on professorialmembership in the CP, the immediate effect on those who tolerated the CP withinthe AFT was clear. The resulting tumult helped Counts defeat Davis by 24 votes,though it was not enough to overturn the full Executive Council. Still, Counts’s vic-tory was significant, and he immediately began consolidating support and secretlyworking to ensure a complete victory the following year when the conventionwould return to Buffalo. In doing so, he collaborated with, among others, theUniversity of Michigan’s Arthur Elder, former CP member Sophus K. Winther ofthe University of Wisconsin and Washington University’s Paul Preissler. At the1940 convention, international events again intervened as Leon Trotsky’s assassina-tion in Mexico City further coalesced the anti-Stalinist forces. Counts defeated Chi-cago Teachers College professor John J. DeBoer, who had been nominated in hopesof splitting the Chicago vote, and his slate swept into office. The anti-Stalinist’s

50Doxey A. Wilkerson to All A.F.T. Locals, June 14, 1939, AFT Inventory Part I, Series IIIExecutive Council [hereafter AFT Executive], Box 11, Folder Doxey A. Wilkerson, ALUA;Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 166–9; Iversen, Communists and the Schools, 115; Cain,‘“Only Organized Effort”’.

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return to power was complete, setting the stage for the expulsions of Locals 5, 192and 537.51

These issues, as with all union issues, were simultaneously national and local.52

Stalin’s pact with Hitler broke the Popular Front and fractured the uneasy allianceswithin many organisations, including teachers’ union locals. Combined with theunion-specific battles over leftist politics, college locals suffered membership lossesthat diminished their influence and, in some cases, threatened their viability. AtYale, membership in Local 204 plummeted from 42 in August 1939 to 11 inOctober.53 The University of Wisconsin local lost over 30% of its August member-ship by September. At the University of Washington, one-third of the membersfailed to renew by the end of the calendar year. At Harvard, the decline in member-ship began that fall – there was an 18% loss by December – but was thenexacerbated by a contentious meeting over the war the following spring. When theanti-interventionist American Student Union (ASU) asked the Harvard local todonate $5 to its cause, the union was divided.54 The CP faction joined the ASU infavouring non-intervention while many of the liberal members sought to aid GreatBritain. Seventy-seven union members debated the proposal at what membersdescribed as a ‘stormy’, ‘exciting’ and ‘momentous’ meeting that ‘threatened todegenerate into something close to a free-for-all’.55 It was also, ultimately, ‘fatal’.56

The final vote was 34 in favour of the donation to 33 against. As Sweezy recalledin his memorial tribute to F.O. Mattheissen, the leader of the local who tried to nav-igate between the two sides:

The immediate aftermath was a considerable number of withdrawals from the Union.About ten members … sent in their resignations in the next few days. A good manymore simply dropped out and failed to rejoin when the college opened again in thefall. The days of the New Deal and the Popular Front against fascism were over atHarvard – somewhat later than elsewhere, perhaps, but no less decisively. One phaseof the Union’s history ended on May 22, 1940, and another opened.57

51Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 165–7; Iversen, Communists and the Schools, 115–17; Sch-recker, No Ivory Tower, 54–7; Dodd, School of Darkness, 117–18, 127–8.52This understanding of the national and local nature of unionisation is informed by GordonB. Arnold, The Politics of Faculty Unionization: The Experience of Three New EnglandUniversities (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2000).53All membership numbers are based on the individual reports that AFT locals filed monthly.Though incomplete, the best single collection is in AFT Inventory Part I, Series IV DefunctLocals [hereafter AFT Defunct], ALUA.54As a leading Popular Front student organisation, the ASU had itself split over theNazi–Soviet Pact and the Soviet Union’s ensuing invasion of Finland. Though theCommunist faction held sway, the organisation was greatly weakened at both local andnational levels. Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young, 278–98.55Levin, ‘A View from Within’, 5; Smith, ‘A Texan Perspective’, 52; Henry F. May, ‘FromBerkeley to Harvard’, in Lyndenberg, Symposium on Political Activism, 21–30, 27; Paul M.Sweezy, ‘Labor and Political Activities’, in Sweezy and Huberman, F.O. Matthiessen, 61–75,67.56Leo Marx, ‘The Teacher’, in Sweezy and Huberman, F.O. Matthiessen, 41.57Sweezy, ‘Labor and Political Activities’, 67.

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That new phase was one of continued diminishment and contraction. The local wasthreatened with expulsion after inviting CIO leader and suspected Communist HarryBridges to speak in November 1942.58 Though Matthiessen was able to keep a tinylocal open during the Second World War and beyond, it closed in 1950 due tomarginalisation and a lack of interest.59

At Howard, the membership loss was not as significant, but the battles withinthe local were, and they spilled onto the national stage. As part of his larger effortto eliminate CP influence in the AFT, Counts convinced Local 440’s Bunche to runagainst Wilkerson for the AFT vice-presidency in 1940. Wilkerson and Hunton, thelocal’s president, attempted to derail Bunche’s candidacy by claiming that he hadnot remained current with his dues and that the local did not consider him to be anactive member. Special hearings at the convention pitted Hunton against socialistanti-Communist Layle Lane of New York, who had lost to Wilkerson in the previ-ous year’s contest. Lane argued on Bunche’s behalf and claimed that he remem-bered paying his dues, though he lacked any evidence of having done so. Huntoncountered that the local had never received such payment. Further politicised inves-tigation and debate resulted in Bunche’s being declared ineligible just before thevoting. When, in the 1950s, Bunche was himself accused of having been a memberof the Communist Party, he pointed to the incident and his opposition to Wilker-son’s and Hunton’s faction of the local as evidence of his anti-Communist creden-tials.60 Bunche’s removal from the ballot proved to be inconsequential for Counts,however. That evening, as the convention learned of Trotsky’s assassination, Lanewas elected over Wilkerson as part of a sweep of Executive Council seats.61

The Wilkerson–Bunche struggle was certainly not the only one at the 1940 con-vention. Perhaps the most revealing was the proposal of a resolution declaring theAFT’s loyalty, including ‘we unequivocally condemn and utterly oppose all dicta-torships, whether of Nazi, Fascist or Communist origin, whether in Germany, Italyor Russia’.62 Julius Metz of the New York Teachers Union offered a minority reportcalling for the removal of all references to specific governmental systems andnations, while, at the urging of the Communist faction, Lettisha Henderson pro-posed an amendment removing only the reference to the nations as a compromiseposition. Davidson, though, defended the resolution and its delineation of specificoffending systems and states. After substantial parliamentary manoeuvring, a roll-call vote resulted in a decisive defeat of the amendment but the vote on the resolu-tion itself was much narrower. The initial results indicated a 160–161 defeat, but are-count determined that the resolution passed. By a final tally of 169–168, the

58See correspondence related to the speech and the AFT’s concerns over the damage itcaused to the union’s reputation in AFT Defunct, Box 10, Folder 431.59Albert Sprague Coolidge, December 21, 1950, AFT Defunct, Box 10, Folder 431.60Ralph J. Bunche, ‘Report Denying Communist Party Affiliation’, 1954, Ralph BunchePapers, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UC LosAngeles. http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb967nb7pm/.61‘Executive Council Proceeding, August 17–26, 1940’, 39–65, 72–73, AFT Executive, Box23, AFT, Folder Executive Council Proceeding, August 17–26, 1940.62Report of the Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Convention of the American Fed-eration of Teachers (Chicago: [1940]), 41.

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AFT declared itself in opposition to Communism and the Soviet Union.63 Thoughno mention of voting patterns appeared in the official record, note was taken of thecollege locals’ opposition to the amendment. The following spring, amid increasingrancour between college locals and the national office, Kuenzli highlighted ‘thatnearly all the college locals voted in favor of the amendment at the 1940convention to eliminate communism from the totalitarian states. On this questionthe college section was almost unanimous.’64

Keunzli’s comments were part of a larger dialogue within the union about theroles and influence of the college locals. Certainly, leaders such as Counts and Deweywere prominent and added prestige to the AFT. Still, college locals were frequentlysmall and could be marginalised even on their own campuses. Some believed thatthey most often appealed to instructors, graduate students and part-time teachers whowere immature and likely to take imprudent actions. As early as 1936, Kuenzli’s pre-decessor as secretary-treasurer, George Davis, informed a college local that the mostuseful strategy for growth was attracting conservative members.65 Kuenzli was evenmore concerned about the troubles with college locals; when the locals attempted tomeet together at national conventions, he informed them that their efforts weredivisive. Elsewhere, he argued that such meetings could inappropriately extend theinfluence of college faculty, which he believed was already disproportionatelylarge.66 A series of letters between Kuenzli and Axtelle in 1941 demonstrated thebroader concerns that Kuenzli and others shared. Begun in specific response to Kuen-zli’s claims concerning the inappropriateness of College Section convention meet-ings, they included Axtelle’s claim that Kuenzli frequently ‘disparaged’ collegefaculty and their locals. Though Axtelle conceded that college faculty were ‘peculiarcritters’ whose ‘orientation to life is in many ways so different from that of the greatmass of people as to handicap him in dealing with practical problems’, he argued thatthey should retain an important role in the union.67 Kuenzli responded by noting thatcollege locals were out of step with the K–12 majority. He singled out Wilkerson formisusing union funds in support of Communist locals, called for college locals thatwould ‘strengthen rather than weaken’ the union and argued that most were made upof assistants and instructors, rather than the most prestigious members of their facul-ties. He claimed to have heard ‘many emphatic complaints’ about the number of col-lege professors among union leaders and argued that the ‘small extremely radical’college locals were damaging the AFT.68 In exchanges over the remainder of the

63Ibid., 47; Selma [Borchardt] to Ben [Davidson], September 12, 1941, Linville Collection,Box 1, Folder Correspondence, 1922–1941; Iversen, Communists and the Schools, 117–18.64Irvin R. Kuenzli to George Axtelle, May 2, 1941, AFT Executive, Box 1, Folder GeorgeAxtelle.65George Davis to James H. Russell, April 17, 1936, AFT Defunct, Box 7, Folder 375.66Irvin R. Kuenzli to Arthur Elder, April 16, 1941, AFT Executive, Box 7, Folder Irvin R.Kuenzli.67George E. Axtelle to Irvin R. Kuenzli, April 24, 1941, AFT Executive, Box 1, FolderGeorge Axtelle.68Irvin R. Kuenzli to George E. Axtelle, May 2, 1941, AFT Executive, Box 1, FolderGeorge Axtelle.

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year, Axtelle defended the college locals and the importance of marginalised instruc-tors, but Kuenzli maintained that radical locals scared away ‘liberal labor-minded’faculty and ‘may actually serve to jeopardize the programs of some of our large, suc-cessful public school locals’.69

Although they differed on larger issues of college unionisation, by 1941 whenthe situation came to a head, Axtelle had joined Kuenzli in opposition to Commu-nism within the union. With the AFL providing external pressure, the State of NewYork investigating Communism in Locals 5 and 537, and the City Colleges firingfaculty for involvement with the CP, the Counts-led AFT Executive Councilannounced a referendum on the expulsions of Locals 5, 192 and 537. Just as theefforts to purge the locals were led by Counts, the defence of the three locals(called the Committee to Save the AFT) was largely led by faculty, including Wilk-erson, Warne and City College’s Robert Speers. Numerous college locals passedresolutions against both the process of the trials and the final expulsions thatresulted; the local at Stanford University circulated an open letter that called for theremoval of the Executive Committee for pursuing the revocation.70 Most strikingly,college locals overwhelmingly voted against the expulsions in the 1941 referendum(80% against), while non-college locals voted overwhelmingly for the expulsions(67% for).71 At the 1941 convention, the purge was finalised, and the AFTamended its constitutional non-discrimination statement to exclude fascists andCommunists from its protected groups, echoing the previous year’s resolution. Indoing so, it reversed a policy proposed by the Howard University local just threeyears earlier. More importantly, it signalled an end to an era of college facultyprominence in the AFT. The Nazi–Soviet Pact had severely damaged but furtherradicalised college locals; the expulsions further marginalised them. In the war yearsthat followed, small college locals struggled to maintain their charters, with manyfailing to remain viable. Howard Teachers Union, for example, turned in its charterand its members founded a CIO-affiliated local, a local which itself would bepurged for Communist domination at the end of the decade. Others limped along,including Local 401 at the University of Washington, which the AFT expelled forthe same reason in 1949.

Conclusion

The struggles over Communism were the central events for the AFT in the late1930s and early 1940s: they determined the future of the union and even threatened

69Irvin R. Kuenzli to George E. Axtelle, June 14, 1941, AFT Executive, Box 1, FolderGeorge Axtelle. See, also, Axtelle to Kuenzli, May 7, 1941; Axtelle to Kuenzli, 4 December1941; and Kuenzli to Axtelle, December 7, 1941, AFT Executive, Box 1, Folder GeorgeAxtelle.70Palo Alto Local 442, ‘An Open Letter to the National Executive Council of the AmericanFederation of Teachers’, American Federation of Teachers Ephemera, 1916–1968 [micro-form], Pamphlets in American History, Labor; L2788 (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corp. ofAmerica, 1979).71The exact vote counts on the three locals differed slightly but the larger patterns wereidentical. Removing Locals 5, 192 and 537 from the tallies opposing expulsion significantlydiminishes the numbers of anti-expulsion votes but maintains the different patterns for K–12and college locals. ‘Membership of Locals’, American Federation of Teachers PrintedEphemera Collection, Box 2, Folder 1940–1943, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner LaborArchives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University.

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its very existence. This article demonstrates that the battles over leftist politics wereespecially important to college faculty and that college faculty played central andunder-appreciated roles in them. At first, these concerns were localised in NewYork, where AFT Local 5 (the College Section of which separated to form the NewYork College Teachers Union in 1937) split over alleged Communist domination inthe middle of the decade. By the end of the decade, they spread more broadly. Itwas on college campuses that these debates were often most pronounced. At thenational level, Jerome Davis, widely considered a Communist sympathiser and fre-quently accused of being a CP member, was elected AFT president in 1936. Hewas joined by leftist college faculty in an Executive Council that increasinglypushed the union in a more progressive direction than many of its members wanted,including reaching out to the CIO and publicly discussing leaving the AFL. TheAFL, while not wanting to lose a union, was conflicted – it feared that Communistscontrolled the AFT and pushed the AFT to remove its CP members. Otherwise, theAFT might no longer have been welcomed in the AFL.

The major academic freedom battles that the AFT fought in this era involvedleftist college faculty, such as Davis, Morris Schappes, Alan Sweezy and J.Raymond Walsh, and were led by CCNY’s Arnold Shukotoff. Shukotoff’s effortswere controversial, both because they linked the union to the views and rumouredaffiliations of the aggrieved faculty members and because they exacerbated riftsbetween K–12 and college members. In the AFT of the late 1930s, the AFT’sNational Defense Fund was controlled by and was used to protect college facultybelieved to be sympathetic to the CP. It was proportionally less often used to assistK–12 educators who lost their positions for reasons other than their political affilia-tion. The struggles between K–12 and college teachers were at times exacerbatedby the battles over Communism in the union. College faculty locals were definedmore by their leftist political activity than most of the K–12 unions and more likelyto be formed by minority activist groups at their own institutions. College localswere at first welcomed into the union and achieved prominence due to the statureof some of their members but as professors ascended to leadership positions andasserted control, resentment festered.

Importantly, though, while faculty were largely at the left edge of the union,there was not a unified faculty voice on these or other issues within the AFT; theleft of the union included a diverse set of political opinions and beliefs, some sym-pathetic to the CP and others not. In 1939, Columbia University professor GeorgeCounts defeated Davis to become president and organised opposition to the rank-and-file Communist elements of the union. The new decade began with a bitterfight over the revocation of the charters of the New York, New York College andPhiladelphia Teachers Unions. When the national convention affirmed the decisionto expel them, the union lost one-third of its total membership, including its largestcollege local, with nearly one thousand members. The college locals at Harvard,Washington, Wisconsin and elsewhere were already suffering from the split overthe Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact; the purges only furthered their difficulties.AFT college unionisation had been furthered by the radicalisation of faculty in the1930s but the same force and the backlash that it generated dealt it a significantblow at the end of the decade. It would be more than 20 years before college fac-ulty would again join the AFT in similar numbers. Still, for the anti-Stalinists whohad returned to power the expulsions were a clear victory. The concomitant dimin-ishment of college faculty in the union was, for some, a further triumph. Only a

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few years earlier, college faculty had been actively sought to add prestige and credi-bility to the AFT, but, by the early 1940s, their radical politics were seen to bemore of a problem than a solution.

Notes on contributorTimothy Reese Cain is an assistant professor in the Department of Education Policy,Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His work onthe history of academic freedom and unionisation has recently appeared in Labor History,Teachers College Record and the History of Education Quarterly. His first book,Establishing Academic Freedom: Politics, Principles, and the Development of Core Values,will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in late 2012. He would like to thank LesterGoodchild, Steven E. Gump and the reviewers for their comments on versions of this paper.

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