The Educational Front

This chapter recounts the history of conflicts between communist teachers and liberal educators, inside the teachers union and in the educational reform movement generally. It focuses on communist teacher-activists Alice Citron, Isidor Begun, and Williana Burroughs, who came into conflict with liberal union leaders over their emphases on the use of “mass action” and community mobilization to achieve higher salaries, better schools, and racial equality, as well as to promote the Popular Front against fascism. In reaction to their confrontational activism, perceived as a challenge to his authority, Linville and other liberals and social democrats tried once more to oust the communist “factions” from the union in 1935, supported by liberals, social democrats, and conservatives in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Failing, the liberals walked out of Local 5 to form an explicitly anti-communist organization, the Teachers Guild.