School integration

Michigan Federation of Teachers Records

dgolodner — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:23:35 -0400

Parts 1 and 2 consist of correspondence, minutes, and reports. Subjects include Administrative Board meetings; American Federation of Teachers; conventions; Detroit Federation of Teachers; Executive Council meetings; Haven Hill conferences; legislative lobbying activities; membership campaigns; metropolitan teachers' institutes; Michigan AFL-CIO Council; Michigan Constitutional Convention (1961); teachers' salary and fringe benefits surveys; treasurer reports; White House Conference on Children and Youth (1960). Correspondents include Detroit city officials, Michigan congressmen and state officials, and national congressmen and officials including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Most of the letters are answers to invitations for speaking engagements.
Part III deals mostly with the efforts to organize teachers during the 1960s and 1970s and dealing with the strikes that accompany labor disputes which is represented in the series Locals. There is ample amount of information about the American Federation of Teachers growth and inner workings during the 1960s and 1970s in the convention files; within these files there are not only basic convention materials but also notes from committee work and flyers from various factions within the AFT. MFT was a part of policy in education finances, assessments of teachers and teacher centers and is reflected in files dealing with the department of education and the like. Part III covers a broad range of topics with specific details on education reform in the 1970s, collective bargaining issues for teachers, political structures in Michigan and various issues on civil rights in Michigan, particularly the bussing of students. Series five contains photographs and audio recordings.

Charles Cheng Papers

dgolodner — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 11:36:18 -0500

Charles Cheng was an activist for education and the civil rights movement whose life was cut short when he died on May 25, 1979 when American Airlines flight 191 crashed after takeoff from O’Hare Airport. He was 42 years old.

He was born on February 23, 1937 raised on the east side of Detroit. After graduating from Eastern Michigan University, Cheng became a teacher in Pontiac, Michigan. He left teaching to become an organizer for the Michigan Federation of Teachers and soon became the assistant to the president of the Washington Teachers Union Local 6 in Washington DC.

Charles attended Antioch Graduate School of Education earning his masters degree in Education, then he attended Harvard Graduate School for Education to receive his Ed.D in 1975. While in Boston, Mr. Cheng was a research associate at the Center for Urban Studies at Harvard as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University Joint Center for Urban Studies. Mr. Cheng ended up at the University of California, Los Angeles as an assistant professor in the Department of Education where he became a leading authority on community participation in collective bargaining in public education.

Cheng wrote and spoke constantly about the idea that the community should be involved with the collective bargaining in public education. Cheng was very active as well with desegregation, starting in the 1960s when he attempted to desegregate the Pontiac, MI public schools, he was on a task force in Boston, consulted in Pasadena and was a citizen member for the Los Angeles Unified School District Desegregation Plan. Cheng’s interests also included racial justice, the teaching of the history of Asian-American and Native-Americans.

Robert E. DeMascio Papers

srafferty — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:04:46 -0500

Robert E. DeMascio, a Detroit lawyer, was appointed to the U.S. District Court Eastern Michigan District in 1971. He served as a U.S. District Judge from this time, until his death in 1999. During his tenure as a Judge he worked with bankruptcy law, including serving multiple committees relating to bankruptcy legislation and the Judicial Conference's Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System. Notably, Judge DeMascio was assigned the Bradley v. Milliken case on school desegregation in Detroit Public Schools. DeMascio worked on this case from 1975 until 1980, creating court ordered improvements to the school system. He also established the Monitoring Commission, to audit the implementation of court ordered changes to the schools.

Helen Bowers Papers

dgolodner — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:56:31 -0400

Helen Marie Newman Bowers was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin on May 16, 1908. After graduating from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, she began teaching art in Detroit, Michigan in 1933 and quickly got involved with the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), Local 231. She left the teaching profession in 1958 to become the executive secretary of the DFT. Together with DFT President Mary Ellen Riordan, Detroit teachers won collective bargaining in 1964. Helen Bowers won duty-free lunch hours for elementary teachers, and conceived of “demonstration picketing” before schools opened in the morning to raise awareness to the community about why teachers were demanding collective bargaining. Ms. Bowers served on the Executive Board and became editor of the DFT newspaper, The Detroit Teacher.

The papers of Helen Bowers reflect her work with the DFT and education reform initiatives. This involves pre-collective bargaining rights in dealing with academic freedom, civil liberties as well as a living wage for teachers. Communism files contain a thorough documentation of the Maki Case trial from clippings from the three Detroit newspapers. The collection also contains very useful information about how the union gained power after collective bargaining was won. Their influence in education issues is seen in issues about accountability, decentralization and student rights.

Howard Hursey Papers

dgolodner — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:44:44 -0400

Howard Hursey was a national representative for the American Federation of Teachers. This collection documents his time as an organizer from the 1960s through the early 1970s. The American Federation of Teachers experienced huge growth in membership during this time and the collection represents this and the strain on AFT workers. Mostly Hursey organized in the Southern United States, but there are materials from Los Angeles and Illinois and points in-between. The correspondences contain contracts, meeting minutes, reports, notes about organizing and issues facing various locals. There are also internal communications about organizing strategies, the growth of AFT, and the treatment of workers in the AFT which is reflected in the Committee for National Representatives.

Wade H. McCree, Jr. Papers

drice — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 13:55:18 -0500

Wade Hampton McCree, Jr. began his career as a lawyer in the Detroit law firm of Harold E. Bledsoe and Hobart Taylor. He later served on the state’s Workmen’s Compensation Commission and as a judge in the county and U.S. court system. During his tenure on the bench, McCree took part in a number of school desegregation cases iand as the government’s lawyer, he argued a number of significant cases before the Supreme Court. He resigned in 1977 to accept appointment as U.S. Solicitor General in the Carter administration. In the last few years of his life, McCree taught law at the University of Michigan, and consulted on various cases and served as Special Master for the U.S. Supreme Court in cases in which it exercised original jurisdiction. Judge McCree’s professional, educational, civic and charitable activities were many and he was the recipient of numerous honors and awards.

His papers contain his personal and professional correspondence, speeches and writings, voluminous case files, including his notes and opinions, meeting minutes, publications and other material relating to his service on the bench and as the federal government’s chief lawyer as well as his work on professional committees and his involvement with a wide range of civic, fraternal and charitable organizations.

Fay O'Hare Papers

srafferty — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 09:20:44 -0500

Fay O'Hare was a Detroit attorney who was heavily involved in Detroit education from the late 1960s through the 1980s. Her involvement included work with the High School Study Commission, Coalition for Peaceful Integration, Detroit Education Task Force, and Coleman Young's Mayor-elect Task Force. In addition to this, she worked on the Monitoring Commission, established to audit the court ordered changes and improvements to Detroit Public Schools as a result of the Bradley v Milliken case. These papers contain meeting agendas, notes, reference materials and publications relevant O'Hare's work, as well as a small amount of material on women's issues and equality.

Sachs Waldman: Detroit Federation of Teachers Records

dgolodner — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 12:05:16 -0400

The law firm Sachs Waldman, Professional Corporation started in
October 13, 1922 by Nicholas J. Rothe, considered by many as the first
union labor lawyer in Michigan grew to represent the best interest of
unions and workers. In 1951 Theodore Sachs joined the firm and was
considered one of the best appellate attorneys in the country, under his
leadership the firm grew in clientele and personnel. In 1965, the law
firm began to specialize in public sector labor and began to represent
those unions that had just gained the right to bargain collectively,
notably with the Detroit Federation of Teachers and the Detroit
Fire Fighters Association. The Detroit Federation of Teachers was
founded in February 24, 1931 and remained a small but determined
organization that fought basic bread and butter issues for teachers in
Detroit. In 1964, the DFT became sole bargaining agent for Detroit
classroom teachers and by 1965 the DFT secured a comprehensive
contract. The DFT has remained the sole bargaining agent for Detroit
teachers since then and expanded their bargaining power to incorporate
various education reform issues. These records document the various
stages of collective bargaining for teachers in the 1970s-1990s in
Detroit that mirrors those issues faced by other teacher unions in large
cities.

Collection Spotlight: Wade McCree's contribution to Detroit and the nation

ljones — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 09:37:16 -0500

The Walter P. Reuther Library continues to celebrate Black History Month by highlighting the life of Wade McCree and his papers.

In his work as a judge, appointed official, and educator coupled with his sense of civic responsibility, Wade Hampton McCree, Jr. made a unique contribution to the Detroit metropolitan area and beyond. His success in these areas are noteworthy by themselves, but even more so given the barriers to success experienced by African Americans read more »

Subject Focus: African American History at the Reuther Library

wlefevre — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:19:12 -0500

The Reuther Library celebrates African American History Month with a look at some of the significant collections housed in the library that deal with African American history.

A gem from Rosa Parks’s collection is a set of her hand written notes from her time at the Highlander Folk School in 1955, shortly before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. These notes showcase her read more »

[Podcast] Punishing Promise: School Discipline in the Era of Desegregation

teller — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 16:24:05 -0400

Matt Kautz explains how his observations while teaching in Detroit and Chicago led him to study the rise of suspensions and other disciplinary tactics in urban districts during school desegregation, fueling the school-to-prison pipeline. read more »

[Podcast] Schools and the Rise of Mass Incarceration in a Post-Brown World

teller — Thu, 22 May 2025 08:35:39 -0400

Dr. Matt Kautz explores how evolving school disciplinary practices, changes in crime reporting, and political pressure in the decades following school desegregation led to the rise of student suspensions, expulsions, dropouts, and the school-to-prison pipeline in Detroit and other cities. read more »