BOOK PARTY PLANNED FOR RELEASE OF “THE NEWARK TEACHER STRIKES”
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August 15, 2002, Bloomfield, NJ - Members of the community are invited to attend a book party for Bloomfield College History Professor Steve Golin, who recently published The Newark Teacher Strikes: Hopes on the Line (Rutgers University Press). The event will be held Thursday, September 19 at 4 p.m. in the Westminster Art Gallery, located in Westminster Hall, corner of Austin Place and Fremont Street in Bloomfield.
Golin will read excerpts, answer questions, and sign copies of The Newark Teacher Strikes. The book will be on sale in the art gallery and the college bookstore, as will copies of Golin’s previous book, The Fragile Bridge: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913.
The Newark Teacher Strikes: Hopes on the Line chronicles the three weeks in 1970 and eleven weeks in 1971 when Newark’s school system was paralyzed by a teacher strike.
Almost 200 people were arrested and jailed as a result of the strikes. The Newark Teachers Union said their members wanted to improve education for their students. The Board of Education claimed the teachers primarily desired more money. After interviewing more than 50 teachers who were on the front lines during these strikes, historian Steve Golin concludes that another, equally important agenda, ignored until now, was on the table. These professionals wanted a voice in the decision-making process.
Through these oral histories, Golin examines the hopes of the teachers on the picket line, who risked arrest and imprisonment. Why did they strike? How did the union represent them? How did their action - and incarceration - change them? Did they continue to teach in impoverished school districts?
Golin also probes the tensions between teachers during that period. These arose from differences in attitudes toward unions among Black, Jewish, and Italian teachers; different organizing strategies of men and women; and conflict between teachers’ professional and working class identities.
Professor of History Steve Golin has taught at Bloomfield College since 1973. He is the author of The Fragile Bridge: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913, which won the 1990 Richard P. McCormick Prize of the New Jersey Historical Commission. He earned his A.B. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Brandeis University.
