A Blacklist Education

American History, a Family Mystery, and a Teacher Under Fire

Jane S. Smith (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

224 Seiten

2025
Rutgers University Press (Verlag)
978-1-9788-4505-3 (ISBN)

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In A Blacklist Education, a mysterious file of family papers triggers a journey through the dark days of political purges in the 1950s. Jane S. Smith tells the story of the anticommunist witch hunt that sent shockwaves through New York City’s public schools as more than a thousand teachers were targeted by Board of Education investigators. Her father was one of them-a fact she learned only long after his death.

Beginning in 1949, amid widespread panic about supposed communist subversion, investigators questioned teachers in their homes, accosted them in their classrooms, and ordered them to report to individual hearings. The interrogations were not published, filmed, open to the public, or reported in the news. By 1956, hundreds of New York City teachers had been fired, often because of uncorroborated reports from paid informers or anonymous accusers.

Most of the targeted teachers resigned or retired without any public process, their names recorded only in municipal files and their futures never known. Their absence became the invisible outline of an educational void, a narrowing of thought that pervaded classrooms for decades. In this highly personal story, family lore and childhood memory lead to restricted archives, forgotten inquisitions, and an eerily contemporary campaign to control who could teach and what was acceptable for students to learn.

JANE S. SMITH's books include The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, winner of the Caroline Bancroft Prize in Western American History, and Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.

Introduction
1. Terrestrial Navigation
2. Under the Big Flag
3. In the Palace of Education
4. A Crash Course in Scandal
5. Save Our Schools
6. Fascist America
7. Accusing the Accusers
8. Wars Hot and Cold
9. So Many Ways to Offend
10. A Seat for Every Child
11. LIFE Comes to School
12. Man of the Year
13. Hidden Records
14. The Superintendent of Schools
15. The Student Strike
16. The Assistant Corporation Counsel
17. The Interview
18. Informers
19. The House I Live In
20. What Made Them So Afraid?
21. The Fear Profiteers
22. Outcast and Wanderer
23. When the Enemy Becomes a Joke
24. Teaching Under the Radar
25. The Past Is Always Present
Acknowledgments
Notes
A Note on Sources
Index

Introduction 1
1 Terrestrial Navigation 11
2 Under
the Big Flag 17
3 In the Palace of Education 23
4 A Crash Course in Scandal 33
5 Save Our Schools 37
6 Fascist America
41
7 Accusing the Accusers 49
8 Wars Hot and Cold 57
9 So Many Ways to Offend 63
10 A Seat for Every
Child 69
11 Life Comes to School 77
12 Man of the Year 83
13 Hidden Records
87
14 The Superintendent of Schools 95
15 The Student Strike 103
16 The Assistant Corporation Counsel 113
17 The Interview 125
18 Informers 137
19 The House
I Live In 143
20 What Made Them So Afraid? 151
21 The Fear Profiteers 159
22 Outcast and Wanderer 167
23 When the Enemy
Becomes a Joke 177
24 Teaching Under
the Radar 181
25 The Past Is Always Present
191
Acknowledgments
195
Note on Sources 197
Index 000

Erscheinungsdatum	17.07.2025
Zusatzinfo	16 B-W images
Verlagsort	New Brunswick NJ
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Regional- / Landesgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
ISBN-10	1-9788-4505-7 / 1978845057
ISBN-13	978-1-9788-4505-3 / 9781978845053
Zustand	Neuware