teacher & worker

Some of the younger faculty and staff join the U.S. Communist Party at CCNY or participate in its activities during the 1930s because they see it as the most effective political vehicle to combat fascism, unemployment, and social and racial injustice. The City College unit of the Communist party never reveals the names of its members for fear that public acknowledgment of their affiliation might cost them their jobs. The party’s members are active in the College Teachers Union and in the campus Anti-Fascist Association.

“Neither dupes nor conspirators, the academics who passed through the American Communist Party during the 1930s and the 1940s were a group of serious men and women who sincerely hoped to create a better world. They opposed Hitler, supported the Spanish Republicans, and struggled, as best they could, to build a movement for social change within the United States.”

-- Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 1986

The Communist party unit of City College faculty and staff publishes a monthly newsletter, the Teacher and Worker, beginning in March 1935. The articles, anonymously written, discuss local campus issues, as well as national and international issues.

The CCNY Communist party newsletter encourages all faculty, staff and students to participate in the annual May Day Labor Parade at Union Square.

Many biting critiques of the college administration appear in the Teacher and Worker.