Der Brownsville School Strike, auch bekannt als New York Teachers’ Strike, war ein Arbeitskampf zwischen der Lehrergewerkschaft UFT und der Stadtverwaltung unter Bürgermeister John V. Lindsay im Jahr 1968, in dem es um die Rassenintegration und die Dezentralisierung der Schulverwaltung in New York City ging. Durch den Streik waren 85 Prozent der 900 städtischen Schulen für 55 Tage geschlossen. (de)
The New York City teachers' strike of 1968 was a months-long confrontation between the new community-controlled school board in the largely black Ocean Hill–Brownsville neighborhoods of Brooklyn and New York City's United Federation of Teachers. It began with a one day walkout in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district. It escalated to a citywide strike in September of that year, shutting down the public schools for a total of 36 days and increasing racial tensions between Blacks and Jews. Thousands of New York City teachers went on strike in 1968 when the school board of the neighborhood, which is now two separate neighborhoods, transferred a set of teachers and administrators, a normal practice at the time. The newly created school district, in a mostly black neighborhood, was an experiment in community control over schools—the dismissed workers were almost all white or Jewish. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), led by Albert Shanker, demanded the teachers' reinstatement and accused the community-controlled school board of anti-semitism. At the start of the school year in 1968, the UFT held a strike that shut down New York City's public schools for nearly two months. The strike pitted community against union, highlighting a conflict between local rights to self-determination and teachers' universal rights as workers. Although the school district itself was quite small, the outcome of its experiment had great significance because of its potential to alter the entire educational system—in New York City and elsewhere. As one historian wrote in 1972: "If these seemingly simple acts had not been such a serious threat to the system, it would be unlikely that they would produce such a strong and immediate response." (en)