A BLACKLIST EDUCATION :
AMERICAN HISTORY, A FAMILY MYSTERY, AND A TEACHER UNDER FIRE
By Jane S. Smith
Rutgers University Press. 211 pages. £21.99. ISBN
978-1-9788-4505-3
Reviewed by Jim Burns
When her mother died and Joan S. Smith was sorting through her possessions she
discovered a file of documents relating to her father, Saul Schur, a teacher in
the New York public school system. He had been blacklisted,
along with several hundred other teachers, for allegedly refusing to answer when
asked, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”.
Smith had been a child at the time of the blacklisting in 1953, and it
was only when she started to read the file that she began to realise just what
had happened and the effect it had on her father’s life. He had been an English
teacher, and she describes him as, in her eyes, an “affable and bookish man”.
The subject of blacklisting was not something she recalled being discussed as
she grew up. Reading the newspaper clippings and other items in the file was to
change her view of him.
Saul Schur was born in Brooklyn, or so he believed. A
birth certificate was never found so the exact location and date remain unknown.
Census records sometimes showed his name as “Sam”. Smith remarks that the “lack
of a birth certificate and the changing records of the boy’s name” were later
used by Board of Education investigators as “evidence of the man’s unreliable
character”. I don’t want to spend too much time trying to pin down exact details
of Schur’s early years. Suffice to say that there’s a school photograph, taken
in 1923, in which the accompanying text mentions that Schur was then twelve.
Further stints in local schools led to him enrolling at City College of New York
(CCNY) in 1927, when he was sixteen. CCNY was “the first tuition free public
college in the United States” and a place where “first generation Americans
could rise from tenements to become college graduates”. Schur, in his daughter’s
words, may have seen “A career as a high school English teacher” as “a
reasonable goal and a rewarding pursuit”, but when he graduated from CCNY in
1931 the Great Depression was affecting the economy and jobs were scarce,
especially for a young, inexperienced Jewish teacher.
When work was available it was as a substitute teacher, a
position which had no job security
and no eligibility for sick or holiday pay and pensions. It was during his years
of part-time and temporary jobs that Schur joined the Teachers Union, “a
decision that would come to define his career”. The Union was seen by the
authorities as being radically-inclined, and anyone thought to be a union
activist was looked on with suspicion. Schur did eventually obtain a permanent
post in 1937, teaching at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School for Boys. From
Smith’s account he appears to have been a teacher who was prepared to do more
than simply go through the routine of following a syllabus, and so involved
himself in additional work to stimulate his students’ interests.
In 1943, Schur, “knowing he would be drafted
soon……volunteered for a special program”, teaching basic literacy to Spanish
speaking draftees. When he was
discharged from the army in 1945 he returned to teaching at Samuel Gompers High
School. But the times were changing as the one-time ally Russia became the new
enemy. Un-American activities, such as expressing any support for communism were
frowned on. Loyalty oaths began to appear, and the notorious question, “Are you
now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” became a standard
tool for investigators. Those who refused to answer were automatically treated
as if they were guilty.
In the anti-communist hysteria of the late-1940s the New
York State Legislature passed a law which said that any teacher belonging to a
“subversive” organisation could be dismissed, “with no need to show actual
subversive intent on the employee’s part”. The Teachers Union was one of the
organisations defined as subversive, which resulted in around one thousand
teachers in New York being investigated. Among them was Saul Schur.
Schur had been active in terms of pushing for
improvements in school buildings, facilities, and other matters, often working
alongside concerned parents’ groups. And he was always ready to challenge the
authorities when he thought they were less than positive in seeking the best
terms and conditions for both staff and students. He was, therefore, an obvious
activist, and as such not looked on too kindly by the school head and his
supporters, nor by the wider education authority.
When the moment was opportune he was summoned to be interrogated by Saul
Moskoff, described by Smith as “assistant corporation counsel in charge of
investigation of subversives in the school system”. Smith’s diligent research
into her father’s life and involvements unearthed the records of the interview,
and it makes for fascinating reading. I have to say that, without wanting to
appear to be taking sides in the confrontation between Moskoff and Schur, the
latter can only be described as what HUAC would term as an “unfriendly witness”.
He argued with Moskoff and refused to say if he was, or ever had been, a member
of the Communist Party. It was obvious that his days as a schoolteacher were
about to end, and in 1953 he jumped before he was pushed by resigning.
Schur was luckier than many of his blacklisted colleagues
in that he had a wife who, as an editor for a
popular, large circulation publication, earned a good salary. Also, he
managed to obtain steady work outside of the state education system, but in
which his time as a teacher proved useful. He was employed by Seventeen magazine
to write about and teach home economics, and was hired additionally as an
“educational consultant”. Was he a member of the Communist Party?
I’d be inclined to think he was, or at least had been at some stage in
his life. His daughter is either unwilling or unable to decide one way or
another. But she recalls a conversation with her father when, commenting on his
wife’s extravagances, he said, “What happened to the communist I married”?
This is an indication of a youthful leaning towards communism at a time
of grave economic pressures, and not necessarily proof of membership on either
his or his wife’s part. And there’s no evidence to suggest that she ever came
under suspicion as a Party member.
A Blacklist Education is an informative and useful
addition to the literature of the McCarthy years in the United States. A great
deal has been written about the blacklist in Hollywood, and there have been
books about well-known individuals who were investigated. To have a book about a
relatively obscure teacher’s experiences is valuable. In addition, Jane S. Smith
has briskly outlined the social and political contexts in which her father
taught and came under suspicion. I doubt that there was ever any evidence that
he attempted to bring communist propaganda into the classroom. His downfall was
probably due to his being a nuisance and asking too many questions about what
should have been done, but wasn’t being done, to improve conditions in the
schools he taught at.