“That Jewish Crowd”: The 1949 CCNY Student Strike and the Politics of Fair Education Law in New York, 1945–1950

Abstract

New York History Fall 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 584 “That Jewish Crowd”: The 1949 CCNY Student Strike and the Politics of Fair Education Law in New York, 1945–1950 Barry Goldberg, The CUNY Graduate Center On April 11, 1949, police arrested seventeen students outside The City College of New York’s (CCNY) uptown campus. That day, hundreds of CCNY students walked out of class to call for the removal of two professors: William C. Davis and William E. Knickerbocker.1 Davis, the head of Army Hall, a dormitory established for World War II veterans, had allegedly segregated African-American residents in substandard and overcrowded rooms in 1947.2 Knickerbocker had reportedly discriminated against Jewish instructors and students as head of the Romance Languages department. Four professors, as well as the campus Hillel and the American Jewish Congress (AJCong), claimed that Knickerbocker refused to hire qualified Jewish instructors; assigned a disproportionate number of Jews to low-level, non-tenured positions; blocked Jews from CCNY’s promotions list; and denied an academic award to a deserving Jewish student.3 Apparently, Knickerbocker worried about his department becoming “full of Jews” and ostracized “that Jewish Crowd,” those faculty members 1. Alexander Feinberg, “City College Students Clash With Police in ‘Bias’ Strike,” The New York Times, April 12, 1949. 2. Jerome H. Holzman to Professor Wisan, November 12, 1947, President’s Committee to Investigate Discrimination in Army Hall, 1947–48, President’s Committee, Army Hall, 1947, Correspondence of Chair of Committee, CCNY Library Archives and Special Collections (New York, NY) (hereafter referred to as CCNY Archives); Sol Franklyn to Professor Joseph Wisan, November 9, 1947, President’s Committee to Investigate Discrimination in Army Hall, 1947–48, President’s Committee, Army Hall, 1947, Correspondence of Chair of Committee, CCNY Archives; James Harold Justice to Mr. Joseph E. Wisan, November 14, 1948, Richard Pitt to Professor Joseph E. Wisan, February 16, 1948, President’s Committee, Army Hall, 1947, President’s Committee, Army Hall. 1947. Letters from J.H. Justice, etc., CCNY Archives. 3. Commission on Law and Social Action, “In the matter of the Romance Languages Department of the College of the City of New York, Analysis of the Record,” September 10, 1946, CCNY B’Nai B’Rith Hillel Foundation Records (1943–1973), Box 2, Knickerbocker Case Publications, 1947–1949, CCNY Library Archives and Special Collections, North Academic Center (New York, NY) (hereafter referred to as CCNY Archives, NAC); Hillel report on Knickerbocker affair, CCNY B’Nai B’Rith Hillel Foundation Records (1943–1973), Box 2, Knickerbocker Case Publications, 1947–1949, CCNY Archives, NAC. Goldberg The 1949 CCNY Student Strike and the Politics of Fair Education Law in New York, 1945–1950 585 who supported Jewish candidates during departmental elections.4 Some people overheard Knickerbocker ranting about Jews altering their surnames and exclaiming that “Hitler was all right [until] he began against the Poles.”5 These actions, claimed Knickerbocker’s accusers, comprised part of a wider “secret and open warfare against Jews” in the Romance Languages department.6 From 1945 to 1950, a slew of civic agencies and campus leaders linked Knickerbocker’s anti-Semitism and Davis’s segregationist policies as similar manifestations of American racism. During this time, the AJCong, CCNY Hillel, NAACP, and Communist-backed American Youth for Democracy (AYD) all lobbied administrators to remove both Knickerbocker and Davis from campus. In so doing, these organizations crafted arguments reminiscent of the Popular Front period of the 1930s and early 1940s, during which a broad spectrum of the political Left, united against fascism, worked together to both limit promote black civil rights and strengthen the U.S. social welfare state. These groups supported the 1949 student strike, and, in addition, embraced the use of statistical analysis and group-based data to remedy broader patterns of racial and religious discrimination at CCNY. The NAACP and AJCong simultaneously shaped New York’s 1948 Fair Educational Practices Act, or the Quinn-Oliffe Law, which prohibited colleges from discriminating against applicants on the basis of race, 4. Elliot Polinger, Ephraim Cross, Otto Muller, Pedro Bach-y-Rita to Special Committee of the General Faculty to Investigate the Department of Romance Languages, October 8, 1945, “Original...