Skip to Main Content
Rutgers University Library logo

The Newark Experience

Who's In Charge?

Community Control and the Newark Teachers Strikes
From Rise Up Newark. Essays accompanied by a valuable digitized collection of documents and oral interviews.

Newark Teachers' Strikes

Social Conflict: Teachers' Strikes in Newark, 1964-1971. An Issue Paper on a Topical Subject in Education
William M. Phillips and Joseph M. Conforti. Trenton, N.J., State Department of Education, Division of Research, Planning and Education, 1972. Alexander Call Number: DOCNJ LB2844.57 .N5P45 1972
"Racial Conflict in Central Cities: The Newark Teachers' Strikes,"
Joseph M. Conforti. Society 12(1), 1974, 22-33. Dana Call Number: Periodical, Shelved by Title
"What Did Teachers Want?: Newark Teachers and Their Union,"
Steve Golin. Contemporary Education 69(4), Summer 1998, 233-37.
Presents the history of the New Teachers Union which became the bargaining agent for Newark teachers in 1969. Rutgers-restricted Access.
The Newark Teacher Strikes: Hopes on the Line.
Steve Golin. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2002. Available?
Class, Gender, and Race in the Newark Teacher Strikes Rutgers-restricted Access
Lois Weiner, New Politics 2, Winter 2003, p.101. Review of Golin's The Newark Teacher Strikes. Available?
Class, Gender, and Race in the Newark Teacher Strikes," IN Lois Weiner, The Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice. Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2012. Available?
The Anatomy of a Strike: The Newark Teachers Union/February 1, 1970 to February 25, 1970
Frank A. Fiorito. Newark, Newark Teachers Union, 1970. The strike from the union's point of view. Heavily illustrated. Available?
The Newark School Wars: A Socio-historical Study of the 1970 and 1971 Newark School System Strikes. Norman Eiger. Ed.D. Thesis, Rutgers University, 1976. 2 vols. Available?
"The Newark Teachers' Strike," Fred Barbaro. Urban Review 5(3), 1972, 3-10. The 1971 teachers strike and the idea of community control of education. Available?
Newark Teachers Union v. Board of Education of Newark
Gale, U.S. Supreme Court Records, 2011. Available?

Leo Litzky Collection
Leo Liztky was the principal of several Newark schools. "Box 2, Folders 6-10, contains correspondence, press releases, newsletters, memos, flyers, notices, legal documents, and clippings concerning strike issues, legal proceedings against strikers, and imprisonment of activists in the Newark teachers strike." More from the Newark Archives Project.
Teacher Strike!: Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order
Jon Shelton. 2nd edition. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2017. "Shelton puts close examinations of strikes in Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and St. Louis in dialogue with the national trajectory of neoliberal conservatism in this period, demonstrating how the strikes and the discourses they provoked contributed to the growing public perception that unions were at best irrelevant and at worst detrimental to American prosperity." Available?
Larry Hamm Describes Student Activism During the 1971 Newark Teachers Strike
Newark community organizer describes the activism of Newark Public Schools students during the strike.