From 1946 to 1949, at City College of New York (CCNY), there occurred a long, well-planned, militant struggle against racism against Jewish and against Black students. This struggle was organized by the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and involved many thousands of students and others. The struggle was successful in stopping officially sanctioned racism against Jewish students and professors and discrimination in college housing against Black workers.

There had long been complaints that William Knickerbocker, Chair of Romance Languages at CCNY, made anti-Jewish remarks, denied awards to Jewish students; and tried to stop the hiring of Jewish faculty members. The Board of Higher Education (BHE) refused to do anything and ignored a report filed by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) recommending Knickerbocker’s retirement.

Led by a communist student, a committee of the Hillel (Jewish) student organization studied the facts. The Anti-Defamation League, an elite Jewish civil rights group, tried to stop the students.

Building the case against racist professors

In the Fall of 1947 it turned out that William C. Davis, an instructor of economics who oversaw student housing in Army Hall, was segregating Black students from white students. A faculty committee charged him with racial segregation. Davis resigned as administrator of housing in March 1948 but remained on the faculty and received a salary increase.

Due to decades of diligent and militant union and antiracist work, CP members were in or close to leadership in a dozen labor unions in the city, even having two members plus other supporters on the City Council. On  June 22 1948, the New York City Council voted to recommend that Knickerbocker either retire or lose his chairmanship. In the Fall of 1948, led by a CP member, students organized a protest walkout from Knickerbocker’s class..

On September 29, 1948, 20 students held an all-night sit-in in front of the office of the CCNY president. The next morning five hundred more students joined them. Then a five-hour meeting of 2000 students passed two resolutions calling for the firing of Knickerbocker and Davis or a college-wide sit-down strike.

Students decide to fight

On October 2, 1948, the Student Council (SC) called for a referendum on the sit-down strike. The liberal SC leadership opposed any strike. To undermine the strike vote, President Wright declared that the students who had walked out of Knickerbocker’s class would not be penalized and would be allowed to transfer to other classes. On October 7, the referendum was defeated by about 2 to 1.

On 22 October 1948, Brooklyn College Dean of Students Frederick W. Maroney announced that he would take disciplinary action against fifteen executives of the Students for Wallace group as a response to their charge that the dean intimidated them in his effort to get them to cancel a campus march to protest the whitewash of Knickerbocker and Davis (“Wallace March Scored,” New York Times, 23 October 1948).

On December 15, 1948, a meeting was called to urge the CCNY president to suspend Knickerbocker and Davis. It was signed by members of many mass organizations including the NAACP (New York branch), the Civil Rights Congress, the Teachers Union (a militant union opposed to the anticommunist American Federation of Teachers), the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order, American Jewish Congress, National Inter-Collegiate Young Progressives of America, American Youth for Democracy, and Students for Wallace. The CP had helped to form, and CP members were activists and leaders of all these groups.

In January 1949, the CUNY alumni association appointed a committee to investigate discrimination at CUNY and appointed Judge Hubert T. Delany as a member. Delany was well-known for his antiracist activities. On March 6, 1949, Delany resigned from the Associate Alumni Committee to Investigate Discrimination, charging that the committee had been packed to block efforts to investigate discrimination at CCNY. This set the stage for the student strike. 

The Strike begins

On April 8, 1948, a two-thirds majority of the 2,800 students voting favored an immediate walkout. But the right-wing tried to confuse students into thinking the vote was only for a one-day strike.

That weekend saw feverish preparations for a strike. On Monday morning, April 11, students walking up the hill from the subway on 138th Street saw eight-foot-high letters splashed across the width of the entire street spelling out a one-word message: STRIKE! It had been drawn by vote in the American Veterans Committee. Small groups of students were picketing at every campus building entrance. Several dozen were walking in a circle in front of the main Administration Building on Convent Avenue, chanting militantly “Jim Crow Must Go!” (“Jim Crow,” a synonym for anti-Black racism, was a term used in the South). A great many of the students on the early picket lines were communists not only from the uptown CCNY campus but from colleges all over New York.

Standing across the street all along Convent Avenue there were about a thousand students, books under their arms, waiting to see what would happen. They had not decided to cross the picket line but had not decided to join the strike either. Suddenly NYC cops charged the picketing students, beating them and arresting 18. The other students fought back, trying to hold their line.

Then the high point of the strike occurred. Without a moment’s hesitation, the mass of students watching from across the street immediately formed a huge picket line 1,000 strong, moving back and forth on Convent Avenue from 138th Street to 140th Street. The strike was on full-scale! And the cops’ action had helped propel it forward. The campus was shut tight!