Committee for Better Schools: Harlem

The Harlem Committee for Better Schools was a group of concerned community members -- primarily parent associations, churches, teachers, and community groups -- that worked toward the improvement of the Harlem community. During the 1920's and 1930's there were a number of white Communists who took a special interest in the Harlem schools. Many of them were teachers who were assigned to Harlem schools. The Committee was started in the 1930's when a group of white Communist teachers were assigned to teach in various Harlem schools. They were angered by the conditions of the schools and how little the children were learning. They also noted the frustration of the Harlem teachers and administrators with the school system for neglecting their needs. They rallied with the black teachers and established Parent Associations and chapters of the Teachers Union. In a very short period, they had succeeded in developing lines of communication with the majority of school teachers in Harlem. Together they organized protests and demanded improvements. They insisted on better treatment of black teachers, repair work in various schools, and offer free lunches for the students to promote student health.

In 1935, a two day conference was held to discuss the situation of education in Harlem. A wide variety of black interest groups participated including the NAACP. There they decided to create the Harlem Committee for Better Schools. Various articles about the inequality in the education were published in a number of newspapers including the Amsterdam News and the New York Times.

After a series of rallies, the Committee succeeded getting the city to construct more schools in Harlem. They were built in 1938. The committee turned its attention to what the children were learning, They closely examined the the content of the curriculum. The Committee found that the children were learning information that was inaccurate and much of it was racially biased. They worked with the Teachers Union to speak out against the racist content in the textbooks that the New York City school system used. They also spoke out against academic tracking of black students out of academic careers and college-bound programs. They tried to get black students to go to schools outside of Harlem.