Why They Couldn't Wait

Jane Anna Gordon is a William Penn doctoral fellow in Political Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. She formerly worked as a researcher at the Institute for Elementary and Secondary Education at Brown University. She is a licensed secondary school teacher.

"WHY THEY COULDN'T WAIT sympathetically chronicles a complex chapter in the struggle for racial equality. It serves as an important corrective to the mostly hostile mainstream accounts, and usefully recalls that many (if still too few) Jews joined in solidarity with the beleaguered Oceanhill-Brownsville commuity." -- Norman G. Finkelstein, author of THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY

• Contents Preface, with Acknowledgements Introduction: The Need for Public Education in a Democratic Society Chapter 1 Who Should Run the Schools?: Decentralization and Community Control Chapter 2 Black Power: Failures of Integration and the Mobilization of a Community Chapter 3 White Power: The Construction of Jews as the Voice of Reason Chapter 4 When Some Workers Don't Look Toward the Left: The Battle with the United Federation of Teachers Conclusion: A Question of Whose Children Benefit from Whose Labor Endnotes