“Making Democracy Real”

This article examines how an interracial coalition of radical teachers from the Teachers Union of New York City and community activists from the Citywide Citizens Committee on Harlem promoted Black history and intercultural curriculum materials and worked side-by-side with parents for school reform in the New York City schools during the 1930s and early 1940s. Their efforts to develop more culturally responsive schools in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant were derailed by the late 1940s in the wake of the red-baiting of progressive scholars and teacher union activists during the cold war era.