Ocean Hill-Brownsville, 40 Years Later

By RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG

The lessons of the New York City school strike

They were the pink slips that helped change American liberalism.

Forty years ago — on May 9, 1968 — the local school board in Brooklyn's black ghetto of Ocean Hill-Brownsville sent telegrams to 19 unionized educators, informing them that their employment in the district was terminated. Eighteen were white. One black teacher was mistakenly included on the list but reinstated almost immediately after the error