Karpinski, Carol F. (2008). A Visible Company of Professionals: African Americans and the National Education Association during the Civil Rights Movement. Reviewed by Christine Woyshner, Temple University

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Karpinski, Carol F. (2008). A Visible Company of Professionals: African Americans and the National Education Association during the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Pp. xiv + 240     $33     ISBN 978-0-8204-8848-6 Reviewed by Christine Woyshner Temple University August 25, 2008 Writing the history of an organization can present a unique set of challenges. First, the historian must remember to be critical in her examination and not come down on the side of advocacy or sentimentalization. Perusing organizational papers and in-house histories can present a lop-sided and overly sanguine view of an association’s leaders and their accomplishments. Second, writing the history of an organization that people seem to know well and have written about can cloud the thinking, obscuring new or different insights. The historian might fall into the trap of thinking no possible original understandings can be gleaned from studying the same sources others have analyzed. Finally, it is easy to become bogged down in the details and feel compelled to cover each era and each associational transition chronologically and with great detail. In “A Visible Company of Professionals”: African Americans and the National Education Association during the Civil Rights Movement, Carol F. Karpinski successfully negotiates the first two, but does not completely avoid the third pitfall. One could argue that the National Education Association (NEA) has been amply researched, yet its history still merits revisiting, particularly along racial lines. Complementing a recent study of the NEA by noted historian Wayne Urban (2000), Carol Karpinski brings several important questions to bear on the past of this monolithic organization: how did African American teachers view the NEA? How did black and white teachers relate to one another through organizational affiliation? What were the hurdles to overcome after the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954? With these questions a whole new set of challenges arises, in particular, writing parallel histories that engage the reader and keep the narrative moving. Karpinski’s writing is indeed engaging and accessible as she details the relationship between and among teachers in two different professional organizations before the NEA was transformed into a trade union and, instead, served as a place for teachers to develop professional skills, interests, and habits. “A Visible Company of Professionals” is organized chronologically as it covers the one-hundred-plus year history of the NEA (organized in 1857) and its relationship to its segregated counterpart, the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, founded in 1904, which was renamed the American Teachers’ Association (ATA) in 1937. While the NEA had always welcomed black members, the ATA was founded to serve the segregated schools of the South. Occasional points of comparison to the NEA’s more radical trade-union counterpart, the American Federation of Teachers, are sprinkled in, and help the reader understand more deeply the nuances of membership in the NEA. The book focuses on the civil rights years of the mid-twentieth century. Highlighting the discussions around the eventual merger between the two organizations—the NEA and ATA—the author mines organizational data, such as minutes, proceedings, and the journals of both associations. Writing from the understanding that teachers’ organizations were “political tools to work for social, political, economic, and educational equity,” Karpinski embarks on a detailed voyage of how representatives of each association, largely through a Joint Committee of the NEA, negotiated their relationship and sought to translate word to action (p. x-xi). In other words, Karpinski asks, why didn’t the NEA move more quickly to merge with the ATA given its commitment to racial equality in the organization and in teachers’ professional lives? Unfortunately, it is an unanswerable question in any historical study, yet the author posits possible reasons and chronicles the turning points along the way. Some of it can be explained by the times and that it was just too hard to turn around on a dime after years of segregation. Other reasons are found in the structure and culture of the NEA. The origins of the racial partnership between the two organizations is in 1890s, as Karpinski begins by perusing NEA Proceedings to bring to light discussions of race and equality. Then, she details the formal relationship of the two organizations—the NEA and National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools (NATCS)—in 1926, the year a joint committee was created, the Committee of the National Education Association to Cooperate with the NATCS. Such committees were not uncommon among segregated civic and professional associations, and typically lasted beyond the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Thus, the Joint Committee remained active through the 1960s, providing a means by which the two associations could communicate with each other. It began by coordinating the activities of the separate teachers’ associations, and later began to debate the merits and drawbacks of desegregation. As Karpinski explains, many African Americans teachers spoke out against the merger of the two associations because they felt it would result in their sacrificing professional autonomy and being swallowed up by the NEA. Many of them believed the NEA had “done little to advance their interests” (p. x). By 1939 the Joint Committee had over one hundred members from forty states, even though, as the author argues, white teachers’ organizations rarely worked “purposively toward the welfare of their African American counterparts or their schools” (p. 17). Nonetheless, as the book’s narrative reveals, black teachers found that their membership in one or both of the organizations afforded them a measure of decision making, occupational status, and professional development, although the influence of the NEA was viewed as important in the nation’s schools. Karpinski points out an important distinction that caused trouble for the two organizations, that ATA members could join the NEA and were often encouraged to, creating an uneven playing field of expected double-membership, which, of course, meant paying dues to two organizations. Because federated organizations such as the NEA and ATA mirrored the national-state-local design of the U.S. government, the author correctly points out that it is difficult to ascertain the ways local and state units handled membership issues in terms of race. Also presenting a challenge to NEA members was the organization’s refusal after 1943 to hold conventions in cities where segregation was commonly practiced or legally enforced. Throughout the book, as Karpinski discusses the evolution of racial discord and harmony between the two teachers’ associations, she integrates the positions of several leaders. For the ATA she reveals the hopes of H. Councill Trenholm of Alabama for the American Teachers’ Association. For the NEA, we are introduced to Willard G. Givens and later, William G. Carr, who, according to Karpinski, was “critical in shaping NEA policy that supported NEA growth and inclusion” (p. 82). Through these biographical vignettes we learn some of the hopes for associational ties and for racial equality in the organization. Through the middle decades of the twentieth century, both associations grew in terms of the number of members and emerged with stronger networks yet, the author observes, there were a series of “missed opportunities to promote the welfare of African American educators” (p. 37). One of them was the issue of the ATA becoming a department of the NEA around 1946, which never came to fruition. Throughout these years, in a series of fits and starts, it appears that the NEA and ATA could not agree on a way to join forces. As discussed above, resistance often came from ATA members who did not want to relinquish control to the NEA. In 1951, African Americans were allowed state-level delegate status in the NEA, a step forward. Nonetheless, the merger of the two associations would drag on for another couple of decades. After the Brown decision, the NEA leadership was prompted to prepare a series of what Karpinski calls “integration resolutions,” which ended up being, according to the author “weak and ineffective statements” that had the two associations limping toward a merger (p. 102). The first resolution, written in July 1954, was still being revised one year later. The author reveals at this point that “This lack of a strong statement was typical of the NEA regarding controversial issues” (p. 102). In the resolutions that followed, NEA delegates became bogged down in the details of the wording as the association continued to remain concerned with how it wanted to represent itself. Disagreements over the series of rewordings of the integration resolution lasted at least until 1961. The details of the integration resolutions and eventual merger, about which talks began in 1963, are detailed in an analysis that reiterates themes and documents false start after false start. Eventually, the national-level merger of the NEA and ATA was accomplished in 1966, after which state and locals began the long process of unification. It may surprise the reader that it took until 1977 for the organization to be entirely integrated. The discussion at this point in the book is so detailed and the narrative in places jumps back and forth in time, that the reader can lose track of the chronology. Perhaps the reason the author gets bogged down in recounting the impact of desegregation on the organization is that the study is not entirely grounded in a theoretical framework that would elucidate its key themes. Karpinski begins and ends the book with the musings of Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, but does not expand on why his observations matter and how they help us understand the NEA, ATA, and the merger between the two. Tocqueville offers food for thought about the vast network of organizations on the American landscape and Americans’ propensity for organizing voluntary associations to attend to social, political, and economic needs. However, by characterizing the NEA and ATA as professional organizations, Karpinski emphasizes the notion of the “professional” at the expense of considering “organizations” and their role in American public education. Eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger (1944) called the U.S. a “nation of joiners,” and more recently sociologists and political scientists such as Robert Putnam (2000) and Theda Skocpol (2003) have argued that we are joining voluntary organizations in decreasing numbers. Expanding the framework Tocqueville and others have to offer, or employing another framework, would make an already strong book stronger and help the reader grasp the import of what Karpinski is revealing to us: that both black and white teachers resisted and welcomed integration in the NEA for different reasons and that it is much easier to talk about overcoming stereotypes and working together, but it is much harder to put a plan in action. “A Visible Company of Professionals” ends up being richly detailed history of the relationship between two organizations. Karpinski successfully brings to light a critical examination of the difficult discussions around race in the National Education Association. It is a much-needed analysis of integration of two organizations that served as a place for edification, the expression of professional goals and aspirations, and conviviality for hundreds of thousands of teachers in the twentieth century. References Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Schlesinger, Arthur M. (1944). “Biography of a Nation of Joiners.” American Historical Review 50(1), 1-25. Skocpol, T. (2003). Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Urban, W. J. (2000). Gender, Race, and the National Education Association: Professionalism and Its Limitations. New York: Routledge Falmer. About the Reviewer Christine Woyshner is Associate Professor of Education at Temple University. Her scholarship examines women’s voluntary federations in the history of education in the twentieth century. She is co-editor, with Anne Meis Knupfer, of The Educational Work of Women’s Organizations, 1890-1960 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008) and author of a forthcoming book on the history of the racial policies and practices of the National PTA, to be published by The Ohio State University Press.