The NEA and Minority Rights

If you erase the 'r' from any 'revolution' you find that it is ninetenths 'evolution,' claimed Roy Nichols in his autobiography, A Historian's Progress.1 In the case of the National Education Association (NEA) and its handling of minority rights, this explanation contains considerable merit. A strong argument can be framed that the NEA reacted to events rather than provided real leadership in the civil rights struggle. The foundation of this thesis rests on the fact that the organizational structure was such that any other policy would have been impossible up until the 1973 constitutional revisions which provided for more direct membership control of the world's largest professional organization. Before these constitutional changes, the NEA consisted of a loosely knit federation of local and state affiliates and various specialized departments of educators. State organizations held most of the real power in the organization because, traditionally, most education legislation originated in them as authorized in the United States Constitution. Even at present, in order to be represented in the NEA, one must have membership in the local and state as well as the national organization. At least until very recently, the state organizations were dominated by conservatively inclined administrators who, in turn, controlled most of the NEA machinery. Additionally, a large segment of the NEA's membership has been provided by the South. In 1954, the eleven southern states had 150,729 of the total NEA membership of 561,708. In 1964, a year of dramatic change in the status of education and civil rights, the figure was 220,222 out of 903,384. In 1974, it was 240,680 out of 1,467,186.2 Although the typical school leader has much to say about the

Political science · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms