Crossing the Line: High School Student Activism, the New York High School Student Union, and the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teachers’ Strike

In the fall of 1968, 54,000 of 57,000 New York City teachers went on strike in what has since become known as the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teachers’ Strike. With schools closed for thirty-six days, from September to November, more than one million students were left without schools to attend. Nearly 300,000 of them were high school students—many of whom utilized their “time off” to become or, in some cases, continue to be socially and politically active. This article outlines high school students’ involvement in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis. It centers upon the New York High School Student Union, which was established as a citywide student organization in September of 1968. During the tense days of that autumn, members of this organization openly supported the African American community’s call for decentralization of schools and firmly opposed the United Federation of Teachers’s strike action.