Reds Routed

Last week Communist teachers in New York City, of whom there are allegedly hundreds, were virtual outcasts from their profession. The American Federation of Teachers (A.F.of L. trade union) stripped them of their union cards, and school officials were rapidly stripping them of their jobs.

A.F.T. had polled its 28,000 members on whether the New York City Teachers Union and College Teachers Union, and the Federation's Philadelphia local, all accused of being Red-led, should have their charters revoked. The vote, counted last weekend, was about 11-to-8.5 for ouster of all three. Outside New York and Philadelphia, A.F.T. members voted 4-to-1 against the locals.

Disputing the referendum's legality, officers of the New York City locals said they would challenge their ouster at the Federation's convention in Detroit in August, perhaps in the courts as well. But the Federation was ready to charter new anti-Stalinist locals in their place.

Meanwhile the outfit that started the rout of Red teachers, the Rapp-Coudert legislative committee investigating subversive activities in New York City schools (TIME, March 31), last week resumed hearings. A teacher in P.S. 61, The Bronx, one Alfred J. Brooks, was revealed to have divided his time between The Bronx and Moscow. He had had seven leaves of absence from school since he became a teacher in 1922. Benjamin Gitlow and Joseph Zack, ex-Communist functionaries, said they had seen him in Moscow in 1927-28, working for the Communist International. His alleged party name: Bosse.

Because Brooks and two other public-school teachers refused to answer the committee's questions (pending a court appeal), Superintendent of Schools Harold G. Campbell last week removed them from their classrooms. This week the Board of Higher Education began trials of 30 municipal college teachers suspended as Communists.

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