“A People’s University”: Communist Workers’ Schools, 1923-1956

Abstract

U.S. Communists charged public-school culture was “a potent instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie to enslave the toiling masses.” In response, leftists created Workers’ Schools, counter-beacons to “clarify their minds, …elevate them to the dignity of builders of a new society.” Beginning in 1923, Communist Workers Schools offered courses “to equip the workers with the knowledge and understanding of Marxism-Leninism” so that worker-students could engage in “militant struggle.” In the 1940s schools adjusted to the Popular Front, but New York’s Jefferson School and Chicago’s Lincoln School continued offering courses in Marxism even as they offered a progressive American narrative, delivering some of the first courses in African American history and the history of anti-colonial struggles, championing a humanistic form of adult education for “workers of hand and brain.” Schools also provided access to literature, arts, and other humanities courses in a progressive milieu. With the Cold War’s onset, McCarthyism darkened the schoolhouse door, and by 1954 the government dismantled Workers’ Schools. But they endure as a liberating, pedagogical genealogy. Now, when monetization threatens the liberal arts, and campus protest met with the blunt cudgel of police terror, we must look to an earlier era’s “people’s university” for instruction.