Student Activism in the 1930s
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ASU Memoirs

American Student Union Memoirs


50th and 25 National Reunion--ASU and SDS--1986

Clare Rodney

1. It was April 22, 1936, just a few weeks short of halt a century ago, the day of the great Peace Strike called by the newborn American Student Union. About 200 of us were going to walk out of our high school, James Monroe, in the Bronx, at 11 a.m., and march to a nearby park where Heywood Broun would lead us in the Oxford Pledge.

2. I was a young 17. We had been denied permission to leave the school by our principal, Dr. Henry Hein. It would be the first time I would defy "constituted authority" for what I thought was right. Those of us who were seniors were under special pressure. We were warned that if we walked out we might not be permitted to graduate. That was as devastating a threat as we could imagine.

3. At 11, we met on the school's ground floor. Lined up in parallel lines between us and the exit were Dr. Hein, members of the faculty and administrative staff. We would have to walk between them, single file, as in running a gauntlet. It was an intimidating sight for teen-agers.

4. It is hard to recapture your exact feelings all these years later. But I do remember that I felt both determined and scared, not necessarily in that order. This was crossing a sort of Rubicon in my life.

5. We started to walk through the faculty to the exit. I'm sure my heart was pounding madly. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. Someone in the line had reached ahead to put a reassuring "we are all in this together" hand on the marcher ahead and in seconds we had all done the same and were all walking with one hand on the shoulder of the one ahead of us. Someone started to sing and we all picked it up. I cannot remember the song. Fear gave way to proud exultation as, head high, linked one to the other and voices raised, we moved through the intimidating gauntlet and out of the school.

6. The meeting at the park proceeded successfully in spite of the fact that the school band, (or most of it, I can't be sure if any refused) was brought a block from the school to play in an attempt to disrupt the ceremony.

7. Our parents were called and told they would have to come to school and see Dr. Hein before we would be allowed back in to attend classes. I remember my father, a hard-pressed iron worker, coming home that night in a rage, and telling us what he had told the principal: "You mean you made me lose hours of work just to tell me that my daughter went out on the peace strike? I could hear that from her. Are you going to pay me back the wages I lost today?"

8. Dr. Hein didn't pay back my parent's lost wages, but we all went back to class, and all the seniors received their diplomas at graduation except for two who were singled out as the leaders. There was a storm of protest at this which included a member of the Board of Education. James Wechsler, director of publications of the ASU, called for Hein's removal as principal. Hein reversed himself and the two students did also receive their diplomas.

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