ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the particulars of the more than decade-long unionization process that culminated in a new constitution for the National Education Association (NEA) early in the 1970s. It looks at the embrace of a new form of political action that accompanied the move to unionization and away from cooperative professionalism. The chapter considers the relationship between the militant unionization movement and the historic, though flawed, commitment of the NEA to women teachers. The creation of a national Political Action Committee for the NEA and its teachers in 1972 was another significant outcome of the teacher militancy movement within the association in the 1960s. The militant teacher movement in the NEA had originated in the local associations, particularly those in urban areas. As the NEA remade itself organizationally in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Washington headquarters staff, including many of its most senior members with decades of experience, responded ambivalently, at best, to the situation.
