National Education Association

Founding

The NEA was founded in Philadelphia in 1857 as the National Teachers Association (NTA). Zalmon Richards was elected the NTA's first president and presided over the organization's first annual meeting in 1858. At the beginning and for its first century of history, it had the character of a professional association rather than a labor union. The NTA became the National Educational Association (NEA) in 1870 when it merged with the American Normal School Association, the National Association of School Superintendents, and the Central College Association. The union was chartered by Congress in 1906.

The NEA was never on good terms with the New Deal. Its main goal was for Congress to pass a multipurpose public finance bill that would supplement local property taxes in funding public schools. Some relief money was used to build schools, but the New Deal avoided channeling any of it through the Office of Education. Legislation never succeeded, because it would condone segregated schools in the South and because President Franklin D. Roosevelt rejected any across-the-board program. He believed that federal money should only go to the poorest schools, and none to rich states. The New Deal set up its own separate educational program through the Civilian Conservation Corps and other relief agencies.

From association to labor union

For most of the 20th century, the NEA was dominated by the public school administration in small towns and rural areas. The state organizations played a major role in policy formation for the NEA. Only a small portion of American public school teachers were unionized before the 1960s. That began to change in 1959, when Wisconsin became the first state to pass a collective bargaining law for public employees. Over the next 20 years, most other states adopted similar laws.

The NEA merged with the American Teachers Association, the historically Black teachers association founded as the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, in 1966. The NEA's merger with the ATA, its transformation into a true labor union, and other factors were to greatly change the organization's demographics. In 1967, the NEA elected its first Hispanic president, Braulio Alonso. In 1968, NEA elected its first black president, Elizabeth Duncan Koontz.