Teachers’ Union of Berkeley and Oakland

The Teachers’ Union of Berkeley and Oakland appears in the record as an organization with meetings and officers, encountered through a student’s research in 1936. The available account establishes that its activities were observed and its officers interviewed, while offering no detailed description of its membership, structure, or aims.

Identity and Documented Activity

The union’s name identifies it with Berkeley and Oakland. The evidence describes recurring meetings and officers whom a student researcher interviewed. It does not specify the union’s size, internal organization, particular campaigns, or relationship to other labor groups, so those aspects cannot be established from this account.

A Student’s Research in 1936

In 1936, Berkeley student Helen A. Lichens researched the union for a term paper titled Term Report: Teachers’ Union of Berkeley and Oakland, Spring 1936. She later explained that she attended many of the union’s meetings and interviewed its officers. Her account offers a direct glimpse of the organization as a meeting-based body whose officers could be approached for interviews, though the record does not identify those officers or reproduce their views.

The Archival Record

The surviving evidence comes through a January 17, 1958, memorandum to the FBI director concerning Lichens, later identified as Mrs. Fred Airy, and her student paper. The memorandum records her explanation of how she conducted the research; it is not itself a contemporary account of the union’s proceedings. The union is therefore visible here through a later security-file reference to a student’s work, rather than through meeting minutes or the testimony of its members. That record documents the existence of meetings and officers, but leaves the union’s activities and historical development largely undescribed.