Few social issues have rivaled the emphasis that the AFT has placed on the fight for civil rights.

From its early years, the AFT was dedicated to equality in education and equality in representation.  Before its second convention, the new AFT had already chartered the Armstrong-Dunbar High School teachers' local in Washington, D.C.--a group of black high school teachers that the union's executive council "were glad to welcome into the organization," noted the AFT headquarters newsletter.

AFT conventions as early as 1928 passed resolutions to call attention to the need for more black history in schools and for the equalization of salaries between black and white teachers.  And 10 years later, the 1938 AFT convention, which was planned for a Cincinnati hotel, was moved to a new location because blacks would have been forced to use freight elevators in the hotel.

One of the earliest unions to condemn segregation, the AFT stopped chartering segregated locals in 1948 and later formalized that action through a constitutional amendment.  The federation also willingly accepted the loss of thousands of members in 1957 when it expelled its remaining segregated locals in the South.

The AFT was virtually alone among teacher organizations in filing an amicus curiae brief supporting the plaintiffs in the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that struck down racial segregation of schools. In its brief filed two years before the decision, the AFT's legal counsel John Ligtenberg wrote, "Segregation in the field of education is the denial of education itself." (see Brown vs. Board of Education: A Proud AFT Moment)

During the turbulent 1960s, the AFT was particularly active on the civil rights front.  Busloads of members traveled to the South for voter registration drives as well as to participate in the historic 1963 March on Washington.  The AFT also ran more than 20 "Freedom Schools" in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.  Staffed by AFT volunteers the schools supplemented the inadequate education offered to black students.

The civil rights movement and the teacher union movement have always been close allies. Many of AFT's leaders who began their activism in the civil rights movement during the 1960s found a natural home for their organizing and leadership skills and their commitment to social justice in the early battles for collective bargaining for teachers.

The AFT also joined with the broader labor movement to promote the cause of civil rights. With the AFL-CIO the AFT lobbied for such landmark legislation as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act.  Other successes have followed, including federal programs such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Title I and the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday.

Today, the AFT is a source of information and resources on a host of civil rights issues and events. The union maintains a network of civil and human rights member activists and sponsors meetings and conferences. The union also works closely with a wide range of civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and many other human rights groups. Within the labor movement, the AFT works closely with AFL-CIO constituency groups such as the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Pride at Work and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance.