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Mildred Grossman
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Mildred Grossman
1916-1988
Photo by Sam Reiss
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A teacher of accounting and business
at Central Commercial High School, Mildred Grossman
was the staff photographer
for the Teachers Union newspaper, Teacher News.
She photographed the annual Teachers Union
Educational Conferences at the Waldorf-Astoria and
Academic Freedom rallies around New York. Her camera
captured invited speakers like playwright Arthur
Miller, (The Crucible) blacklisted
screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and recipients
(educator/activist, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and
actor/activist Paul Robeson) of the TU's Award for
Distinguished Service in the Cause of Education for
Peace and Freedom. Mildred
covered the action when teachers marched in Albany for
salary increases, protests in Washington for allied
unions, and picket lines in NYC protesting unfair labor
practices such as the Timone Resolution, which targeted
both the TU and individual teachers for their personal
political beliefs. Her bravery
factored into her own defense when she too became a
target of assistant corporation counsel Saul Moskoff's
interrogations. After twelve years as a teacher, the
Board of Education determined that Grossman had not
satisfactorily severed her ties to the CP, and she was
dismissed in April 1954 for “Insubordination and conduct
unbecoming a teacher. ” Despite that
loss, she continued to work as a photographer, traveling
globally, documenting union struggles, individual
struggles, and the lives of the disenfranchised across
our country.
In 1955, Mildred's work was featured
in the historic Edward Steichen-curated exhibit,
Family of Man, at the Museum of Modern Art. It
depicted the universality of the human experience
around the world for which poet Carl Sandburg wrote
the introduction to the book of the same name. It
sold 400 million copies. Mildred was among the 273
photographers in the collection culled from over two
million photographer submissions. The exhibit is now
on permanent display in Luxembourg.
The posthumously published Eye of the Storm: Photographs
by Mildred Grossman (1999) Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore
County catalogues her photographs and life as an
educator, photographer, and civil rights activist.
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