Goldie Watson

Goldie Watson (1909–1994) was a Philadelphia teacher and city official. During the red scare, she was fired by the School District of Philadelphia over her association with a Communist Party-affiliated teachers' union and later won her job back through a Supreme Court challenge. In 1969, mayor James Tate appointed her the fourth administrator of the Model Cities Program in Philadelphia. She was later appointed Deputy Mayor by Frank Rizzo, becoming the first Black woman to hold that post. Her father was a carpenter. Watson's family moved to North Philadelphia when she was young. Watson taught at Martha Washington Elementary School in Mill Creek at a time when many Philadelphia teachers were involved in organizing the city's first labor union in the profession – Local 192 of the American Federation of Teachers. The AFT began investigating the leadership of its New York and Philadelphia locals in 1939, and it expelled the Philadelphia chapter from the national union in 1941 over the communist sympathies of its membership. Watson refused to answer questions about her political affiliations on the basis on the First Amendment, rather than the more commonly invoked Fifth Amendment. Watson wrote to W.E.B. Du Bois, hoping that he would attend her hearing and draw attention to the case, but he was unable to do so. She appealed her firing to the Supreme Court and was awarded her job back along with $17,000 in back pay in 1961.