The flagship institution of the U. S. Communist Party's once extensive but now all-but-forgotten network of schools, the Jefferson School of Social Science, flourished in New York City during the 1940s and early 1950s. Its pedagogy represented some of the left's most creative cultural work in the period. With a faculty that included distinguished scholars, writers, artists and musicians, the School attracted thousands of mainly adult student-workers each term. It offered them a wide array of courses, lectures and cultural programs mostly on Marxism, trade union issues and related topics, along with teaching about practical applications to the day's political struggles. Art, music, dance and literature were also essential components of the curriculum. But the combination of powerful government generated repression and the Communists’ vulnerability in the Cold War years destroyed the Jefferson School, along with many other Party-led schools and socio-political organizations.
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