UFT members had the rare opportunity to hear a first-hand account of the creation of the Paraprofessionals Chapter more than 50 years ago from Velma Murphy Hill, the chapter’s founder and first chair, and her husband Norman Hill.

The couple, longtime civil rights activists and labor organizers, discussed that history and signed copies of their new book, “Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain: The Extraordinary Story of Love, Civil Rights and Labor Activism,” at a fireside chat at union headquarters on Nov. 21.

A new graduate of the Harvard School of Education, Murphy Hill approached then-UFT President Albert Shanker to discuss the need to unionize the largely Black and Latina paraprofessional workforce. At Shanker’s urging, Murphy Hill took a job as a para in 1968. At that time, paras had to be welfare-eligible and earned poverty wages, she said. “We made $50 a week,” she said. “No benefits, no pensions, no job in the summer.”

Murphy Hill began socializing with her fellow paras, often visiting their homes and meeting their families, in her quest to build support for the union. Murphy Hill also forged relationships with teachers, whose support she knew would also be critical.

In 1970, Shanker and the Department of Education signed the first paraprofessionals contract. By 1974, paraprofessionals’ wages had tripled and they had health benefits.

That first contract also established a career ladder, officially called the Career Training Program. Facing a teacher shortage in the city, the Board of Education was trying to recruit in the southern states and Puerto Rico. “But we had a reservoir of would-be teachers right here in these communities,” Murphy Hill said. And so she negotiated a program, still in place today, in which the city funds college credits and provides release time for paras to attend college.

“When we first got that career ladder, there were lines at all the colleges,” she said. “Six thousand paras applied.”

Murphy Hill credits her success in organizing the paraprofessionals to the tactics she and her husband learned in their civil rights work in the 1960s. She also used civil rights music and even what she describes as civil rights “elan” to win labor rights. “There is a real relationship between the civil rights community and the labor community,” she said.

UFT Vice President Janella Hinds described the Hills’ story as inspirational and joyful. “So often when we think about labor history and Black history, we talk about the challenge, the crisis and the pain,” she said. “But this is a love story. It is about the joy that is in resistance.”