She entered Brooklyn College (which at the time offered free tuition), where she studied English literature.
During her early years in the Civil Rights Movement, Feldman worked to integrate Howard Johnson's restaurants in Maryland.
She soon became employment committee chairwoman of the Congress of Racial Equality in Harlem.She also participated in several Freedom Rides, and was arrested twice.
Upon graduation in 1962, Feldman worked for six months as a substitute third grade teacher in a public school in East Harlem.
She continued to be active in the Civil Rights Movement, participating in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
When New York City teachers won collective bargaining rights in 1960, she organized the entire school staff within a year.
Many observers argued that the decentralization experiment was a canard: Little educational advancement for the poverty-stricken students of Ocean Hill-Brownsville could be achieved without additional resources, yet the city provided none.
The crisis began when the Ocean Hill-Brownsville governing board fired 13 teachers for allegedly sabotaging the decentralization experiment.
Shanker demanded that specific charges be filed and the teachers given a chance to defend themselves in due process proceedings.
She had been involved in early negotiations over additional funding for the independent school, and Ocean Hill-Brownsville principal Rhody McCoy alleged that Feldman had not objected to the disciplinary actions at the time they were made.
She was writing newspaper op-eds and giving statements attacking the New York Civil Liberties Union, militant black teachers opposed to the UFT's strikes, and minority parents' groups—people she had worked closely with just a few years before.
A "no-raid" pact was signed by the two unions in which they pledged to not raid one another's locals in an effort to cool off decades of bad blood.
The AFT and NEA also continued to work together on federal education policy, and renewed their no-raid pact regularly.
The "Futures II" committee's final report, approved by AFT delegates in July 2000, advocated a four-point plan: 1) building a "culture of organizing" throughout the union, 2) enhancing the union's political advocacy efforts, 3) engaging in a series of publicity, legislative, funding and political campaigns to strengthen the institutions in which AFT members work, and 4) recommitting the AFT to fostering democratic education and human rights at home and abroad.
Feldman's position on the AFL-CIO executive council was strengthened when AFT secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy was elected to that body in December 2001.
She was survived by her second husband, Arthur Barnes (an insurance executive), two stepchildren, two grandchildren, and her brother and sister.