This chapter is a retrospective analysis of a critical manifesto for change in the social order advanced by the American educator George Sylvester Counts (1889–1974). Counts was profoundly moved by the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression. The failure of capitalism was plainly written on the faces of the unemployed standing in bread lines and the thousands of farmers forced from their lands for failure to pay their loans. As an educator, Counts saw the schools as a potential and potent force to reshape the larger social order. To implement his agenda, he had to embrace what is called today, social justice. Social justice work entails strategies to eliminate racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of social prejudice, which have shown themselves to be detrimental to some groups of students and, if not addressed, perpetuate social injustice. While Counts’ critical analysis of capitalism still resonates today, his antidote was based on the premise that one ideological agenda could replace another, a view that today is naïve. The presence of social power is disbursed, fluid, and never static. Finally, he did not anticipate that embracing a political agenda, especially in higher education, would invite a retributive and atavistic response that today directly threatens academic freedom.