Around the time of the Civil Rights movement in the United States were school teachers generally more progressive about racial issues relative to most professions?

There are a few interesting things going on in your question that need to be unpacked a bit. First, the notion of teaching is a "profession" is a relatively modern phenomenon. Although there were multiple states by the 1960's that required some degree of higher education and formal certification to be a teacher, education is a matter left to states' discretion. Teaching with only a high school degree was still possible in the 1960’s, especially in Western states. It wasn't until the late 1900's that cross-state licensing compacts and a formal, national-level teacher certification process gained popularity. So, to that end, it's difficult to compare teachers to other licensed and certified professions.

That said, unlike other professions (doctors, lawyers, etc) teachers are overwhelmingly women, mostly white. The history of white women advocacy, unfortunately, was often focused on their needs and when they weren’t ambivalent to the rights of women of color, they were downright hostile. As an example, white suffragists often asked Black women to march in the back of parades and some early white teacher union leaders advocated white women teachers be paid as much as white men teachers but insisted Black men and women be paid less. Which is to say, women teachers may be have been progressive around issues related to gender, that didn’t necessarily carry over to race.

Although each state has its own education history^1, virtually every state had a parallel system for most of American history, especially in rural areas: schools with white teachers for white children, schools funded at half the rate as the white schools with Black teachers for Black children. The history of these parallel systems is complex and there were exceptions^2, but generally speaking, this meant the teaching force was, taken as a whole, relatively reflective of the American population for the first half of the 20th century. Black teachers often wrote^3 and spoke about the impact of institutional racism on their work and their students, or what we might today, consider "progressive". Likewise, there were Indigenous, Asian, Hispanic/Chicano/Latinx teachers advocating for their children and offering students a progressive curriculum as well as white teachers who advocated for and taught progressive ideas. In many cases, these white teachers came from Quaker communities, were motivated by personal relationships with people of color, or inspired by leaders of the movement. So, while it's difficult to say teachers were more progressives than other professions, there was absolutely a strong progressive wing of the American teaching force, mostly led by teachers of color.

Until Brown v. Board in 1954. One thing it’s important to keep in mind is that Black parents didn’t necessarily want their children going to school with white children – white school were typically better resourced. The work around public education during the Civil Rights movement wasn't so much about getting Black children into white schools, it was more about getting Black children access to the resources found in white schools and explicitly kept from Black schools. The NAACP and the families who were a part of the Brown cases felt court-mandated desegregation was the best way to gain access to the public dollars set aside for education. However, there is an entire history of Black parents and educators who believed Brown was misguided and a better route was to insist the idea of "separate but equal" from Plessy v. Ferguson be fully realized. Unfortunately, may of their fears were realized once the ruling for Brown v. Board came down.

The decision in Brown said that school segregation needed to end with "all deliberate speed.” Not only was the wording vague, meaning white school leaders could put something down on paper and then not act on it for years, it meant there was no time to be thoughtful about the impact of desegregation on Black schools. Remember, there was an entire parallel system of Black schools in most Southern states. In many cases, the teachers at the schools had more formal education than white teachers in white schools as many graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were unable to get jobs in their chosen field. This meant, in many cases, young Black children were learning from highly qualified authors, poets, scientists, and mathematicians. With Brown, though, the parallel track of Black schools was obliterated, almost overnight, especially in the rural South.

Due to generations of neglect from the white school leaders and politicians who controlled school taxes, rural Black schools were often dilapidated, lacking running water and sanitation. Even when a community was able to maintain and support a modern schoolhouse for their children, white parents were simply unwilling to send their children to school in a Black community in order to comply with Brown. (Some even shut down the entire school system for a year, rather than allow for integration.) This meant Black children and teachers needed to be folded into white schools. As an interesting aside, modern day memoirs written by older Black Americans or anecdotes from Black adults from the South will occasionally describe Black schools that "avoided" or "escaped" integration. There were instances where Black parents and educators had enough social and political capital to maintain a Black-only school and in many of those instances, the white school leaders were in no rush to integrate so the town maintained two separate high schools. This wasn't to say Black parents didn't want to send their children to learn with white children, but rather, the events of the Little Rock Nine made an impact. If white adults were willing to send death threats to Black children, why should Black parents expect that to change just because of a court case from 1000s of miles away?

Numbers vary, but it's estimated up to 38,000 Black teachers lost their jobs as a direct result of Brown v. Board. (Here and here) while very few, if any, white teachers did. The impact on an individual level was dramatic and profound. In one case, a highly educated physics teacher who was also the football captain at the closed Black school was told his only option was to work as an aide and an assistant to the football captain at the white school. Women with multiple degrees from HBCUs who taught literature and Latin were given the choice of Kindergarten or unemployment. While modern day teachers are more comfortable with the idea of co-teaching - multiple adults in one room - many white teachers refused to share space with incoming Black teachers or otherwise froze out the new faculty. Black teachers were often forced to choose between working in a school that did not want them where they might be able to be a resource for Black children or protecting their own personal dignity and self-worth.

To turn back to your question again, there were radical, progressive Black-led schools in Chicago where children called teachers by their first names and students worked on political campaigns alongside members of The Black Panthers at the same time white male principals in Southern schools were using corporal punishment on girls who failed to adhere to the school dress code. Teacher union advocacy changed the norms for all married women, regardless of race, which reflected progressive politics but didn't advocate for maternity leave in any meaningful sense of the word, reflecting a general conservative worldview around pregnancy during the Civil Rights Era. Teachers were instrumental in the passage of PL 94-142 which made special education possible; teachers refused to teach Black children with disabilities. White teachers in NYC during the Civil Rights movement embedded political activism in their curriculum and in several cases, were fired for being a suspected communist at the same time teachers a few states away were teaching the Lost Cause narrative and telling students The Civil War was about states' rights.

So, generally speaking, teachers of the era reflected American society at-large. Generally moderate, some liberals and some conservatives, and a few hard-core activists like Jane Elliot.

1: As an example, by 1870 or so, virtually every white women in Massachusetts had been or was a teacher (teachers were expected to leave the classroom as soon as they got married) but several Southern counties maintained a system of white tutors, mostly men, for the children of wealthy white families well into Reconstruction.

2: A chance to learn: A history of race and education by Weinberg is a great look at the history of segregated education. Likewise, Stewart's First Class gives a whole bunch of context around a Black-only HS in DC in the early 1900's that were funded at the same level as white schools.

3: *The Lost Education of Horace Tate” by Siddle Walker looks at the lengths Black parents and teachers went to in order to fund and supply Black schools. It’s a powerful reminder of how many limitations white school leaders and political deliberately put between Black children and a quality education.