New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School (Historical Studies in Education) 3030799212, 9783030799212

Citation preview

HISTORICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION

New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School Edited by Kyle P. Steele

Historical Studies in Education

Series Editors William J. Reese, Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA John L. Rury, Education, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

This series features new scholarship on the historical development of education, defined broadly, in the United States and elsewhere. Interdisciplinary in orientation and comprehensive in scope, it spans methodological boundaries and interpretive traditions. Imaginative and thoughtful history can contribute to the global conversation about educational change. Inspired history lends itself to continued hope for reform, and to realizing the potential for progress in all educational experiences.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14870

Kyle P. Steele Editor

New Perspectives on the History of the TwentiethCentury American High School

Editor Kyle P. Steele University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Oshkosh, WI, USA

Historical Studies in Education ISBN 978-3-030-79921-2 ISBN 978-3-030-79922-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Harris & Ewing, photographer. Central High School. United States Washington D.C. District of Columbia Washington D.C, None. [Between 1910 and 1920] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016854783/. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Series Editors’ Preface

The high school is an institution that almost all Americans are familiar with, but its past is still being explored by historians. Focusing on the twentieth century, this volume offers a diverse collection of essays examining various facets of that history. It begins with two accomplished scholars reflecting on their own influential books and proceeds with chapters considering a range of issues in the social history of secondary schooling. Most deal with facets of high school experiences that previous generations of scholars have neglected, raising questions and offering insights along the way. In these respects the volume highlights new perspectives on this uniquely American institution and sketches a research agenda for the future. As editor Kyle Steele points out, high schools began as rather elite institutions in the nineteenth century, but continued to be an avenue to higher social status throughout the twentieth century. David Labaree suggests in the book’s second chapter that secondary schools have contended with dual purposes of equal access and unequal outcomes for most of this time. The tensions inherent in this set of circumstances are a focal point to one extent or another in each of the essays herein. They are evident in discussions of curricular reform in “essential” schools and other institutions, gendered inequity in Philadelphia, status distinctions in students activities, racial conflict during the Civil Rights era, public perceptions of institutional quality, and inequality in the physical structures of these

v

vi

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

schools. The result is a rich and rewarding collection of viewpoints on the conflicted history of American secondary education. Professor Steele also reminds us that the “high schools” years occupy a special place in the individual and collective memories of most Americans, and this too is a feature of its history. So many of the essays in this book rely upon such recollections in oral history accounts and first-hand reports of events that impacted thousands of lives. In these respects the book’s chapters offer methodological and interpretive insights as well, issues for other scholars to consider in future research on secondary schooling. Beyond that, it is possible that members of the public at large, the elusive “general readers” that publishers yearn for, may also find many of these essays quite interesting. After all, everyone has been to high school (or nearly so), and the themes exhibited in this volume have touched upon the experiences of many. This book offers an opportunity for all to reflect upon their meaning and significance. William J. Reese John L. Rury

Acknowledgments

This volume would not have been possible without interest and encouragement from Bill Reese and John Rury, who recommended it be considered for their Historical Studies in Education series at Palgrave Macmillan. The volume also benefitted greatly from its editor at Palgrave, Milana Vernikova, who was remarkably helpful in moving it through its various phases, always doing so with both efficiency and care. I feel very fortunate to have worked with this group of scholars. I was regularly humbled by their talents and skills as historians, and I was impressed, to a person, by their professionalism. Truth be told, I was warned that editing a book could be quite cumbersome. “It’s like herding cats,” one colleague joked. That certainly was not my experience. I found the process to be delightful. It is worth mentioning, too, that nearly all of the editorial back and forth took place during the pandemic. So, at a time when it was easy for us all to feel disconnected, I was thrilled to have an excuse to talk writing and ideas (and, often, to just chat) over email, on the phone, and on Zoom. I truly looked forward to our conversations about the history of the high school—but, just as much, our conversations about the rest of it all. Special thanks to Walter Stern, Erika Kitzmiller, Bill Reese, Alex Hyres, Cam Scribner, Kevin Zayed, Jon Hale, Liz Hauck, Bob Hampel, and Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen, all of whom helped shape my thinking about this volume and, in some cases, read all or parts of my own contributions.

vii

viii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Lastly, I want to thank my kids, Henry (6) and Jack (4), for tolerating me sometimes reading after dinner and sometimes pacing around talking (“too loud,” they said) to other historians on the phone. As this volume was wrapping up, they were wrapping up a school year with extended closures, then intermittent closures, virtual learning, masks, and COVID tests. Their flexibility and joy during it all were a reminder of precisely what I should be grateful for during a pandemic, as well as what school is really about.

Contents

1

2

What Is the Twentieth-Century American High School? An Introduction Kyle P. Steele

1

Politics and Markets: The Enduring Dynamics of the US System of Schooling David F. Labaree

13

3

Renovations in the Citadel Robert L. Hampel

4

“Intellectual Power” for All: Theodore Sizer and the Origins of the Coalition of Essential Schools at Phillips Academy, Andover John P. Spencer

5

6

29

53

“A Living, Breathing, Curriculum”: Harlem Prep and the Power of Cultural Relevance, 1967–1974 Barry M. Goldenberg

81

Gendered Anxieties Pave the Way for a Separate and Unequal Co-educational High School Erika M. Kitzmiller

115 ix

x

7

8

9

CONTENTS

A Window into the World of Students: An Analysis of 1920s High School Student Newspapers Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen Books, Basketball, and Order of the Fish: Youth Culture in Midwest Small-Town High Schools, 1900–1930 Patricia Stovey

“Fight for Your Land”: Southern High School Activism and the Struggle for Youth Autonomy During and After the Second World War Jon Hale

10

The Hidden Politics of High School Violence Walter C. Stern

11

Shifting Public Perceptions of Wichita’s Southeast High School, 1957–2000 Lauren Elizabeth Coleman-Tempel

12

13

Funding the “High School of Tomorrow”: Inequity in Facility Construction and Renovation in Rural North Carolina, 1964–1997 Esther Cyna

Epilogue Kyle P. Steele

Index

139

169

205 237

277

311

347

357

List of Contributors

Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA Lauren Elizabeth Coleman-Tempel University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Esther Cyna Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris, France Barry M. Goldenberg Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA Jon Hale University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, USA Robert L. Hampel University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA Erika M. Kitzmiller Barnard College, New York, NY, USA David F. Labaree Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA John P. Spencer Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA Kyle P. Steele University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA Walter C. Stern University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA Patricia Stovey University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, WI, USA

xi

List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2

Fig. 12.3 Fig. 12.4

Philadelphia’s High School Enrollment by Ward, 1909 Hubert Nelson’s Drawing, or “Plat,” of Minerva Hall, Harris High School, Petersburg, Illinois, 1921 Projected Population Growth in Wichita, 1945–1980 Increase in Suspensions in Wichita Public Schools, 1987–1990 College Completion in Adults Twenty-Five Years and Older, 1980 College Completion in Adults Twenty-Five Years and Older, 1990 Representation of School Funding for Facilities in North Carolina Percentage of School District Budgets Dedicated to Repair (National Average), 1982 (Source American Association of School Administrators, “The Maintenance Gap: Deferred Repair and Renovation in the Nation’s Elementary and Secondary Schools,” 1983, 10–11) Pinecrest High School, Moore County, 1969 (Source The Pilot, September 7, 2013) Perquimans High School Demolition, Perquimans County, 1986 (Source Harris, “School Demolition Nears Completion”)

124 174 281 298 302 303 314

315 318

322

xiii

xiv

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 12.5

Fig. 12.6 Fig. 12.7

North Carolina State Funding for Capital Outlay, 1958–2014 (Source North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, “The North Carolina Public School Partnership,” August 2016 Conference Presentation, 20) Enka High School, Buncombe County, 1986 (Source Moore, “New Enka High: A Dream Come True”) Trailers Outside Owen High School, Buncombe County, 1987 (Source Ewart Ball, Asheville Citizen-Times, August 30, 1987, 9A)

327 333

334

CHAPTER 1

What Is the Twentieth-Century American High School? An Introduction Kyle P. Steele

A couple of years ago, a colleague who is also interested in the history of the American high school suggested I read Jennifer Senior’s 2013 essay, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School.”1 In it, Senior intersperses snapshots from an actual twenty-fifth high school reunion with interviews from filmmakers, artists, scientists, friends, and academics, among others. The evidence hops quickly from topic to the next, but Senior’s argument is crystal clear: for those who spend time in high schools, there something inescapable about the experience. Senior’s hunch, it turns out, is supported by the work of developmental neuroscientists and psychologists, many of whom suggest that humans tend to remember events between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five with far more clarity than in other periods of life, a phenomenon called the “reminiscence bump.” For better or worse, they argue, we can retrieve with more ease the

K. P. Steele (B) University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_1

1

2

K. P. STEELE

sights and sounds from those years: the music, the fashion, the friendships, the triumphs, the blunders, and, above all, how it made us feel. As Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg put it, “There’s no reason why, at the age of sixty, I should still be listening to the Allman Brothers.”2 Unsurprisingly, elements of our popular culture—television, music, and film, in particular—regularly tap into (or cash in on) the “reminiscence bump.” Scores of television shows, from Dobie Gillis (1959–1963), to What’s Happening!! (1976–1979), to Saved by the Bell (1989–1993), to Glee (2009–2015), have placed high schoolers and their social worlds at the center of the story, and we should expect even more of them to materialize next pilot season. Musicians have similarly rhapsodized about the high school experience. Before and since Chuck Berry’s album “After School Sessions” (1957), The Beach Boys, Alice Cooper, Bruce Springsteen, Nirvana, and Taylor Swift, to name a few, have all found inspiration for lyrics, not to mention hit songs, by mining the rites of passage surrounding the institution. Recently even, in January of 2021, seventeen-year-old Olivia Rodrigo’s song “Drivers License” debuted at the top of the Billboard 100, breaking records for the number of streams it accumulated on Spotify and Apple Music in the weeks that followed. As with many pop songs before it, “Drivers License” describes a love lost, which Rodrigo muses about while driving alone “through the suburbs.” And where did Rodrigo and her special person purportedly meet? As actors on the set of the television show “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.”3 Movies, of course, have also explored the social worlds of high schoolers. Compared to other media, films have had a tendency to present those worlds, as well as the high school as an institution, in more hyperbolic and dangerous terms, as overrun by unscrupulous and degenerate teenagers, ineptly corralled by the adults who struggle to understand them. This point is made apparent not only by the plot lines of the most beloved and successful high school movies of the last seventy years— including Blackboard Jungle (1955), Carrie (1976), House Party (1990), and Booksmart (2019)—but also, of late, by historians of education. Sevan Terzian and Patrick Ryan’s edited volume American Education in Popular Media (2015), for example, features several terrific essays that explain how films about high schools have shaped our view of them, however distorted that view might be.4

1

WHAT IS THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN HIGH …

3

With disproportionate attention devoted to the point of view of young people and their communities in cultural artifacts and the popular imagination, I was surprised as a graduate student to find how much the historical literature on high schools had sidestepped it. I was also struck by how much attention, by contrast, historians paid to the people who ran high schools, and to the national leaders who endeavored to shape them with policy. The historiography of the high school, I found, attended to the institution’s view of the community as opposed to the community’s view of the institution. Books and articles from this perspective, many of them expertly crafted and utterly absorbing, left me curious about the rest of the story. As I attempted to capture in my first book, this more top-down approach is still vitally important, and it has been necessary in moving the field forward for a couple of reasons.5 First, this literature explains how both the high school and high school enrollment changed remarkably over the twentieth century. Put simply, at the start of the century, going to high school was still somewhat rare, typically reserved for the white and middle or upper classes.6 But by the end of the century, high school attendance was the normative experience for teenagers, regardless of one’s background. In 1890, as several of the chapters in this volume point out, only six percent of the nation’s fourteen-seventeen-year-olds were educated beyond eighth grade. By 1930, that figure had risen to fifty-one percent, prompting, as William Reese explains, local communities to build “one high school per day between 1890 and 1920, not all of them palaces, but an indication of impressive demand.”7 By 1960, roughly ninety percent were enrolled, and graduation rates, which help us track how long people stayed in the high school, passed sixty percent for the first time.8 By 1985 and through the end of the millennium, the percentage of Americans who completed high school hovered between eighty-five and eighty-seven percent.9 High schools, in short, became mass institutions. Second, these more top-down narratives explain how the high school curriculum grew almost as rapidly as the student population over the course of the century. Historians have tended to portray the curricular expansion as the ongoing triumph of the ideas presented in Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education report (1918) over the ideas presented in Report of the Committee of Ten (1892). Both of these widely read statements on the high school were expansive in scope and circulation, completed as part of the work of the National Education Association.

4

K. P. STEELE

In brief, the Committee of Ten, which a president of Harvard led, argued that all high schoolers should receive a standardized, academic curriculum, regardless of their background or plans for the future. Conversely, the authors of the Cardinal Principles, whom a former high school principal led, argued that course offerings needed to expand substantially to meet the interests and varied abilities of the growing number of students. Implicit in their argument was a conviction that many of the era’s new high school students—who were somewhat less likely to be well-to-do, native-born, or white—were incapable of benefitting from an academic curriculum.10 As the late Jeffrey Mirel aptly noted, it “is not hard to see where the battle lines would have been drawn” between these two perspectives, but, “as we know now, the Cardinal Principles team won.”11 For the rest of the century, that is, high schools expanded what they offered their pupils, adding vocational classes (to prepare young people for specific jobs), even more extracurricular activities (to fill more of the high schooler’s day), health and physical education (to teach young people how to be healthy and prepare them for military service), watered-down academic classes (“Household Science” over chemistry, for example), and a “life adjustment” education (to teach young people to drive cars, balance their checkbooks, and live independently). In many cases, historians explain, high schools regularly offered all of this training and more under one roof, in so-called “comprehensive” institutions. This means that students were “tracked” to receive demonstrably different educations—exacerbating race-, class-, and gender-based inequities—even as they ultimately received the same credential: a high school diploma.12 Over the years, Americans have changed some of the names and content offered in the high school’s various tracks, but the arrangement of the institution has been markedly stable.13 Despite all this important and complex scholarship, there has always been, and continues to be, more room to explore what the field has done less fully: to round out our stories about high schools with the perspectives of the people who attended them and with a consideration for the idiosyncrasies of the communities that surrounded them. For example, what did communities make of high schools during this century of incredible change? If a community had more than one high school, how did people make sense of the differences between them? How did all of this matter to the young people who were required to attend? What about those who were denied access, who never attended, or who left

1

WHAT IS THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN HIGH …

5

before graduation? And, if we “truly never leave high school,” and are constantly reminded of its social and cultural import, then how does this near-ubiquitous institution live on in our memories, refracted by time and age? If we are truly searching to understand “education in the broadest sense,” as Lawrence Cremin and Bernard Bailyn put it sixty years ago, then our narratives about high schools would need more points of view.14 Without question, there are many models of scholarship that address questions like these, including books by David Labaree and Robert Hampel, both contributors to this volume. Additionally, Gerald Grant takes us inside the halls of Hamilton High in his “sociologically informed history” of a school in transition from the 1950s through the 1980s. James Anderson describes how Black students accessed high schools in the Jim Crow South, despite virulently racist laws and policies that attempted to impede them. Paula Fass utilizes yearbooks to help us understand how New York high schools in the 1930s and 1940s acted to Americanize immigrant youth. Stephen Lassonde shows how high schools in New Haven pulled the children of Italian immigrants spatially and culturally away from their neighborhoods. Sherman Dorn traces the arrival and institutional response to the dreaded “high school dropout” in the 1960s. Beth Bailey brings to life the dimensions of high school dating in her single-volume history of courtship. Pamela Grundy uses high school basketball to show how North Carolinians grappled with the politics of race, class, and gender throughout the twentieth century. Carlos Kevin Blanton uncovers the damaging English-only policies put in place in Texas high schools. Yoon K. Pak captures the lived experience of Japanese American high schoolers in Seattle during World War II.15 And more recently, a wave of books and articles by John Rury and Shirley Hill, Michelle Purdy, Jon Hale, Dionne Danns, and V. P. Franklin, among others, take great care to uncover the perspectives of Black teenagers as they fought to access secondary education, desegregated private schools, engaged in local activism, and furthered the aims of the long Civil Rights Movement.16 The chapters that follow expand on this scholarship in service of four distinct but related ends: as an introduction to the history of the American high school in the twentieth century; as a reevaluation of the power of narratives that privilege the perspective of school leaders, administrators, and the curriculum; as a glimpse into the worlds created by the students themselves; and, most critically, as a means of sparking conversations about where the field may look next for stories worth telling.

6

K. P. STEELE

Indeed, the chapters that follow prove that the question this introduction poses—“What is the twentieth-century American high school?”—is far from fully answered. The question’s ultimate un-answerability, in fact, is what makes the field exciting. To borrow a phrase from Eric Foner in his book The Story of American Freedom, “[t]he title…as is perhaps obvious, is meant to be ambiguous or ironic (one might even call is postmodern).”17 In terms of style, I encouraged the contributing authors to address the topic at hand from their varied perspectives, training, and interests, as well as in their unique style and voice. As a result, some of the chapters approximate journal articles in the history of education, while others are slightly less formal (a couple even include autobiography). Some contain elements that are more sociological than historical, and others connect their arguments to ongoing debates regarding education policy and the American high school. The fact that the chapters are wide-ranging not only reflects a strength inherent to edited collections, but, in this case, it also reflects the important tendency toward interdisciplinary thinking and writing in the field.18 In terms of organization, each of the chapters present standalone arguments that can be read and interpreted on their own. That said, I have arranged them to suggest that the authors are regularly engaged in overlapping or complimentary themes, either in their guiding questions, historiographical interventions, chronologies, or research methods. What follows, therefore, may also be read as: a pair (Chapters 2 and 3), followed by a pair (Chapters 4 and 5), followed by trio (Chapters 6–8), followed by a pair (Chapters 9 and 10), followed by a pair (Chapters 11 and 12). For clarity, the spacing of the table of contents indicates this arrangement. Chapters 2 and 3, for example, present scholars reflecting on their books on American high schools over thirty years after they were written. First, David Labaree considers his conclusions from The Making of an American High School (1988), suggesting that, over the course of his career, he has come to understand the high school as an ideal model for examining the conflict at the center of education writ large. On the one hand, that is, the high school has claimed to be egalitarian and democratic (and therefore inclusive), yet, on the other hand, it has promised to be elite and to confer status (and is therefore stratified). The system, Labaree proposes, is at odds with itself. In Chapter 3, Robert Hampel revisits his book The Last Little Citadel (1986), which was completed as part of three books from A Study of High Schools, alongside Horace’s

1

WHAT IS THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN HIGH …

7

Compromise (1984) and The Shopping Mall High School (1985). Hampel’s chapter not only explores his path to joining the Study and completing Citadel, but also how, with the benefit of decades in the field and experience in on-the-ground school reform, he would approach the book with additional questions and sources today. Chapters 4 and 5 offer stories that center around the high school curriculum, utilizing it as a vehicle to examine anew central questions in the field, including: What is an ideal high school curriculum? Should it be standardized for all high schoolers? And can the right curriculum, if taught correctly, lead to more engaged students and equitable schools? In Chapter 4, John Spencer brings to life Theodore “Ted” Sizer’s time as headmaster of the elite boarding school Phillips Academy, Andover in the 1970s. The Andover years, Spencer argues, are key to understanding Sizer’s future work as head of the Coalition of Essential Schools, a group that pushed secondary schools nationwide to focus on critical thinking, interdisciplinarity, depth over coverage, and student-led inquiry over lecture. As Spencer shows, the Coalition’s ideas hold continued relevance in light of the movement for testing and accountability that No Child Left Behind (2002) enshrined. At roughly the same time that Sizer was at Andover, Black school leaders at Harlem Prep, just over 200 miles away, were implementing a curriculum aimed at meeting the needs of the school’s mostly Black student population, which Barry Goldenberg captures in Chapter 5. Before 1974, Goldenberg explains, Harlem Prep operated as an independent, community-based school. Its multicultural, student-first curriculum and pedagogy—with hallmarks that would now be called “culturally relevant”—proved successful and, Goldenberg contends, contain lessons for equity-minded school leaders, teachers, and citizens today. The next three chapters (Chapters 6, 7, and 8) use unique source material and methods to take us inside high schools. In Chapter 6, Erika Kitzmiller chronicles the gendered anxieties that fueled the campaign to open Philadelphia’s Germantown High School at the turn of the century. While Germantown, and many secondary schools like it nationally, were celebrated for being co-educational, Kitzmiller uses local planning documents, school records, and Census data to show that male and female students were systematically separated inside Germantown (physically and in educational opportunity), an arrangement that limited the longterm prospects of the young women who attended or even graduated. In Chapter 7, Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen considers the proliferation of

8

K. P. STEELE

high school student newspapers in the early twentieth century. Pairing a fine-grained analysis of student newspapers in Wisconsin with national trends, Cieslik-Miskimen shows that early student experimentation in the medium was curtailed in the 1920s by more adult control, a change that led to professional looking papers and an editorial perspective that was distinctly pro-school. In Chapter 8, Patricia Stovey complements traditional school records with student diaries and memoirs to describe the rhythms of small-town, midwestern high schools between 1900 and 1930. Borrowing a framework for describing youth culture from Paula Fass, Stovey provides intimate and rarely explored details from the worlds students created in assembly halls, within school clubs and sports, and in their lives beyond adult supervision. Chapters 9 and 10 focus on the experiences of Black students and communities during periods of high school segregation and desegregation. In Chapter 9, Jon Hale examines student activism at historically Black high schools in the South before and after the World War II. Given that Black secondary schools were often important hubs of culture and education, Hale suggests, they became critical sites for students— in concert with their teachers, the NAACP, and the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC)—to build a foundation for the freedom struggles that would dominate the 1950s and beyond. In Chapter 10, Walter Stern discusses the often hidden politics of race-based violence in high schools in the 1960s and 1970s. As Stern makes clear, violence in schools nationally was usually the result of anti-Black discrimination, but it was almost always reframed by school leaders as a matter of “school safety” and compliance as opposed to racial justice. Lawmakers and administrators used the moment to institutionalize practices that disproportionally surveilled and disciplined Black students, effectively binding the high school to the growing carceral state in what scholars now often call the “school-prison-nexus.” Chapters 11 and 12 use oral history and school finance law, respectively, to investigate how the placement and construction of high schools created durably inequitable school systems in the final decades of the century. In Chapter 11, Lauren Coleman-Tempel explains how local perceptions of Wichita’s Southeast High School changed significantly between 1957 and 2000, a process shaped by racist housing and education policies, the efforts of civil rights groups, and the introduction of test-in magnet and International Baccalaureate high schools. By layering

1

WHAT IS THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN HIGH …

9

this timeline with oral histories, Coleman-Tempel shows that community members routinely disagreed about who or what was responsible for Southeast’s educational problems and, by extension, what should be done to address them. In Chapter 12, Esther Cyna investigates funding for the construction and improvement of high school buildings in North Carolina from the 1960s through the 1990s. Given, as Cyna proves, that high school buildings are typically the most expensive investments districts make, carefully untangling the processes by which they are funded reveals inequities that are legal, fiscal, educational, and even symbolic. Finally, in a short Epilogue, I offer some brief thoughts, based on the scholarship here and elsewhere, on what the field might consider in capturing future histories of the American high school in the twentieth century. For now, though, as you begin reading and considering the chapters that follow, I will leave you with a quote from the author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., one that I included in my first book’s introduction, but that bears repeating here. In a 1970 interview in Esquire, Vonnegut declared that “the high school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of. We have all been there... [and while] there, we saw nearly every sign of justice and injustice, kindness and meanness, [and] intelligence and stupidity, which we are all likely to encounter later in life.”19 Since I included the quote in my book, I have had the chance to teach an undergraduate senior capstone in which— aided by research, media, and art—my students try to decide if Vonnegut is right. There has yet to be much consensus, and I suspect the readers of these chapters may be divided similarly. All the same, I hope this volume can add context to Vonnegut’s claim, perhaps revealing what else we ought to know about such an institution along the way.

Notes 1. I was fortunate to have Daniel Perlstein chair a panel I was on at the History of Education Society’s Annual Meeting in 2018. At the time, I was preparing to teach an undergraduate Honors capstone on the American high school, and he shared the syllabus for his course at UC Berkeley titled, “High School, The Movie.” Among many fascinating texts and films, the syllabus included Senior’s essay. 2. Jennifer Senior, “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” New York Magazine, January 18, 2013, 20–21.

10

K. P. STEELE

3. Anna Grace Lee, “Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Drivers License’ Is the No. 1 Song in the World Right Now. But There’s More to the Story,” Esquire, January 21, 2021. 4. Sevan Terzian and Patrick Ryan, eds., American Education in Popular Media: From the Blackboard to the Silver Screen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). See chapters by Daniel Perlstein and Leah Faw (seven) and Andrew L. Grunzke (eight), in particular. Also, see Robert Bulman, Hollywood Goes to High School: Cinema, Schools, and American Culture (New York: Worth Publishers, 2005); Joel Spring, Images of American Life: A History of Ideological Management in Schools, Movies, Radio, and Television (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). 5. See, for example, Edward Krug, The Shaping of the American High School: 1880–1920, Vol. 1 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969) and The Shaping of the American High School: 1920–1941, Vol. 2 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972); Herbert Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1835–1958, Second Edition (New York: Routledge, 1995); Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876–1946 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999). 6. For more on nineteenth-century public high schools, see William Reese, The Origins of the American High School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 7. William Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 181. 8. I outline these enrollment figures, which have been covered widely by the field, in Making a Mass Institution: Indianapolis and the American High School (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 1–2. 9. In this case, the “completion rate” captures “the proportion of 18through 24-year-olds who have left high school and earned a high school diploma or the equivalent, including a General Educational Development credential.” See Phillip Kaufman and Martha Naomi Alt, Dropout Rates in the United States: 2000 (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 2001), 17–18. 10. For an excellent and concise overview of this tension, see Jeffrey Mirel, “The Traditional High School: Historical Debates over Its Nature and Function,” Education Next (Winter 2006): 14–21. 11. Mirel, “The Traditional High School,” 15, 17. 12. For overviews of these trends, see Reese, America’s Public Schools, notably chapter six; John Rury, Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling (New York: Routledge, 2012), notably chapters four and five; and, though about a K12 system, Jeffrey Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban System: Detroit, 1907–1981 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); On the drive for vocationalism,

1

13.

14.

15.

16.

WHAT IS THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN HIGH …

11

see Harvey Kantor and David Tyack, eds., Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism in American Education (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1982) and Harvey Kantor, Learning to Earn: Work, School, and Vocational Reform in California, 1880–1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988 ). For more on how tracked high schools meet demands for both “social efficiency” and “social mobility” through education, see David Labaree, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Education,” American Educational Research Journal 34, No. 1 (Spring 1997): 39–81. This point is made explicit by Stephen Lassonde in the opening to Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven’s Working Class, 1870–1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 10. See Bernard Bailyn, Education and the Forming of American Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960) and Lawrence Cremin, The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay on the Historiography of American Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1965). David F. Labaree, The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Hampel, Robert L. The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools Since 1940 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986); Gerald Grant, The World We Created at Hamilton High (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Paula Fass, Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Sherman Dorn, Creating the Dropout: An Institutional and Social History of School Failure (Westport: Praeger, 1997); Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Pamela Grundy, Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in TwentiethCentury North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Carlos Kevin Blanton, The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007); Lassonde, Learning to Forget; Yoon K. Pak, Wherever I Go, I Will Always Be a Loyal American: Schooling Seattle’s Japanese Americans During World War II (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002). Michelle A. Purdy, Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018); Jon Hale, “Future Foot Soldiers or Budding Criminals? The Dynamics of High School Student Activism in the Southern Black Freedom Struggle,” Journal of Southern History 64, No. 3 (August 2018): 615–652; Dionne Danns, Crossing Segregated Boundaries: Remembering

12

K. P. STEELE

Chicago School Desegregation (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020); Vincent P. Franklin, The Young Crusaders: The Untold Story of the Children and Teenagers Who Galvanized the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Beacon Press, 2021). Also, see Pamela Grundy, Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); John L. Rury and Shirley A. Hill, The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling, 1940–1980: Closing the Graduation Gap (New York: Teachers College Press, 2015); Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 17. Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), xxi. 18. Among others, the work of Jonathan Zimmerman is emblematic of this trend. See Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), and Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). Also, though not a historian of education in name, Gloria LadsonBillings has produced some of the most lucid and meaningful essays in the last thirty years of the field. See “Landing on the Wrong Note: The Price We Paid for Brown,” Educational Researcher 33, No. 7 (2004): 3– 13; “From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in US Schools,” Educational Researcher 35, No. 7 (2006): 3–12. 19. Steele, Making a Mass Institution, 7. As I note, I first read the quote in Reese, America’s Public Schools, 286–287.

CHAPTER 2

Politics and Markets: The Enduring Dynamics of the US System of Schooling David F. Labaree

Sometimes, when you’re writing a book, someone else needs to tell you what it’s truly about. That is what happened to me as I was writing my first book, published in 1988: The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939. I had just completed the manuscript when David Cohen, my colleague at the Michigan State University College of Education, generously offered to read the full draft and give me comments on it. As we sat together for two hours in my office, he explained to me the point I was trying to make in the text but had failed to make explicit. Although the

This chapter is dedicated to my friend and former colleague, David Cohen, who died in 2020. D. F. Labaree (B) Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_2

13

14

D. F. LABAREE

pieces of the story I presented were interesting in themselves, he said, they fell short of forming a larger interpretive scheme. The elements of this larger story were already there, but they were just below the surface. Our conversation showed me that the heart of the story my book told about this high school revolved around an ongoing tension between politics and markets, a tension that shaped its evolution. Central High was created as an expression of democratic politics. In this role, it was an effort to create informed citizens for the new republic. But once it was launched, it took on a new role, as a vehicle for conferring social status on the highly select group of students who attended. Its subsequent history was a struggle between these two visions of the school, as political pressures mounted to give future students greater access to the high school credential, while the families of current students sought to preserve the exclusivity that provided them with social advantage. At the same time that David told me what my book was about, he also told me what it was not about. As I saw it, the empirical core of the book was a quantitative dataset I had compiled of 1,834 students who attended the school during census years between 1840 and 1920. I had coded the information from school records, linked it to family data from the census, punched it into IBM cards (remember those?), and analyzed it at length with statistical software. What the data showed was that— unlike the contemporary high school, where social origins best explain who graduates and who drops out—the determining factor at Central was grades. This was my big reveal. But that day in my office, David pointed out to me that all this data—recorded in no fewer than thirty-six tables—added up to a footnote to the statement, “Central High School was a meritocracy.” In total, this part of the study took two years of my still short life. Two years for one footnote. Needless to say, at the time I struggled to accept either of David’s comments with the gratitude they deserved. He was right, but I was devastated. First, the book I thought was finished would now require a complete rewrite, so I could weave the book’s central theme back into the text. And second, this revision would mean confining the hard-won quantitative analysis to a single chapter, because the most interesting material turned out to be elsewhere. In the rush to display all my hard-won data, I had ended up stepping on my punchline. In this essay, I explore how the tension between politics and markets, which David Cohen uncovered in my first book, helps us understand the central dynamics of the American system of schooling over its 200-year

2

POLITICS AND MARKETS: THE ENDURING DYNAMICS OF THE US …

15

history. The primary insight is that the system, as with Central High, is at odds with itself. It’s a system without a plan. No one constructed a coherent design for the system or assigned it a clear and consistent mission. Instead, the system evolved through the dynamic interplay of competing actors seeking to accomplish contradictory social goals through a single organizational machinery. By focusing on this tension, we can begin to understand some of the more puzzling and even troubling characteristics of the American system of schooling. It’s a radically decentralized organizational structure, dispersed across 50 states and 15,000 school districts, and no one is in charge. Yet somehow schools all over the country look and act in ways that are remarkably similar. It’s a system that has a life of its own, fends off concerted efforts by political reformers to change the core grammar of schooling, and evolves at its own pace in response to the demands of the market. Its structure is complex, incoherent, and fraught with internal contradictions, but it nonetheless seems to thrive under these circumstances. And it is somehow able to accommodate the demands placed on it by a disparate array of educational consumers, who all seem to get something valuable out of it, even though these demands pull the system in conflicting directions. It has something for everyone, it seems, except for fans of organizational coherence and efficiency. In fact, one lesson that emerges from this focus on tensions within the system is that coherence and efficiency are vastly overrated. Conflict can be constructive. This essay starts with the tension between politics and markets that I explored in my first book and then builds on it with analyses I carried out over the next thirty years in which I sought to unpack this tension. These findings were published in three later books: How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education (1997); Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling (2010); and A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education (2017). The aim of this review is to explore the core dynamics of the US educational system as it emerges in these works. It is a story about a balancing act among competing forces, one that began with a conversation about Central High with my friend David Cohen. The insight that came to me as I was working on these later books was that the form and function of the American high school served as the model for the educational system. The nineteenth-century high school established the mix of common schooling at one level and elite schooling at the next level that came to characterize the system as a whole. And the

16

D. F. LABAREE

tracked comprehensive high school that emerged in the early twentieth century provided the template for the structure of US higher education, which, like Central in 1920, is both highly stratified and broadly inclusive. Overall, it is a system that embraces its own contradictions by providing something for everyone—at the same time providing social access and preserving social advantage.

Politics and Markets and the Founding of Central High To understand the tension in the American educational system you first need to consider the core tension that lies at the heart of the American political system. Liberal democracy is an effort to balance two competing goals. One is political equality, which puts emphasis on the need for rule by the majority, grounded in political consensus, and aiming toward the ideal of equality for all. This is the democratic side of liberal democracy. The other goal is individual liberty, which puts emphasis on preserving the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority, open competition among individual actors, and a high tolerance for any resulting social inequality. This is the liberal side of the system, which frees persons, property, and markets from undue political constraint. These are the two tendencies I have labeled politics and markets. Balancing the two is both essential and difficult. It offers equal opportunity for unequal outcomes, majority rule, and minority rights. School is at the center of this because it reflects and serves both elements. It offers everyone access to school and the opportunity to show what individuals can achieve there. And it also creates hierarchies of merit, winners and losers, as it sorts people into different levels of the social structure. In short, it provides social access and also upholds social advantage. So what happened when Central High School appeared upon the scene? It was founded for political and moral reasons, in support of the common-school ideal of preparing citizens of the new American republic by instilling in them the skills and civic virtues they would need in to establish and preserve republican community. But in order to accomplish this goal, the founders needed to get past a major barrier. Prior to the founding of common schools in Philadelphia in the 1830s, a form of public schooling was already in effect, but it was limited to people who couldn’t afford to pay for their own schooling. To qualify, you had to go

2

POLITICS AND MARKETS: THE ENDURING DYNAMICS OF THE US …

17

down to city hall and declare yourself, in person, as a pauper. Middle- and upper-class families paid for private schooling for their children. Common schools would not work in creating civic community unless they could draw everyone into the mix. But the existing public system was freighted with the label “pauper schools.” Why would a respectable middle-class family want to send their children to such a stigmatized institution? The answer to this question was ingenious. Induce the better-off to enroll in the public schools by making such enrollment the prerequisite for gaining access to an institution that was better than anything they could find in the private education market. In Philadelphia, that institution was Central High School. The founders deliberately created it as an irresistible lure for the wealthy. It was located in the most fashionable section of town. It had a classical marble façade, a high-end German telescope mounted in an observatory on its roof, and a curriculum that was comparable to what students could find at the University of Pennsylvania. Modeled more on a college than a private academy, the school’s principal was called president, its teachers were called professors (listed in the front of the city directory along with judges and city council members), and the state authorized the school to award college degrees to its graduates. Its students were the same age-range as those at Penn; you could go to one or the other, but there was no reason to attend both. And unlike Penn, Central was free. It also offered students a meritocratic achievement structure, with a rigorous entrance exam screening those coming in and a tough grading policy that screened those who made it all the way to the end. This meant that graduates of Central were considered more than socially elite; they were certified as smart. The result was a cultural commodity that became extraordinarily attractive to the middle and upper classes in the city: an elite college education at public expense. But there was a catch. Only students who had attended the public grammar schools could apply for admission to Central; initially they had to spend at least one year in the grammar schools and then the requirement rose to two years. This approach was wildly successful. From day one, the competition to pass the entrance exam and gain access to Central High School was intense. This was true not just for prospective students but also for the city’s grammar school masters, who were engaged in a zero-sum game to see who could get the most students into central and win themselves a prime post as a professor. Note that the classic liberal democratic tension between political equality and market inequality was already present at the very birth of

18

D. F. LABAREE

the common school. In order to create common schools, you needed an uncommon school. Only the selective inducement of the high school could guarantee full community participation in the lower schools. Thus, from the very start, public schooling in the US was both a public good and a private good. As a public good, its benefits accrued to everyone in the city, by creating citizens who were capable of maintaining a democratic polity. But it was also a private good, which provided social advantage to an elite population that could afford the opportunity cost to attain a scarce and valuable high school diploma.

Increased Access Leads to a Tracked and Socially Reproductive Central High For fifty years, Central High School (and its female counterpart Girls High School) remained the only public secondary schools in Philadelphia, which at the time was the second largest city in the country. High school attendance was a scarce commodity there and in the rest of the country, where in 1880 it accounted for only 1.1% of public school enrollments.1 At the same time that high school enrollments were small and stable, enrollments in grammar schools were expanding rapidly. By 1900, the average American over twenty-five had completed eight years of schooling.2 If most students were to continue their education, the number of high schools needed to expand rapidly. As a result, the end of the nineteenth century was a dynamic period in the development of the American system of schooling. The pressures on the high school were coming from two sources. The first was working-class families, who were eager to have their children gain access to a valuable credential that had long been restricted to a privileged few. It’s a time-tested rule of thumb that, in a liberal democracy, you can’t limit access to an attractive public institution like the high school for very long when demand is high. Sheer numbers eventually make themselves felt through the political arena. In Philadelphia you could see this play out in the political tensions over access to the two high schools. By the 1870s, the school board started imposing quotas on students from the various grammar schools in the city in order to spread access more evenly across the city. By the 1880s, the city began to open manual training schools in parallel with the high schools, and by the 1890s the flood gates opened. A series of new regional high schools were established, allowing a sharp increase in enrollments. At

2

POLITICS AND MARKETS: THE ENDURING DYNAMICS OF THE US …

19

the same time, the board abolished the high school entrance examination, which meant that students now qualified for admission to high school solely by presenting a grammar-school diploma. By 1920, Central had lost its position as the exclusive citadel at the top of the system, where it drew the best students city-wide, now demoted to the status of just one among the many available regional high schools. Everything suddenly changed in Central High’s form and function. The vision of being a college disappeared, as Central was placed securely between grammar school and college in the new educational hierarchy. Its longstanding core curriculum, which was required for all students, by 1920 became a tracked curriculum pitched toward different academic trajectories: an academic track for those going to college, a mechanical track for future engineers, a commercial track for clerical workers, and an industrial track for machine operators. And whereas the old Central had a proud tradition of school-wide meritocracy, students in the four tracks were distributed in a pattern familiar in high schools today, according to social class, with 72% of the academic-track students from the middle class and only 28% from the working class.3 Its professors, who had won a position at Central after proving their mettle as grammar school masters, now became ordinary teachers, who were much younger, with no teaching experience, and no qualification but a college diploma. (The professors hadn’t needed a college degree; a Central diploma had been sufficient.) Political pressure for greater access explains the rapid expansion of high school enrollments during this period, but it doesn’t explain why the entire structure of the high school was transformed at the same time. While working-class families wanted to have their children gain access to the high school, in order to enhance their social opportunities, middleclass families wanted to preserve for their children the exclusivity that granted them social advantage. They were the second factor that shaped the school. In part, this was a simple response to the value of high school as a private good. In political terms, equal access is a valuable public good; but in market terms, it’s a disaster. The value of schooling as a private good is measured by its scarcity. When high school became abundant, it lost its value for middle-class families. The new structure helped to preserve a degree of exclusivity, with middle-class students largely segregated in the academic track and the lower classes dispersed across the lower tracks. In addition, the middle-class students were positioned to move on to college, which had become the new zone of advantage after the high

20

D. F. LABAREE

school lost its cachet. This is a pattern we see emerging again after the Second World War, when high school filled up and college enrollments sharply expanded. For middle-class families at the turn of the twentieth century, this combination of high school tracking and college enrollment was more than just a numbers game, trying to keep one step ahead of the Joneses. Class survival was at stake. For centuries before this period, being middle class had largely meant owning your own small business. For town dwellers, either you were a master craftsman, owning a shop where you supervised journeymen and apprentices in plying the trade of cordwainer or cooper or carpenter, or you ran a retail store serving the public. The way you passed social position to your male children was by setting them up in an apprenticeship or willing them the store. By the late nineteenth century, this model of status transmission had fallen apart. With the emergence of the factory and machine production, apprenticeship had largely disappeared, as apprentices became simple laborers who no longer had the opportunity to move up to master. And with the emergence of the department store, small retail businesses were in severe jeopardy. No longer able to simply inherit the family business, children in middle-class families faced the daunting prospect of proletarianization. The factory floor was beckoning. These families needed a new way to secure the status of their children, and that solution was education, first in high school and then in college. Through the medium of exclusive schooling, they hoped to position their children to embrace what Burton Bledstein calls “the culture of professionalism.”4 By this, he is not referring simply to the traditional high professions (law, medicine, clergy) but to any occupational position that is buffered from market pressures. The iron law of markets is that no one wants to function on a level playing field in open competition with everyone else. So, a business fortifies itself as a corporation, which acts as a conspiracy against the market. And middle-class workers seek an occupation that offers protection from open competition in the job market. Higher level educational credentials can do that. If a high school or college degree is needed to qualify for a position, then this sharply reduces the number of job seekers in the pool. And once on the job, you are less likely to be displaced by someone else because of shifting supply and demand. The ideal is the sinecure, and a diploma is the ticket to secure one. By the twentieth century, college became Sinecures “R” Us.

2

POLITICS AND MARKETS: THE ENDURING DYNAMICS OF THE US …

21

The job market accommodated this change through the increase in scale of both corporations and government agencies, which created a large array of managerial and clerical positions. These positions were safer, cleaner, and more secure than wage labor. They were protected by educational credentials, annual salaries, chances for promotion, formal dress, and civil service regulations. And, because they were awarded according to educational merit rather than social inheritance, they also granted the salary man a degree of social legitimacy that was not available to the owner’s son. Here’s how Bledstein explains it: Far more than other types of societies, democratic ones required persuasive symbols of the credibility of authority, symbols the majority of people could reliably believe just and warranted. It became the function of the schools in America to legitimize the authority of the middle class by appealing to the universality and objectivity of “science.”5

Evolving in search of this symbolic credibility, the model of the high school that emerged in the early twentieth century looks very familiar to us today. It drew students from the community around the school, who were enrolled in a single comprehensive institution, and who were then distributed into curriculum tracks according to a judicious mix of individual academic merit and inherited social position, with each track aligned with a different occupational trajectory. The school as a whole was as heterogeneous as the surrounding population, but the experience students had there was relatively homogeneous by track and social origin. In one educational setting, you had both democratic equality and marketbased inequality, commonality, and hierarchy. An exemplary institution for a liberal democracy. A lovely essay by David Cohen and Barbara Neufeld, “The Failure of High Schools and the Progress of Education,” captures the distinctive tension built into this institution.6 On the one hand, the comprehensive high school was one of the great educational success stories of all time. Starting as a tiny sliver of the educational system in the nineteenth century, it became a mammoth in the twentieth—with population doubling every ten years between 1890 and 1940—and by the end of this period it incorporated the large majority of the teenagers in the country. The elite school for the privileged few evolved rapidly into a comprehensive school for the masses.

22

D. F. LABAREE

But on the other hand, this success turned quickly into failure. Instead of celebrating the accomplishment of the students who managed to graduate from the high school, we began to bemoan those who didn’t, thus creating a new social problem: the high school dropout. Also, as the high school shifted from being seen as a place for students of the highest academic accomplishment to one for students of all abilities, it became the object of handwringing about declining academic standards. As a public good, it was a political success, offering opportunity for all; but as a private good, it was an educational failure, characterized by a watered-down curriculum and low expectations for achievement. The result was that the high school became the object of most educational reform movements in the twentieth century. Once the answer, it was now the problem.

The Lessons of Central High Applied to the American Educational System At this point, having followed the trajectory of the high school, we are in a position to examine more fully the core dynamic that shaped the development of the American educational system as a whole. Here’s how it works. Start with mass schooling at one level of the system and exclusive schooling at the level above. Then, in response to popular demand from working-class families for educational opportunity at the top level, the system expands access to this level, thus making it more inclusive. Next, in response to demand by middle-class families to preserve their educational advantage, the system tracks schooling in the zone of expansion, with their children occupying the upper tracks and newcomers entering in the lower tracks. Finally, the system ushers the previously advantaged educational consumers into the next higher level of the system, where schooling remains exclusive, the new zone of advantage. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, for example, we saw the formation of the common school system in the US, with universal enrollment at the elementary level, partial enrollment in grammar schools, and scarce enrollment in high schools. By the end of the century, grammar schools had filled up and pressure rose for greater access to high schools. As a result, high schools shifted toward a tracked structure, with middleclass students in the top tracks and the working-class students in the tracks below. Then in the middle of the twentieth century, the same pattern played out in the system’s expansion at the college level.

2

POLITICS AND MARKETS: THE ENDURING DYNAMICS OF THE US …

23

By 1940, high school enrollment had become the norm for all American families, which meant that the new zone of educational opportunity was now the previously exclusive domain of higher education. As was the case with high school in the late nineteenth century, political demand arose for working-class access to college, which had previously been the preserve of the middle class. Despite the much higher per-capita cost of college compared to high school, political will converged to deliver this access. The twin spurs were a hot war and a cold war. The need to acknowledge the shared sacrifice of Second World War led to the 1944 GI Bill, which paid for veterans to go to college. And the need during the Cold War to mobilize research, enhance human capital, and demonstrate the superiority of liberal democracy over communism led to the 1965 Higher Education Opportunity Act. The result was an enormous expansion of higher education in the 1950s and 1960s. Enrollments grew from 2.4 million in 1949 to 3.6 million in 1959; but then came the 1960s, when enrollments more than doubled, reaching 8 million in 1969 and then 11.6 million in 1979.7 The result was to revolutionize the structure of American higher education. Here’s how I described it in A Perfect Mess: Until the 1940s, American colleges had admitted students with little concern for academic merit or selectivity, and this was true not only for state universities but also for the private universities now considered as the pinnacle of the system. If you met certain minimal academic requirements and could pay the tuition, you were admitted. But in the postwar years, a sharp divide emerged in the system between the established colleges and universities, which dragged their feet about expanding enrollments and instead became increasingly selective, and the new institutions, which expanded rapidly by admitting nearly everyone who applied. What were these new institutions that welcomed the newcomers? Often existing public universities would set up branch campuses in other regions of the state, which eventually became independent institutions. Former normal schools, set up in the nineteenth century as high-school level institutions for preparing teachers had evolved into teachers colleges in the early twentieth century; and by the middle of the century they had evolved into full-service state colleges and universities serving regional populations. A number of new urban college campuses also emerged during this period, aimed at students who would commute from home to pursue programs that would prepare them for mid-level white collar jobs. And the biggest

24

D. F. LABAREE

players in the new lower tier of American higher education were community colleges, which provided 2-year programs allowing students to enter low-level white-collar jobs or transfer to the university. Community colleges quickly became the largest provider of college instruction in the country. By 1980, they accounted for nearly 40 percent of all college enrollments in the U.S.8 These new colleges and universities had several characteristics in common. Compared to their predecessors: they focused on undergraduate education; they prepared students for immediate entry into the workforce; they drew students from nearby; they cost little; and they admitted almost anyone. For all these reasons, especially the last one, they also occupied a position in the college hierarchy that was markedly lower. Just as secondary education expanded only by allowing the newcomers access to the lower tiers of the new comprehensive high school, so higher education expanded only by allowing newcomers access to the lower tiers of the newly stratified structure of the tertiary system. As a result, the newly expanded and stratified system of higher education protected upper-middle-class students attending the older selective institutions from the lower-middle-class students attending regional and urban universities and the working-class students attending community colleges. At the same time, these upper-middle-class students started pouring into graduate programs in law, medicine, business, and engineering, which quickly became the new zone of educational advantage.9

So, at fifty-year intervals across the history of American education, the same pattern kept repeating. Every effort to increase access brought about a counter effort to preserve advantage. Every time the floor of the educational system rose, so did the ceiling. The result is an elevator effect, in which the system gamely provides both access and advantage, thus increasing the upward expansion of educational attainment for all while at the same time preserving social differences. Plus ça change.

What’s Next in the Struggle Between Politics and Markets? So where does that leave us today? I see three problems that have emerged from the tension that has propelled the evolution of the American system of schooling: a time problem, a cost problem, and a public goods problem. Let’s consider each in turn.

2

POLITICS AND MARKETS: THE ENDURING DYNAMICS OF THE US …

25

The time problem arises from the relentless upward expansion of the system, which is sucking up an increasing share of the American life span. Life expectancy has been growing slowly over the years, but time in school has been growing at a much more rapid rate. In the mid nineteenth century, the modal American spent four years in school. By 1900 it had risen to eight years. By 2000 it was thirteen years. And by 2015, for Americans over twenty-five, fifty-nine percent had some college, forty-two percent an associate’s degree, thirty-three percent a bachelor’s degree, and twelve percent an advanced degree.10 In my own case, I spent a grand total of twenty-six years in school: two years of preschool, twelve years of elementary and secondary school, five years of college, and seven years of graduate school (I’m a slow study). I didn’t finish my doctorate until the ripe old age of 36, which left only thirty years to ply my profession before the social-security retirement age for my cohort. As I used to ask my graduate students—most of whom had also deferred the start of graduate study until a few years after college— when do we finish preparing for life and start living it? When do we finally grow up? Not only does the rapid expansion of schooling eat up an increasing share of people’s lives, but it also costs them a lot of money. First, there’s the opportunity cost, as people keep deferring to the future their chances of earning a living. Then there’s the direct cost for students to pay tuition and to support themselves as adult learners. And finally, there’s the expense to the state of providing public education across all these years. As schooling expands upward, the direct costs of education to student and state grow geometrically. High school is much more expensive per student than elementary school, college much more than high school, and graduate school much more than college. At some point in this progression, the costs start hitting a ceiling, when students are less willing to defer earning and pay the increasing cost of advanced schooling and when taxpayers are less willing to support advanced schooling for all. In the US, we started to see this happening in the 1970s, when the sharp rise in college enrollments spurred a taxpayer revolt, which emerged in California (which had America’s largest higher education system and charged no tuition) and started to spread across the country. People began to ask whether they were willing to pay for the higher education of other people’s children on top of the direct cost for themselves. The result was a sharp increase in college tuition (which until

26

D. F. LABAREE

then was free or relatively cheap) and the shift in government support away from scholarships and toward loans. In combination, these increases in time and money began to undermine support for higher education as a public good. If education is seen as providing broad benefits to the community as a whole, then it makes sense to support it with public funds, which had been the case for elementary school in the nineteenth century and for high school in the early twentieth century. For thirty years after 1945, higher education found itself in the same position. The huge public effort in the Second World War justified the provision of college at public expense for returning soldiers, as established by the GI Bill. In addition, the emerging Cold War assigned higher education a major role in countering the existential threat of communism. University research played a crucial role in supplying the technologies for the arms race and space race with the Soviet Union, and broadening access to college for the working class and racial minorities helped demonstrate the moral credibility of liberal democracy in relation to communism. But when fiscal costs of this effort mounted in the 1970s and then the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the rationale for public subsidy of the extraordinarily high costs of higher education collapsed as well. Under these circumstances, college began to look a lot more like a private good than a public good, whose primary beneficiaries appeared to be its 20 million students. A college degree had become the ticket of admission to the good middle-class life, with its high costs yielding even higher returns in lifelong earnings. If graduates were reaping the bulk of the benefits, then they should bear the costs. Why provide a public subsidy for private gain? This takes us back to our starting point in this analysis of the American system of schooling: the ongoing tension between politics and markets. As we have seen, that tension was there from day one—with the establishment of the uncommon Central High School at the same time as the common elementary school—and it has persisted over the years. Elite schooling was stacked on top of open-access schooling, with one treating education as a private good and the other as a public good. As demand grew for access to the zone of educational advantage, the system responded by stratifying that zone and expanding enrollment at the next higher level. And the result we’re dealing with now is the triple threat of a system that that has devoured our time, overloaded our costs, and diminished our commitment to education as a public good.

2

POLITICS AND MARKETS: THE ENDURING DYNAMICS OF THE US …

27

As I write now, in the midst of a pandemic and in the waning weeks of the Trump administration, these issues are driving the debates about education policy. We hear demands for greater access to elite levels of higher education, eliminating tuition at community colleges, and forgiving student debt. And, countering these demands, we hear concerns about the feasibility of paying for these reforms, the public burden of subsidizing students who can afford to pay their way, and the need to preserve elite universities that are the envy of the world. Who knows how these debates will play out. But one thing for sure is that the tensions— between politics and markets and public goods and private goods—will continue.

Notes 1. National Center for Educational Statistics, 120 Years of American Education (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993), Table 8. 2. NCES, 120 Years of American Education, Table 5. 3. Labaree, David F., The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), Table 6.4. 4. Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978). 5. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism, 123. 6. Cohen, David. K., and Barbara Neufeld, “The Failure of High Schools and the Progress of Education,” Daedelus 110 (Summer 1981): 69–89. 7. Susan B. Carter et al., eds., Historical Statistics of the United States (millennial edition online) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Table Bc523. National Center for Educational Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2013 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2014), Table 303.10. 8. NCES, 120 Years of American Education, Table 24. 9. Labaree, David F., A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 106– 108. 10. United Nations Development Programme Human Development Reports, “Mean Years of Schooling (Males, aged 25 years and above),” accessed December 1, 2020, http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/mean-years-sch ooling-males-aged-25-years-and-above-years. Camille L. Ryan and Kurt Bauman, “Educational Attainment in the United States: 2015,” Current Population Reports, United States Census Bureau (March 2016), Table 1, accessed December 1, 2020, http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/meanyears-schooling-males-aged-25-years-and-above-years.

CHAPTER 3

Renovations in the Citadel Robert L. Hampel

In 1986, I finished The Last Little Citadel , a history of American high schools since 1940. It was the third of three books from A Study of High Schools, the formal name of a four-year appraisal of American secondary education past and present. The informal name, “the Sizer study,” reflected the stature of the project’s chairman, Theodore “Ted” Sizer, who at thirty-one became Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and at thirty-nine began nine years (1972–1981) as headmaster of Phillips Academy, Andover, a period described in detail in John Spencer’s chapter in this volume. Sizer’s sterling career did not guarantee the success of Horace’s Compromise in 1984, which was his widely read contribution to A Study of High Schools. His observations and recommendations could have been dismissed as the unrealistic musings of an Ivy League, boarding school outsider. Fortunately, readers appreciated his well-written descriptions of individual teachers and students. Sizer had obviously been inside schools.

R. L. Hampel (B) University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_3

29

30

R. L. HAMPEL

He understood and respected the craft—yes, the teacher Horace had to compromise, but it was not his fault. The system should be overhauled to reduce the need to cut corners. For Sizer, requiring more academic course credits, more homework, longer school years, stiffer college admissions requirements, and other get-tough proposals would not do the job, although an influential 1983 federal report, A Nation At Risk, said it would. In the wake of that report, Horace’s Compromise seemed more ambitious—restructure rather than tinker—and thus won praise for boldness and imagination, especially the proposal to tie graduation to a culminating “exhibition of mastery.” A Nation At Risk quickly increased the visibility of education reform designed to improve academic achievement. Our timing was good—the same book five years earlier might have sunk from sight.1 The second book in “A Study of High Schools,” The Shopping Mall High School by Arthur Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David Cohen, relied on extensive study of eleven public and four private high schools across the country. Nine research associates spent three different weeks in those sites during the 1981–1982 school year. Based on nearly 20,000 pages of field notes, The Shopping Mall High School is a long but tightly argued analysis of how public high schools accommodated diversity by offering unprecedented variety and choice in courses, ability levels within those courses, extracurricular activities, and social services. The students admitted to five “specialty shops” in the mall (Advanced Placement and Honors, special education, sports and clubs, vocational programs, and even the truants and troublemakers) had a significantly better education, on balance, than the so-called “unspecial” students who lacked the distinctive abilities or disabilities that would trigger individual attention, clear expectations, and extra resources. Private schools minimized anonymity thanks to the push, purposefulness, and personal attention similar to what specialty shop students received. As with Horace, this book went far beyond the scope of most blue-ribbon panel reports, the standard American way to diagnosis educational problems and offer solutions. My book, shorter in length, explored what had changed in American high schools since 1940. I tried to write a readable overview, draw on previously untapped sources, shed light on my colleagues’ arguments, and compress forty-five years within 200 pages. I was especially interested in this question: Why did life inside high school classrooms become more relaxed and informal as life among education policymakers became more tense and adversarial?

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

31

I will say more about that puzzle after I sketch the evolution of my association with A Study of High Schools. How I redefined myself in the early 1980s may be instructive for young historians who want to shift gears after they finish their dissertations. Next, I turn to what I wrote in 1986, summarizing the key Citadel arguments and then, in detail, explaining how and why I changed my mind in light of what I experienced and what I read in the decades after it was published. At the end, I briefly discuss the future of my field in regard to teaching, not researching, the history of education. ∗ ∗ ∗ The dismal job market for historians in the 1970s was still bleak when I defended my dissertation in October, 1979. But as a second year visiting instructor at Franklin and Marshall College, I thought my time had come. I would succeed where others failed. Search committees would see a Yale B.A. and Cornell Ph.D. on my vita, admire my good teaching evaluations, and request a copy of the definitive study of temperance and prohibition in Massachusetts, 1813 to 1852. I worked all the time and I would move anywhere: wasn’t I bound to be a tenure-track professor? A 1979 disco hit became my anthem for 1980: “I’m makin’ it. I’ve got the chance, I’m takin’ it. Listen everyone here: This coming year’s gonna BE MY YEAR!” David Naughton and his band had my number. “The top of the ladder is waiting for me.” By June I had nothing. No tenure-track job at Fordham, no one-year appointment at Dartmouth or New York University, and no more pinchhitting at Franklin and Marshall. “You’re male and pale,” a conservative friend said, sure that those facts explained my failures. “All I know for sure,” I told him, “is that six plus two equals 160”—my calculation that six years at Cornell and two years at Franklin and Marshall resulted in $160 weekly unemployment checks. A grim equation, but, fortunately, I had several twelve percent bank CDs, no children to feed, and enough ambition to try my luck elsewhere. Pennsylvania’s unemployment benefits transferred across state lines, so I moved to suburban Boston, a not-yet-unaffordable area I knew from a year of dissertation research. Massachusetts required semi-monthly reports of where the recipient applied for work. To list at least three jobs, I began reading the “Help Wanted” columns in The Boston Globe, reluctantly willing to consider a life outside the classroom. Thanks to my

32

R. L. HAMPEL

economist-father, I grew up following the stock market, helping draw by hand the price and volume charts now available online for free. Perhaps an historian’s skills, especially the evaluation of long-term trends, might transfer to Wall Street. The transfer would be easier, I realized, if I had an M.B.A. degree. So rather than devote every sunny day to writing journal articles on antebellum temperance and prohibition, I began to take Graduate Management Admission Test advice books to the nearby Wollaston beach. After four months of fruitless job applications, I had several papers under review, a respectable GMAT score, and a tan. In October I saw a small Sunday Globe advertisement for a research associate on a study of American high schools since 1940. I knew very little about twentiethcentury secondary education. Pre-Civil War education I understood, but for the years after 1865 I only had notes on books by Lawrence Cremin, Richard Hofstadter, and David Tyack. With nothing to lose, I sent my vita and a cover letter asserting my interest in all aspects of the history of reform. I also applied to the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. Six weeks later, I signed an offer to join A Study of High Schools. I had nine months to analyze the major changes in high schools since 1940, with another twelve months promised if the project raised more money. $750,000 for a former Harvard Dean might seem certain, but in the 1980–81 recession there was no guarantee that even Ted Sizer could convince Carnegie and three other foundations. The grants did come through by April, 1981, and so did an acceptance letter from M.I.T. My best friend held it up and shouted, “This is a license to print money.” In April, I deferred my M.I.T. enrollment for one year. By the spring of 1982, I reasoned, I would know whether or not I should start a new career. In the meantime, I was becoming hooked on the history of education. The scope of the field captivated me—to understand high schools, I could explore teachers and students, politicians and judges, gender roles and racial bias, and much more. The job felt like a post-doctoral fellowship in twentieth-century history for a nineteenth-century historian who, after years of narrowly focused case studies, was now free to roam. My far-flung reading was encouraged by Ted Sizer, who loved to explore many topics. Not only was he fascinated by the recent history, present conditions, and future prospects of secondary education (public and private), he also thought about schooling in context. What were the social, economic, and political trends that shaped high schools yesterday, today, and tomorrow? For instance, he often referred to what he called

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

33

“the claims of the state.” He considered himself a liberal, but, unlike many of his peers, he was skeptical of state and federal regulations. Sizer thought that most external mandates, even if well-intentioned, constrained and insulted educators. He asked equally basic questions about the cultural homogeneity spread by the electronic media. What did and did not happen in schools, he knew, reflected the priorities in the wider society, including the silences—the topics not discussed—in the conversations among policymakers. For my research, Sizer recommended several dozen books and proposed a few immense topics: What do we know about the topic of school ethos? Has geographical mobility increased and, if so, what’s the impact on schools? To what extent are racial issues primarily socioeconomic issues? Art Powell, who ran the day-to-day operations of the study and planned the field work in fifteen high schools, made additional suggestions. Neither Powell nor Sizer required me to write background papers on specific topics, unlike many projects where the research associates must produce technical reports. I think they hoped I would be an interesting junior colleague; perhaps what I said and wrote could sharpen their thoughts and update their vast knowledge of the history of American education.2 In my November, 1980 interview, I had emphasized my commitment to history from the bottom up, the then-popular phrase for investigating the lives of less prominent and powerful people. That perspective paid less attention to politicians, battlefield generals, major authors, and other famous white men spotlighted when Powell and Sizer were in graduate school. Court cases, petitions to the legislature, local tax assessments, voluntary society minutes, church records, rural and urban newspapers: for my Ph.D., I had ransacked Massachusetts to find the sources for a social history of temperance and prohibition. I told Powell and Sizer that a history of high schools could do the same, looking beneath the reform rhetoric to see what went on in the classrooms and corridors. That point of view shaped my work. The first paper I wrote compared educators’ praise for democratic education in 1940 with their frequently undemocratic practices, and then discussed how to reconcile the differences. The twenty-five pages were not earthshaking—the gap between words and deeds was no great surprise—but in October, 1981 the paper was good enough. That is, I demonstrated the ability to write a coherent synthesis of dozens of articles and books in what was for me a new field. As a result, our senior consultant, David Cohen, told me, in front of

34

R. L. HAMPEL

Powell and Sizer, that if I could write six or seven more chapters of the same caliber, I would have a good book. Unfortunately, I had no outline of other chapters and no confidence that the gap between educators’ words and deeds could become the core argument of a good book. Rather than write a prospectus or even decide on research questions, I reverted to my dissertation strategy: find primary sources neglected by other historians and hope the overarching framework and central arguments would emerge. I worked from the part to the whole, a lifelong approach that has been both a blessing and a curse. With enough new material the results will be valuable, but what connects the bits and pieces? I kept and still keep a “Big Picture” folder to force myself to make connections. Otherwise, I am prone to end up with too many ornaments and not enough tree, as I told one editor. In search of ornaments, Sizer and I asked James Conant’s widow to let me read his papers. In 1959, Conant, who was the former President of Harvard (1933–1953), wrote The American High School Today, an influential defense of the comprehensive high school.3 His correspondence, memoranda, and notes were extensive, stored in aptly named Miracle Boxes in the Harvard archives. For two earlier reports—Education for ALL American Youth (1944) and General Education in a Free Society (1945)—I found the stenographic transcripts of the panelists’ deliberations. Accreditation reviews of New England independent schools, Yale admissions office correspondence, and Educational Testing Service files were also useful. On aspects of the high school curriculum, I found a few nuggets at the headquarters of two publishers and watched old mental hygiene filmstrips at a third company. I generated new material through forty interviews and storage room research at four of the fifteen schools visited by Powell and his teams in the 1981–1982 school year. In hindsight, I could have done more; I interviewed former Commissioner of Education Harold Howe II and former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner, but I could have contacted many other policymakers. I should have gathered photographs, floorplans, and school rules like the “Faculty Supervision in the Lunch Room” page in Kyle Steele’s book.4 I overemphasized the northeast quadrant of the country and neglected my own high school yearbook, with its blatant and subtle examples of gender bias in suburban Chicago.5 When is a book a book? Thanks to Sizer, Houghton Mifflin offered contracts in May, 1982 for a trilogy: Horace’s Compromise, The Shopping Mall High School , and “American High Schools since 1940,” the

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

35

bland title I proposed in my three-page, lick-and-a-promise overview. A book contract from an excellent publisher convinced me to tell M.I.T. to give my license to print money to someone else. But in hindsight, if I had enrolled in business school that fall, I would have earned the M.B.A. sooner than I finished my book. Slow spins the silkworm small his slender store, as they say. Turning all the notecards and Xerox copies into a coherent book required three drafts: the first was not chronological, the second exposed gaps in my evidence, and the third took so long that in March, 1984 I was again collecting unemployment.6 The importance of time to revise was a lesson I learned from Sizer. He finished his first draft in four months. The 500-page manuscript, “A Celebration of Teaching,” had to be rewritten, Houghton Mifflin said. Focus on the stories, tell the reader what they mean, and prune the long summaries of traditional research. As David Cohen put it, “you can only load so much on the camel.” Several of us urged Sizer to move the profile of English teacher Horace Smith from the back to the front, which might have been the most important contribution to education I ever made. His editor suggested the new title, which his wife and regular collaborator Nancy Sizer worried sounded like the novel Portnoy’s Complaint (“Exactly!” Austin Olney replied, reminding her how well it sold). Two drafts and many months later, the book was shorter, with Horace at the front and in the title. So, I knew what was in store for my ragged first draft. I was lucky to have more than a year to revise rather than rush to submit a “deliverable” or plead for an extension, as is often the case today for grant recipients. Here is the puzzle at the heart of my book: why did life inside high school classrooms become more relaxed and informal as life among education policymakers became more tense and adversarial? The first two chapters sketch conditions in 1940: the decorum and obedience expected of students and teachers, in contrast to the behind-the-scenes give-andtake among decision makers. Explaining how and why those patterns changed is the task of the rest of the book. For a succinct version of the central argument, here is what I asked Sizer to add to his foreword: “Hampel argues that, after the mid-1960s, when students and teachers began to make life more agreeable for each other, the friction between staff, administrators, and outsiders increased. As regimentation in the classroom relaxed, relations among decision makers developed a bluntness rarely seen in earlier days, when talk of rights and feelings

36

R. L. HAMPEL

was unwelcome and notions of propriety discouraged not only camaraderie between teacher and student but also public bickering among the educators themselves.” Elaborating on three phrases in those sentences is useful in retrospect. First, “rights and feelings” was my shorthand for two developments in American life I considered crucially important. On the one hand, Supreme Court decisions, federal laws, state regulations, and union activism made education policy more complicated, confrontational, and litigious. Disputes previously settled by compromise and behind closed doors became more likely to spark public conflict. On the other hand, a heightened sensitivity to emotional wellness, psychological fulfillment, and empathic parenting was a cultural shift directly relevant to the greater informality in high school classrooms. The first trend encouraged showdowns; the second encouraged nonjudgmental peace. Second, “notions of propriety” signaled to the values that had traditionally dominated decision making in high schools, namely that education must be above politics, teachers cannot strike, judges should not mandate busing, and school boards need to seat affluent white males. But in my book, I gave more attention to the expectations of adolescents. Parts of Citadel resemble a social history of teenagers, a continuation of Joseph Kett’s celebrated 1977 book, Adolescence in America.7 I thought it was impossible to understand the evolution of high schools without knowing how adolescence had changed. Were the young growing up faster, doing and saying what would have been punished as inappropriate or even illegal a generation earlier? I made that case in chapter four, where I also claimed that “many adults adopted curiously adolescent forms of behavior, undergoing identity crises, job changes, explorations of feelings, and marital realignments.”8 Third, “after the mid-1960s” points to the fact that Citadel says almost nothing about World War II, and for the next twenty years, the title of chapter three conveyed my argument—“the persistence of the old order.” High schools in 1965 resembled their counterparts in 1940, but that was no longer the case by the mid-1970s. The major changes in the 1950s and early 1960s, I claimed, were outside school: fewer restrictions on the leisure of teachers and especially students. But during the watershed years from 1968 to 1972, turmoil in the high schools began suddenly, and many changes introduced in those years endured, often shaped by the new notions of propriety, rights, and feelings. Case studies of four high schools in Citadel explored those changes, especially the less austere

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

37

relationships within classrooms and the less cordial interactions among the decision makers. For yet another take on the book, Houghton Mifflin asked me to distill the most “newsworthy” insights. What might tempt a local paper to run a story or publish a review? I appreciated the question. It nudged me to highlight five ways the book connected the present with the recent past, which is often useful in our field: (1) Schools are peaceful. Gallup Poll results on “lack of discipline” as the worst problem in high schools are wrong. Schools are safe and orderly—but it’s not the same peace and quiet of the 1940s and 1950s. In place of the old unilateral order, the truce now is a negotiated compromise, not rule by dictat. (2) The public is also wrong when they hanker for the Good Old Days. That nostalgia glorifies a past that never was. In school governance especially, the 1940s and 1950s witnessed deep disagreements and much offstage dickering, but in public schoolmen appeared upbeat and unified. In private they quarreled. Furthermore, there is no solid evidence of greater student achievement or superior teaching. (3) Much has not changed since 1940. Talk, fussing, fine-tuning, yes; revolutions, no. The structures of schooling—class periods, departments, teachers’ loads, graduation requirements—seem set in stone. (4) What has changed is how people relate to each other. Authority has been redefined, in both the classroom and the front office. There is more negotiation today in both places—but where classroom bartering usually results in genial “let’s make life comfortable for each other” bargains, the front office dickering often breaks down and nasty confrontations ensue. (5) Unlike medicine, research and theory are less important than changes in the wider world in bringing about change in education. The engine pulling the educational train is usually not under the direct control of school people.

Second Thoughts Anyone trying to write a history of high schools now can make use of dozens of excellent articles and books published since 1986. Historians

38

R. L. HAMPEL

have not neglected this topic. I would have been so grateful in 1983 to have found histories of the school lunch, sex education, fraternities and sororities, special education, science courses, and independent schools. I will start with several reconsiderations, the first based on what I have read since 1986, the second and third grounded on my experience in Delaware schools, and a fourth derived from a long-term study of a Kentucky high school. The Disappearance of Childhood? Citadel claimed that adolescents grew up faster in the 1970s—premarital sex, drugs, more after-school employment, X-rated media, and newly bestowed constitutional rights meant that adulthood started earlier. By the end of the century, many people cited other risk factors to argue that growing up had never been so difficult. Family life was supposedly more precarious as divorces, remarriages, unwed motherhood, and career demands increased. Alcohol, cigarettes, and junk food, along with too many drugs and not enough exercise, undermined good health. Crime was accelerating, whether gauged by the juvenile arrest rate, homicide among minority youth, or weapon possession in school. Births to single teens, sexually transmitted diseases, and child abuse were distressingly common. And then there were startling rates of homelessness, suicide, low birth weight, infant mortality, and emotional disorders. The latest statistics were often featured by the media; reports with fresh data were newsworthy. The raw numbers alarmed most readers: thirteen million children in poverty, one million pregnant teenage girls annually, 135,000 students carrying weapons daily. The rates could be just as jolting: every two hours a child died of a gunshot wound, each day forty teenage mothers give birth to their third child, and since 1960 gonorrhea infections quadrupled for ten- to fourteen-year-olds.9 Compiling the dire numbers in lists seemed to clinch the case for the youth-in-peril argument. One head of the American Educational Research Association included fifteen “frightening facts” in her 1995 presidential address. A prominent psychologist began one of his books with the claim that “practically all of the indicators of youth health and behavior have declined year by year for over a generation,” with ten indicators reviewed in the next six pages. Urie Bronfenbrenner and his coauthors filled a book with 150 charts, including twenty on youth, to show “increasing

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

39

social chaos, which threatens the future competence and character of this generation and the next.”10 On the other hand, I saw many trends either flatten or improve since the late 1970s. Alcohol use peaked then, and moderate drinking (more than twice a month) declined from fifty percent of twelfth graders in 1980 to thirty-one percent by 1995. Substance abuse also fell, especially in the 1980s, with slightly smaller decreases in cigarette smoking. The trendlines were level for children in poverty, children without health insurance coverage, the white teen birth rates, and “detached youth” (sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds neither in school nor at work). Some of the indictors worsened, to be sure. From 1985 to 1994, there were increases in victims of violent crimes, families headed by a single parent, teenage deaths by accident, homicide or suicide, and low birth weight babies. On the other hand, there were improvements in infant mortality, child death rates, prenatal care, and childhood hunger.11 I still felt that adolescence changed significantly from the late 1960s on, but I became more guarded about the extent of what one writer called the disappearance of childhood.12 For some teens, yes, but for most growing up was no faster or slower than it had been. For instance, there was no stampede in the 1970s and 1980s to attend college at sixteen or seventeen. The flagship college for early admissions, Simon’s Rock, sought 800 students to be financially viable, but the peak enrollment was only 256 before 1978, when it escaped bankruptcy by merging with Bard College.13 In popular movies, the sexuality in films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) exaggerated what most students felt and did, even if some of the scenes, such as the two girls at lunch practicing fellatio on a banana, would have been unthinkable on the screen in the 1960s. Discussion of the art of oral sex was less common than the familiar concerns twenty years earlier—clothes, hair, acne, weight, and writing notes to best friends.14 And if maturation had accelerated, why so much torpor and passivity in most classrooms in the 1970s and early 1980s? Mile-Wide, Inch-Deep The University of Delaware hired me in 1985 as an historian of education who also cared about contemporary education policy. I would teach courses in both areas, and within a year I had the opportunity to spend a semester as a Public Service Fellow with the Governor’s education advisor.

40

R. L. HAMPEL

I soon learned that the buzzword of 1986, “restructuring,” inspired little enthusiasm outside her office. “We’re not like other states” was one rationale; another was satisfaction with the modest changes already underway. Moreover, the state department of education avoided conflict. Partnership with all nineteen districts was the priority. Even so, the Governor signed on when Ted Sizer and the Education Commission of the States co-sponsored the RE:Learning initiative in 1988. Sizer’s new Coalition of Essential Schools realized soon after its creation in 1984 that its members needed strong allies beyond their campuses. Innovations might live longer with the support of key people in district offices, school boards, legislatures, and elsewhere. “I had hoped to stay with pedagogy,” Sizer wrote me, “but clearly cannot: unless a broad coalition of folks are in at the beginning, it’s hard to proceed very far.”15 RE:Learning’s subtitle—from the schoolhouse to the statehouse— signaled the focus on alliances to help local schools willing to use the neo-progressive Coalition principles. From 1988 to 1992, I served on the eight person “Coordinating Committee” overseeing RE:Learning, edited the quarterly RE:Learning newsletter, mentored five RE:Learning principals’ graduate work, and wrote an annual evaluation for the state department of education. I set aside historical research (on standardized testing in the 1920s and 1930s) to live in the present. Of all I learned in those years, here are two points relevant to The Last Little Citadel . First, I realized that Citadel underplayed the importance of divisions of opinion within schools. RE:Learning could raise public awareness and mobilize external support, but the divisiveness within the sites was as unmistakable as it was unanticipated. Four factions typically emerged, persisted, and contested. Here is an example from Janice’s journal: Our attempt at integrating curriculum? I taught outlining, and communicated what I was doing to my team. If they could do it too, what great reinforcement, I thought. I even gave out materials so they knew what I had done. All three thought the idea was great. So they said! Pam began to outline her material. Dave ignored it. Last week my kids told me that outlining is now used as a punishment in Steven’s science class. HELP!

Not everyone took the chance to innovate and lead. Teachers like Janice did, but quite a few teachers were like Pam—watchful, cautious, waiting until they knew more. Some were as indifferent as Dave, and several

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

41

scorned the innovations, as Steven did. Each of those teachers represented one of the four groups which arose in the Delaware RE:Learning schools. Voluntary leaders, “yes, but” supporters, apathetic bystanders, and outspoken opponents had different views of the need for change in general and this change in particular. The school voted to join RE:Learning, but no one forced the teachers to change what they did in class. A YES vote did not mean that the majority was eager or even willing to revamp their teaching.16 In Citadel, I slighted the micropolitics of school improvement projects. With broad strokes I painted the picture of progressive education, Life Adjustment, James Conant’s agenda, and school-within-a-school options circa 1970, and I did so without much attention to disagreements within particular schools. Perhaps more detailed case studies would have revealed the internal divisions, as Gerald Grant reported in his masterful study of one upstate New York high school, The World We Created at Hamilton High (1988).17 The second lesson learned I once shared in my “Breadth Versus Depth” commentary in Education Week in 1995, which was then running a series on the difficulty of “scaling up” the success of individual schools in dozens of other places.18 In my short essay, I argued that premature expansion of promising young initiatives was a greater danger than the lack of diffusion. Why did that happen? I suggested four major reasons. First, philanthropic foundations tend to expect wide and rapid dissemination of the innovations they underwrite. Second, legislators expect a “pilot project” to expand or fold, not hold steady. If it’s good, move it out. If it’s bad, don’t waste tax dollars. As a Delaware budget analyst said, “You can’t tell a legislator, We have this wonderful project in four districts, but the other 15 can’t have it.” Third, Governors prepare budget requests so far in advance of final approval that they propose expanding a pilot project before anyone truly knows how good it is. In September, a Governor may have to decide if the first nine months justify his bid to increase funding for a third year. And fourth, schools favor breadth. They want some of the extra money and good publicity awarded to the original members. They see that it is remarkably easy to join local and national reform networks, with willingness to try and good intentions more crucial than past accomplishments or present achievements. They also know that few schools are suspended or dropped for lack of progress. Both lessons learned point to the mile-wide-inch-deep impact of many school improvement initiatives. Comprehensive high schools serve many

42

R. L. HAMPEL

constituencies, and bold reforms to change the array of courses, programs, and services evoke opposition. I knew that from my former colleagues in A Study of High School who wrote The Shopping Mall High School . To see it for myself was a jolt. Lessons from a Kentucky High School Another jolt came from students in a Kentucky high school. Two research associates and I spent a total of ninety days at Lincoln High (a pseudonym) from October, 1991 to March, 1994.19 We were part of the Coalition’s “School Change Study,” an exploration of how five schools sustained their commitment to restructuring. After each visit, I sent a summary (twenty pages or so) of what we saw and heard to the staff to help them take stock of their progress. In my first snapshot, I said the students could not describe the Coalition or define restructuring. When asked what major changes they had seen recently, they said nothing about teaching or learning. When asked about specific instructional changes, such as group work, they had mixed opinions—sometimes it was fine, other times it was not. So I recommended that Lincoln explain what the Coalition stood for and why that was preferable to the widespread notion that teaching is telling, learning is listening, and knowledge is an accumulation of facts. In the next visit, the students questioned the plan to expand team teaching to include all freshmen and sophomores and a third of the juniors and seniors. The upperclassmen had protested an initial proposal to put everyone on teams. Could they still take yearbook? Would they get the teachers they wanted? Why spend four hours every day with the same people? Many freshmen also worried. Teaming was for middle school: “It’s like their trying to put us back, treating us like little kids again.” High schools should offer independence, chances to meet new people and move around the building. “Nobody likes to be cooped up, stuck in one room all day with the same old faces.” This time, my snapshot suggested the creation of a pamphlet for students and parents to clarify the Coalition’s vision of effective teaching and worthwhile learning. When that did not happen, I decided to cast my third snapshot as a day-in-the-life narrative, a junior’s account of six classes that ended with a question to discuss: Is she well prepared for the new state achievement tests, especially the dozen open-response items? Low scores answered the question several months later. As a result, administrators asked teachers to

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

43

use open-response questions in homework, paper assignments, and classroom quizzes. They coached Lincoln students to write detailed answers rather stop after one sentence. Even with more preparation, the novelty of the questions surprised many students. Calculating the orbit of two planets and the number of blocks in a pyramid startled one junior: “That’s stuff I’d never seen. How am I supposed to do good when I’ve never had it?” A senior felt disadvantaged on an item on New York City in the nineteenth century. In his mind he had finished social studies as a junior. One girl froze when she saw a math problem about a robot. “Oh my gosh. What’s that?” Students tended to see what the Coalition considered real-life problems as strange and unfair puzzles to solve. The tests felt as contrived as the old traditional exams that reformers deplored as artificial. Once again, I was dwelling on Lincoln students’ notions of learning. They repeatedly said that the keys to success were paying attention, staying out of trouble, and not falling behind. Their goal was to reduce, not heighten, complexity and uncertainty. The thoughtful habits of mind and intellectual dispositions praised by the Coalition seemed too new, difficult, and risky. In darker moments, I decided that the Coalition was too late. School reform had to begin long before high school. The earlier the better, I felt. A fresh start at fourteen sounded nice, but for most youth the die had been cast by then. On the other hand, the Coalition was probably an opening skirmish in a long battle. It would take decades for its ideas to supplant the standard notions of what happens inside a “real school.” Perhaps the next generation will hold different views of what teenagers should know and do during high school. Maybe the change will take several generations if, as David Cohen said, we are in the “first chapter of a much longer saga…a great, slow change in conceptions of knowledge, teaching, and learning.”20 In the meantime, I admired the perseverance of Coalition stalwarts. They shared Sizer’s remarkable passion and stamina, two dimensions of reform often underrated. I wondered if I had underestimated the long shadow of the nineteenth-century view of teaching as a calling, a moral commitment, which would suggest that school improvement initiatives resembled a religious revival. The true believers in utopian goals would be affirmed and energized by a charismatic leader, his disciples, and a

44

R. L. HAMPEL

shared creed (the Coalition’s Ten Common Principles). Awakened to the perils of their habits, skeptics might be converted.21 Passion and stamina are no guarantee of instructional skill, but they can sustain the hard work necessary to become and remain a first-rate teacher.

Different Sources For a final reflection on The Last Little Citadel, I want to highlight two books, David Angus and Jeffrey Mirel’s The Failed Promise of the American High School (1995) and Dale Gyure’s The Chicago Schoolhouse (2011). Each reminded me that my quest for overlooked primary sources could have gone farther. Each book is essential reading thanks to the authors’ adroit use of numbers and visuals. Numbers: Course Enrollments The federal government blessed historians by collecting high school course enrollment data eight times from 1915 to 1982. What a convenient source to trace change over time in the curriculum. I found the 1948–1949 data very helpful in my discussion of the late 1940s “life adjustment” crusade for practical courses. I noticed the modest increases for typing, home economics, psychology, and physical education (wherein another study revealed the rapid rise of driver’s education in the 1940s and early 1950s). I also noticed that many traditional academic subjects held steady, with some erosion in geometry and physics, considerable loss in Latin, and the near extinction of ancient and medieval history. The next survey, from 1961, also indicated more continuity than change. The numbers did not shift as rapidly as the national debates on what should be taught. In 1984, I wished someone had loaded the surveys into a computer so historians could crunch the numbers. What were the variations from state to state, and how did those change over time? But I knew the interpretation of the results would be difficult. Did the states require students to earn credit in the subject in order to graduate (and did the state university require it for admission)? How many schools even offered the subject (for instance, more than one third of all high schools in 1960 had fewer than 200 students, and less than ten percent of those schools scheduled a third year of any language)? Were enrollment changes driven by new

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

45

state mandates, college entrance requirements, curricular expansion, or other factors? I was also cautious because the enrollment survey formats changed. The 1949 tally included separate numbers for schools spanning seventh through twelfth grades alongside the figures for four-year high schools. In 1961, the tables broke out the data for three-, four-, and six-year high schools, with some but not most enrollments disaggregated by grade level. The director of the 1961 survey acknowledged that course titles change, and “the method of combining course titles for expediency in reporting data, as is done in each survey, differs slightly from survey to survey.”22 Those challenges did not deter David Angus and Jeffrey Mirel. They gathered national, state (Michigan), and local (Grand Rapids and Detroit) enrollment data across ninety years. For 1900 to 1940, they analyzed 1,445 student transcripts from Grand Rapids, and they also used Michigan accreditation records. Thirty pages of tables present what they found: a broader array of courses of all kinds, with more and more students taking courses without academic rigor or vocational utility. As a result, they sharply criticized American high schools for accepting and even celebrating a “custodial” mission. What a depressing word. At one point custodial seems to mean “meet[ing] the immediate needs of youth while keeping young people separate from the adult world.”23 That is not necessarily a lamentable mission, nor is it one that high schools truly achieved—many “immediate needs” were slighted before the expansion of extensive social services in the 1970s and beyond. At most points in The Failed Promise of the American High School , custodial means the absence of academic challenge or vocational preparation. There are several problems with the academic/vocational/custodial tripartite division of the curriculum. There is only one reference in the entire book to special education students. How should we classify their sophomore English class in, say, 1950? Academic or custodial? Later, the rapid growth and improvement of special education since the mid1970s challenges the “failed promise” criticism expressed in the title. Furthermore, enrollment data exclude another bright spot in most high schools: extracurricular clubs and sports. In chorus, debate, tennis, the yearbook, and other pursuits, students learn teamwork, time management, recouping from failure, and other essential skills. One recent book

46

R. L. HAMPEL

praised the “purpose, passion, and precision” in after-school pursuits as more compelling than most class periods.24 Another issue: a course classified as academic might be fluff, a vocational course might lead nowhere in light of the local job market, and a supposedly custodial course might be very enlightening, such as the sex education units in gym, the nutrition lessons in a cooking class, or the sociological insights from a well-designed Family Living elective. And the numbers fail to tell us what I tried to emphasize in Citadel: how people got along with each other. Even so, if I had spent more time on quantitative evidence, I could have done a better job sketching the range and variety of high schools. Instead, I emphasized common traits and shared patterns. No wonder I liked Christian Slater’s comment in the 1989 movie Heathers : “seven schools in seven states, and the only thing different is my locker combination.” Visuals: High School Architecture “The topic of school architecture is a neglected subject in need of more study,” I asserted in my third chapter.25 I had relied on old issues of Architectural Record and the American School Board Journal to understand the postwar shift to less austere structures. Apart from a few articles and several dissertations, historians of education rarely examined school architecture. The best book at the time analyzed college buildings. Dale Gyure’s excellent 2011 monograph, The Chicago Schoolhouse: High School Architecture and Educational Reform, 1856–2006, filled the gap. Gyure is an architectural historian who also understands the history of secondary education. As a result, his book provides a good summary of the evolution of the urban high school. If all the references to architecture disappeared from this book, the remaining pages would offer a graceful overview of big-city schooling. The special merit of The Chicago Schoolhouse comes from connecting architectural details with the policies of Chicago school boards and superintendents. Gyure is especially keen on linking reform initiatives with building designs, and he does so with straightforward descriptions and explanations that require no specialized knowledge of architecture. It is not surprising that the progressive era (c. 1890–1920) was a period of profound change. Before then, high school buildings were simple structures, typically with four to six classrooms, a small assembly hall, washrooms and utilities in the basement, one office, and no cafeteria,

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

47

library, or gym. By the early twentieth century, massive new high schools resembled courthouses and other civic monuments. Although lacking the bell towers and medieval quadrangles popular on college campuses, the buildings were nevertheless designed to impress and inspire. Inside the fortresses, the once standard collection of identically sized rooms gave way to an array of laboratories, workshops, and offices, with larger areas for the library, lunchroom, auditorium, gymnasium, and other spaces (including faculty restrooms) unimagined in the 1880s. Courtyards in the popular E- and H-shaped rectangular designs provided sunlight; the ideal was natural light from a single row of windows behind the left shoulder. Heating and ventilating the behemoths were so important that the Chicago school board’s full-time engineer co-designed the buildings with the architects. A second period of transformation set aside the old fortresses in favor of less grandiose schools. The modernist aesthetic of the 1950s and 1960s had lower ceilings, larger courtyards, side entrances, sparse ornamentation, more windows, and cheerful colors. These structures were less formal than the colossal progressive era citadels. They resembled elementary schools in many ways. The new informality reflected architectural trends and at the same time expressed widespread attitudes toward childrearing (be nicer) and instruction (be more inviting). I was fascinated by his reference to the Chicago superintendents’ annual reports in the 1950s and 1960s—the word “friendly” appeared more and more. Perhaps I had underestimated the desire in those years to be less regimented. On the other hand, I noted Gyure’s comment that “the classrooms themselves were the least-changed features of the modernist school building: they remained rectangular spaces for thirty to forty students dominated by large windows and orderly rows of student desks.”26 The pace of change by teachers lagged behind the shifts created by architects. Even so, Gyure’s account convinced me that school boards (and parents) wanted more casual education, tried to extend upward some of the relaxed features of elementary school, and were thus stunned by the late 1960s student accusations of rigidity and authoritarianism. Gyure devotes less space to high schools from the 1970s to the present, but what he describes is startling. Some of the schools look exactly like office buildings. There is nothing distinctive or uplifting in their facades. The results are utilitarian shells that lack the playfulness of the modernist experiments of the 1950s and 1960s. What has been absent recently is a landmark school like Boston Latin and English (Massachusetts, 1878)

48

R. L. HAMPEL

or Crow Island (Winnetka, Illinois, 1940), two pacesetting designs that inspired architects in Chicago and elsewhere. Gyure notes that school boards were usually frugal. No wonder they liked the relaxed modernist designs: they were cheap. As Esther Cyna’s chapter in this volume shows, close analyses of expenditures can be revealing—decisions of where to spend and where to save on new construction shed light on a district’s priorities. Future studies could investigate the bonds that paid for the buildings, while others could explore the dozens of vendors who sold school equipment and supplies (the American School Board Journal carried their advertisements in each issue). I am surprised historians of education rarely follow the money, which I would do if I were rewriting Citadel today.

What’s Next? Rather than suggest more topics for research, I want to discuss teaching, which my reflections on Citadel repeatedly called to mind. If enrollments drop in the undergraduate history of education courses, how will administrators justify replacing those of us near retirement? The field should help them make the case by creating exceptionally good courses that attract students from all corners of the campus. Good research will continue if scholars have jobs, but they won’t have jobs if our courses are mediocre. When I returned to the classroom in 2012 after two years in administration, I reread the major history of education textbooks, and I was disappointed. They were full of details bewildering to most college students. The texts were also dry, with fewer colorful illustrations and supplemental materials than the leading American history texts offer. Worst of all, textbooks usually did the analysis for the students. Rather than pose problems for the student to solve, the authors expounded their views of the past. Students rarely saw the sources historians used or realized that many interpretations are contested rather than universally accepted. The authors praised the progressive era push for active learning, but their own pages did not promote active learning. In hindsight, that was also true of Citadel. Unusual anecdotes and vivid stories lay within a traditional format where I had done the heavy lifting for the undergraduates. In search of alternatives, I picked three paperbacks by outstanding historians. Surely the evolution of teacher education (by Jim Fraser),

3

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

49

the history of school reform (by Diane Ravitch), and essays on multicultural education (by David Tyack) would fascinate my undergraduates. The topics did interest them, but they struggled with the books. Too much detail! No central argument! What convinced me they were not just whining was the very bright woman who told me she spent fifteen minutes reading one long paragraph to understand the main point, and then she was not sure if it was an important point. I reread the same page, and I agreed with her. So what are the alternatives? At first, I tried several books I thought were more engaging. I assigned Sarah Mondale et al., School (2002), the companion volume to a four part PBS series on elementary and secondary education. With dozens of pictures, the book would be easy and enjoyable for my 100 undergraduates, many with meager background knowledge of U.S. history. For a second book, I chose Steven Mintz’ history of childhood, Huck’s Raft (2004). Even with more than 400 pages, the topic would be compelling, I thought. Satisfaction rose, but neither book let my students solve problems or analyze primary sources. Instead, they absorbed what the experts told them was true, and often they absorbed only some of the truth—for instance, several students admitted they skimmed Huck’s Raft by reading the first sentence of each paragraph.27 Eventually, I decided to assign several dozen short online readings. Most of them are my excerpts from autobiographies, course catalogs, blue ribbon panel reports, college admission exams, landmark court cases, and so on. Each assignment is concise (two to ten pages) with one or two questions that require more than recall to answer. What are the traits of a good item? The topic is significant, a case in point of a major development. It is also open-ended enough to generate classroom discussion, and it must be interesting. Early twentieth-century College Board and I.Q. tests, for example, never bore students. Have them take part of the tests, then ask, “What did this test test—what knowledge or skills were necessary to do well?” and “Could anyone have been coached to do well on the test?” Or have the class create a high school schedule that honors all seven goals of the 1918 Cardinal Principles report. Start with a discussion of why a high school could not simply make each goal one class period. Then divide the class into three groups— one brainstorms core courses for everyone, a second group generates electives, and the third creates the extracurricular options. My lectures use dozens of photographs, movie clips, and parts of documentaries, but I should include more of them in the readings.28 Part of

50

R. L. HAMPEL

the problem my students faced when they read Ravitch, Tyack, Fraser, and Mintz was the burden of page after page of black ink without pictures, maps, diagrams, or even charts and tables. The larger point is that our reading assignments often look like they did fifty or 100 years ago. Most of us write about education reform. I think it’s time we reformed the assignments in our courses.

Notes 1. Eleven years earlier, Sizer’s book of thoughtful essays, Places of Learning, Places of Joy (Harvard University Press, 1973) never made headlines or mobilized schools to try his proposals. 2. Yale University Press in 1964 published Sizer’s revised 1961 dissertation on late nineteenth century high schools, Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century, and Harvard University Press in 1980 published Powell’s The Uncertain Profession, an expanded version of his 1968 dissertation on the history of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he was Sizer’s Associate Dean from 1968 to 1972 (and continued as Associate Dean until 1976). 3. For Conant, a truly comprehensive high school must challenge the academically talented (the top 15–20%) and train vocational students in trades with real employment opportunities. By doing both tasks in the same building, educators would promote fellowship and mutual respect between groups headed for different careers. Small, specialized, and private high schools were less likely to do that, he believed. 4. Kyle P. Steele, Making a Mass Institution: Indianapolis and the American High School (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020), 76. 5. The 1968 Hinsdale Central High School El Diablo mocked the head of the Girls Athletic Association by showing her doing “the infamous front drop” on the trampoline, in contrast to the flattering pictures of the allfemale cheerleaders and Homecoming Court. Gender discrimination was school policy—only three interscholastic female sports, varsity “letters” for males but charms and trophies for female stars, and GAA’s sole fundraising was selling food during the football games. It is also revealing that in one picture of the GAA officers, the blackboard had menu choices for the annual banquet, and one option was “ladies steak.” 6. A Study of High Schools supported me until then because the sky-high money market interest rates generated revenue unanticipated in the original budget. Thanks to the bull market that began in August, 1982, I had invested enough to decline an April, 1984 job with the CBS Department of Investor Relations in New York City (at twice the salary offered three months later by the University of Delaware). As with MIT in 1981, the

3

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

RENOVATIONS IN THE CITADEL

51

business world tested my commitment to history. A young scholar with savings can afford to wait, at least for a while. I like to think I valued money as a means to noble ends—reading, writing, waiting to return to campus. Without a nest egg I would have been forced to leave academia. But the pleasure in accumulating that nest egg—the challenge and fun of investing—tempted me twice to leave voluntarily. Joseph Kett, Adolescence in America: 1790 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Robert L. Hampel, The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools Since 1940 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 79. Robert L. Hampel, “A Generation in Crisis?” Daedalus 127, No. 4 (Fall 1998): 67–88. Jane Stallings, “Ensuring Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century,” Educational Researcher 26, No. 6 (August–September 1995): 4–8; William Damon, Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in America’s Homes and Schools (New York: Free Press, 1995), 7–13; Urie Bronfenbrenner et al., The State of Americans (New York: Free Press, 1996). Hampel, “Generation in Crisis?” 72. Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982). Robert L. Hampel, Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 100–103. For the 1950s, see Joan Jacobs Brumberg, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (New York: Random House, 1997); for 1979, see David Owen, High School: Undercover with the Class of’80 (New York: Viking, 1981). At 24, Owen spent four months masquerading as a senior. With regard to sex, he observed that “the rich get richer. People who didn’t have much luck at sex as teenagers in 1960 wouldn’t necessarily be having any more luck now” (173). Ted Sizer to Bob Hampel, September 1, 1988 (author’s files). Robert L. Hampel, “The Micropolitics of RE:Learning,” Journal of School Leadership (November 1995): 597–616. For similar insights from a five year ethnographic study of eight Coalition schools, see Donna E. Muncey and Patrick J. McQuillan, Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). Gerald Grant, The World We Created at Hamilton High (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Education Week, February 8, 1995. “Lincoln” was on the outskirts of a large urban district. Approximately 75% of its 1100 students were white, and about 40% qualified for free or reduced meals.

52

R. L. HAMPEL

20. David K. Cohen, “Teaching Practice: Plus que ca change…,” in P.W. Jackson, ed., Contributing to Educational Change (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1989), 44, 52. 21. For a similar analysis, see Donna Muncey and Patrick McQuillen, “Education Reform as Revitalization Movement,” American Journal of Education 101, No. 4: 393–341. And see former Coalition staffer Robert L. Fried, The Passionate Teacher (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). 22. Grace S. Wright, Subject Offerings and Enrollments in Public Secondary Schools (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1965), iii. For additional challenges in using the enrollment data, see The Last Little Citadel, 177. 23. David Angus and Jeffrey Mirel, The Failed Promise of the American High School (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 69. 24. Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine, In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 306. One year I asked my 80 undergraduates about their extracurricular activities in high schools. I was amazed by how much they liked their clubs and sports. As a result, I wrote an editorial for the Wilmington News Journal in praise of extracurriculars. Dozens of people told me they felt the same. Then one assistant superintendent told me that my proposal—policies to encourage clubs and sports—would fall flat. Why? I had said nothing about test scores. 25. Hampel, The Last Little Citadel, 55. 26. Dale Gyure, The Chicago Schoolhouse: High School Architecture and Educational Reform, 1856–2006 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 180. 27. I asked Harvard University Press if I could condense most of the chapters and then assign the streamlined version to my students, with a suitable royalty to HUP. They declined my offer. 28. In a doctoral seminar on qualitative methods, we watched Frederick Wiseman’s High School (1968). I gave pairs of students specific topics (music, clothes, sexuality, teaching methods, social class, Wiseman’s close-ups) to focus their note-taking. Within each pair, students compared what they observed, and then shared their insights with the entire class. At the end of our discussion, I gave them copies of Joseph Featherstone’s brilliant analysis of the staff’s “bitter joy in the work of denial” (The New Republic, June 21, 1969). The same approach could be used with Wiseman’s High School II (1994), a documentary on Central Park East in New York City.

CHAPTER 4

“Intellectual Power” for All: Theodore Sizer and the Origins of the Coalition of Essential Schools at Phillips Academy, Andover John P. Spencer

In the 1980s and 1990s, one of the biggest names in discussions of the American high school was Theodore (Ted) Sizer, author of the classic book, Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (1984); founder of the subsequent nationwide reform movement, the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES); and leader of the Annenberg Challenge, a $500 million grant to improve American education. Sizer avoided labels, though his ideas overlapped significantly with those of John Dewey. He promoted critical thinking and the application of knowledge and understanding over the “coverage” of content—a goal of “using one’s mind well,” as he described it. He also insisted that schools should

J. P. Spencer (B) Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_4

53

54

J. P. SPENCER

have the authority to shape curriculum and assessment to fit their local context. By 2002, however, the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) had moved school reform in a different direction, toward the use of state-mandated standardized tests in a few subjects as the key measure of learning. Eventually, Sizer’s name all but vanished from public debates over school reform, and, in 2016, seven years after Sizer died, the Coalition closed its national office.1 Nonetheless, recent years have brought a degree of backlash against the test-driven agenda stemming from NCLB. A movement among parents to “opt-out” their students from testing has gathered momentum, and interest is rising in efforts toward “deeper learning” and educational “innovation” that are reminiscent of Sizer’s approach to reform.2 In this context, it is an opportune moment to revisit the history and legacy of Ted Sizer and the CES. This essay looks at a lesser-known part of Sizer’s career: his time in the 1970s as headmaster of Phillips Academy, the private boarding school better known as Andover. Andover is a prestigious institution, but, even so, it might seem a detour on Ted Sizer’s career path. He previously had made a name for himself as the boyish dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (he was just thirty-one when he took the job in 1964). Some were surprised when he left Harvard in 1972 and took the Andover job, where he stayed for nine years until leaving to do the reform work for which he became well-known. However, I argue that Sizer’s Andover years are a key to understanding the rest of his career in reform. Far from being simply a bastion of privilege, remote from the concerns of regular public schools (as some assumed when he took the job), Andover was where Sizer developed and synthesized key ideas that grew into the CES. Sizer learned from and built on Andover’s strengths (especially a personalized learning environment), but he also pushed for progressive changes in curriculum and pedagogy: an emphasis on critical thinking and interdisciplinary learning over content “coverage” in traditional subjects; and inquiry-based teaching over lecture. And Sizer was not content simply to improve Andover for the benefit of its traditional clientele. He expanded access for previously underserved groups of students through scholarships and other innovative programs, and, ultimately, his shift into public school reform was motivated by the desire to provide an intellectually powerful, Andover-style education for all students— to “Andover-ize” public education, as his colleague Arthur Powell has described it.3 At the same time, because of his experience as a principal

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

55

on the ground, he would refuse to dictate specific curricula and programs to other schools, yet another signature of his movement that was shaped by his experience at the boarding school. The Andover roots of Sizer’s reforms would seem to reinforce a familiar criticism of his approach, namely that it was unrealistic for many of the nation’s high schools, which did not have such abundant resources, prestigiously credentialed faculty, and undeniably privileged students.4 No doubt this is why Sizer did not often emphasize the influence of his Andover years. His touchstone school was as atypical as could be. And, as we will see, change was difficult even at Andover. Still, Sizer highlighted a basic question that is still relevant today: in a democracy, shouldn’t all students have access to an education that prepares them to use their minds well? This was not a new question; historians of education have described how it has played out for more than a century, as a conflict between the ideas in two major reports on secondary education: the Report of the Committee of Ten (1893) and the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education(1918). The Committee of Ten, a group composed mainly of university presidents, called for all students, including a rising number of working-class and immigrant students, to follow an academic curriculum in the subjects of English, history, languages, science, and math. Cardinal Principles took the opposite stance, arguing that a college preparatory curriculum should be followed only by the brightest students (as measured by the burgeoning field of intelligence testing) while everyone else should follow various non-academic tracks that allegedly fit their abilities and would prepare them for clerical work or manual labor. The history of the high school often has been framed in terms of the shifting fortunes of these rival positions. From the 1920s through the 1970s, the Cardinal Principles prevailed, resulting in “comprehensive high schools” whose various curricular tracks allegedly catered to different abilities and interests but, in practice, reinforced race-, class-, and genderbased discrimination. Since the 1980s, the standards and accountability movements (spurred by another major report, the Reagan Administration’s A Nation at Risk) have pushed in the other direction, promoting a return to academic subjects and an emphasis on college prep for all.5 Sizer’s work complicates this story and provides a valuable perspective on issues of educational equity in our own moment. His promotion of an education for “intellectual power” was part of a shift away from Cardinal Principles influence in the 1970s, but it was also a challenge to the legacy

56

J. P. SPENCER

of the Committee of Ten, which he believed had stifled genuine intellectual engagement in its own way, by reducing high school to a list of subjects and credits to check off a list without necessarily defining the purposes and uses of those subjects and the interconnections between them. In Sizer’s view, most high schools, including even Andover, needed to reframe their work in terms of intellectual habits like critical thinking rather than mere subject matter “coverage.” But as he also knew, students at private schools like Andover, and in the higher academic tracks of some advantaged public schools, have been much more likely to receive such an education than have less privileged students (often students of color) in underperforming schools or tracks. In the past two decades, in spite of its well-intentioned effort to foster “high expectations” and hold schools accountable for the learning of all students, the movement ushered in by NCLB appears to have reinforced that divide, ensuring that the least privileged students are the ones most likely to experience rote forms of learning aimed at passing standardized tests.6 Sizer’s work at Andover enables us to explore a pioneering example of deeper learning and challenges us to reckon with the meaning of that example in school reform. As Sizer saw it, the barrier to providing such an approach for all students was more than just a lack of resources, which in turn was symptomatic of a lack of societal will. It was also a lack of imagination in how we think about teaching and learning. His years at Andover were above all an effort to imagine new approaches, ones that remain compelling today.

“A Private School?” Ted Sizer’s vision for reshaping the American high school was a long time in the making, and a review of his early life and career is helpful in understanding his work at Andover. Born in 1932, the youngest of six children (and the only boy), Sizer described having a happy childhood on a farm near New Haven, Connecticut, where his father, Theodore Sizer senior, was an art history professor and Director of the Art Gallery at Yale. But even so—and in contrast with the relaxed confidence he was known for in his professional career—young Ted struggled with his identity and performance as a learner. For high school, he went to the Pomfret School, the then-all-male boarding school his father also had attended. Pomfret was a small and intimate school community. Sizer’s class of 1949 had about thirty students, and each report card included lengthy typed comments from the teachers. Looking at those reports, it’s not hard to

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

57

imagine Sizer’s discomfort with school. Though he was always about onethird from the top in the class ranking that the reports emphasized so prominently, and he served as editor of the school paper and as graduation speaker, the teachers sometimes made jarringly harsh statements that must have stung, and that now sound curiously underestimating of him. Did the eventual author of Horace’s Compromise and ten other books really have “a very poor ear for natural, idiomatic writing”?7 High school, he reflected toward the end of his life, had been especially useful in making him “sympathetic to the terror that all sorts of students in all forms of secondary schools inevitably experience, now as well as then.”8 Across time and place, perhaps this is what most high schools have had in common. Sizer’s own schooling not only helped him appreciate the struggles many young people face in school; it also shaped his lifelong push for school learning to be more purposeful and powerful. Here, too, the lessons from his own education were often negative. Sizer titled his 2004 memoir The Red Pencil, a reference to a Pomfret School Latin class in which the teacher went down the rows of students, asking each to translate a sentence and then recording a grade in his book with his red pencil. The teacher never explored why the students made mistakes, and he never conveyed that there could be enjoyment or meaning in learning Latin. His class was anxiety-provoking and at the same time a chore—“something we had to do because this was School.”9 The story was not much different at Yale, where Sizer attended for reduced tuition as the son of a faculty member. “Dutiful but uninspired” was how he described his experience there, his English major a “weary trudge” through a parade of canonical authors. Years later, Sizer wrote that he remembered little of what he learned in college, except for its “unspoken but clear pedagogical message: it is more important to cover material than it is to become engaged with it.”10 Sizer did have one early experience that made a positive impact on his views about teaching and learning, and it came in the military. Following family precedent, he enrolled in Yale’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, and, after graduation, he served in Germany as an artillery training officer in the U.S. Army. Sizer later said his military training had shaped some of his central views about teaching and learning. If the “students” were nineteen-year-old recruits, and the objective was to teach them how to use 155 mm howitzers, then the method of teaching was to have them practice—and practice some more—until they could do

58

J. P. SPENCER

what was expected, not only under the best of conditions, but when they were tired, or when it was dark. Performance, in unscripted real-world circumstances—which one day might include the ultimate challenge of real war—was the true “test” of learning (and therefore, of “teaching”).11 Moreover, military service taught Sizer a crucial lesson about democracy and education. The young men in his unit came from various backgrounds and included high school dropouts, but they were not “tracked” by ability as in high schools, Sizer later commented. Every one of them could, and would, learn, or else put their fellow soldiers at risk.12 The common good depended on valuing and developing all people. After the army, and his marriage to Nancy Faust, who also became his most trusted colleague in education, Sizer taught for a year each at the Roxbury-Latin school in Boston and the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School in Australia, sandwiching a Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) from Harvard in between. Still, he moved quickly toward pursuing a doctorate in American History and Education at Harvard, and that experience is a key to understanding his later work at Andover and nationwide. Sizer’s thesis advisor was the historian Bernard Bailyn, still in the early years of his illustrious career, and Bailyn suggested that Sizer do research in the papers of Charles William Eliot. Eliot had been the president of Harvard from 1869–1909, but more importantly for Sizer’s purposes, he had been head of the Committee of Ten, the group of university presidents and other educators whose influential 1893 Report promoted a standardized academic curriculum for all high school students. Sizer did his doctoral thesis on the Committee of Ten and turned it into his first book, Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century (1964).13 Historians of education have emphasized that the work of the Committee of Ten was swept away by the Cardinal Principles report of 1918 and the rise of comprehensive high schools, which sorted students into various curricular tracks and reduced the intellectual rigor of high school for most of them, especially those from less privileged backgrounds.14 But for Sizer, the bigger story was one of continuity: he felt Eliot had cemented a dreary mentality about high school education that had dominated ever since. The report had tidy charts with the number of hours students should spend on each subject—but what kind of knowledge and abilities should they gain from these courses, and for what purpose? The Committee didn’t mean for its curriculum charts to become a recipe for mindlessly going

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

59

through the motions and checking courses off a list, but Sizer felt that was the unintended consequence.15 Doing something about that problem would have to wait; in 1964, Sizer became dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), a job that pulled him away from a focus on classroom teaching and learning. In an era defined by the federal War on Poverty, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, and the Black Freedom Movement, Sizer and HGSE focused on struggles over race, poverty, and unequal education that were erupting in Boston and across the country. One experience that would shape the rest of his career was the expansive, year-long research seminar that he organized with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, newly arrived as a Harvard professor after his controversial stint in the U.S. Department of Labor under President Lyndon Johnson. Known as the “Coleman seminar,” the project involved dozens of eminent scholars from many disciplines in re-analyzing the data from the 1966 federal study “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” better known as the Coleman Report. The Coleman seminar emphasized that factors outside of schools—especially the social class background of students—had even more impact on school achievement than what went on in schools (for example, factors such as class size and quality buildings). “It stung me personally,” Sizer said of this downplaying of the power of schools to affect outcomes for children.16 In fact, Sizer remained committed to the potential for schools to be transformative institutions, and in 1972, this helped lead him to Andover. The decision to become headmaster at a boarding school was surprising to some people. “You must be out of your mind!” said some friends and colleagues when they heard he was leaving Harvard. Of course, Andover had prestige, too—and a larger endowment than HGSE—but in a secondary school context, even those attributes drew some raised eyebrows. “A private school?” Sizer later described the thinking of some colleagues. “Bastion of preppy snobbery, old school ties, arrogance, and all the rest? Abandonment, thereby, of that glory of American democracy, the public school?”17 Andover was a powerful symbol of privilege for sure. Founded in 1778 during the American Revolution, it was the most famous of the nation’s private boarding schools and a pipeline to the Ivy League. As of 1962, when Time magazine ran a feature story on prep schools and put Andover headmaster John Kemper on the cover, nearly half the school’s graduates—all boys—were bound for Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.18 The

60

J. P. SPENCER

950-acre campus of neo-Georgian brick buildings was more like that of a liberal arts college than a secondary school. According to the writer William Cohan, who graduated from Andover in 1977, the school had been founded “for the sole purpose of manufacturing, and nurturing, the future leaders of the country—as long as they were white, male, and Protestant,” a statement that is underscored by lists of its graduates over more than two centuries, including two Presidents of the United States (George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush).19 Yet, in Sizer’s mind, the move to Andover seemed natural, and it led to his launch of the CES. Not only was Sizer eager for a new chapter after eight years at Harvard, but he also found Andover to be a more complicated and interesting institution than its elitist image suggested.20 In the 1960s, Sizer had become interested in the idea that “public” education was defined not only in terms of funding and governance, but also by access and function: how diverse was a school, and in what ways did it contribute to the advancement of democracy? By those definitions, he argued, the increasingly segregated public schools were in some ways less “public” than some of their private school counterparts.21 Andover’s founding charter from 1778 reinforced this line of thinking. Phillips Academy was to be a “public free school,” open to students “from every quarter”—including those who could only attend with scholarship aid. “That latter puts quite a load on our endowment,” Sizer commented early in his tenure. “Fortunately, it’s a large endowment,” at some $50 million in the early 1970s and over $1 billion today.22 Andover was rightly known as a bastion of wealth and privilege, but it was also interested, especially since the 1960s, in admitting and subsidizing less affluent students. Sizer wanted to expand on that commitment. Perhaps the most important draw to Andover, though, was the chance to work with adolescents in an educational setting, which, as Sizer said later, had always been his main professional interest. “I wanted to work in a school again,” he said, and, of consequence, “I wanted to work in a school while my kids were still high school age.” As it turned out, all of his four children would graduate from Andover in the 1970s, bringing a personal dimension to his work as headmaster. This included his two daughters, who were able to attend because one of Sizer’s first orders of business (initiated by the school before his arrival and completed during his first year as headmaster), was to merge with Abbot Academy, a nearby school for girls, and make Andover co-educational. Andover was by no

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

61

means a typical high school, but co-education made it more so. There, Sizer would have an opportunity to “see if what I’d been thinking about theoretically could apply to real-world kiddos.”23

The Power of Personalization The Andover job not only immersed Sizer in the lives of adolescents and the daily workings of a secondary school; it exposed him to a particular kind of school environment, one that was highly personalized and holistic. At a private boarding school with a low student–teacher ratio, adults got to know teenagers well, interacting with them in settings and activities beyond the classroom, including dorms and athletic fields. Granted, as Nancy Sizer recalls, Andover had a reputation for being “rigorous and heartless” (probably not unlike the Pomfret School in the 1940s when Sizer had a mixed experience there).24 But the shift to co-education rounded some of those rough edges, making Andover a “more progressive, humane place for kids,” according to former history teacher Kathleen M. Dalton.25 This is not to say that relations between adults and students were smooth or harmonious in the 1970s. Far from being immune to the upheavals of the larger society in those years, Andover and other private schools were rocked by student unrest over national issues such as civil rights and the Vietnam War, as well as campus dress codes and rules about compulsory chapel. As Frederick Allis, Jr. suggested in his bicentennial history of the school, written during Sizer’s tenure as headmaster, the year leading up to Sizer’s arrival in 1972 was perhaps the most difficult one in the history of the Academy. The school experienced a wave of vandalism, including break-ins to the office that tracked attendance and punished students for cutting classes. During one incident, a security guard fired a warning shot over the head of a student who was running away, sending a shock wave through the campus. In 1971, 160 graduating seniors—about two-thirds of the class—signed a statement of no confidence in the faculty and administration. Headmaster John Kemper, who had come to Andover from the military in 1948 and presided over glory days for the school, resigned in October 1971 due to a battle with cancer and died two months later.26 Challenges to authority continued during Sizer’s tenure in the 1970s. The Academy struggled to enforce its discipline code, especially around alcohol and drug use and the breaking of dorm curfews.27 The conflicts

62

J. P. SPENCER

were partly a sign of the times and partly the result of adults being responsible for adolescent students twenty-four hours a day, a challenge not faced by most high school educators and one that Sizer did not relish. Years later, for example, when the topic of sex education came up in an exchange of letters with his close colleague Deborah Meier, Sizer told her it brought up “not so fond memories” of his life at Andover: “I took the public position—repeatedly—that ‘if you’re old enough for sex, you’re too old for Andover,’ and the kids thought I was a dinosaur.”28 A boarding school like Andover immersed Sizer in adolescent life far more intensively than a typical high school would have done, but that was precisely why it had such a lasting influence on his approach to schooling. “At Andover,” he reflected later, “I learned much about the wonderful and important dailiness of schoolkeeping, about which sorts of regimens might work for adolescents and which might not, about what it practically meant to be living on that tricky and emotional line between childhood and adulthood, between awkward dependence and taking responsible charge of one’s life.”29 From the start, Sizer took students and their views seriously. On one of his first visits to campus after being hired, he made inroads with a skeptical audience of students by walking into the room and saying, “Hello, I’m Ted Sizer. What can we do to make our school better?”30 One such effort was the “cluster system,” which divided the student body into six groups of about two-hundred students who lived near each other, each cluster with its own dean and team of residential faculty members. The cluster system aimed to increase a sense of community among students and adult mentors, and it made a large school feel more personal in scale.31 Meanwhile, Ted and Nancy had close interactions with students in their own version of dorm living. Not only did their four children attend Andover, but the Sizers also volunteered to convert the back of the headmaster’s house into a residence for four female students who were chosen by lottery. The Sizer kitchen was a frequent gathering place for students, and Nancy found she enjoyed being a “triple threat,” the old boarding school term for faculty who get to know their students not only as teachers but also as coaches and dorm parents. Nancy taught history and coached tennis, and she preferred the term “thread” over “threat,” because “it’s like three threads of a kid’s life.”32 The Sizers’ openness and accessibility helped steer Andover through the turbulence of the era and regain its footing as a school with a strong sense of community. To be sure, as headmaster, Sizer was willing to

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

63

confront serious misbehavior. In 1980, for example, he closed down a new student center when a student’s milkshake had been laced with a powerful drug.33 But compared to his predecessors, and in tune with changing times, he took a tolerant stance toward the ups and downs of adolescent growth and was happy to usher out now unpopular traditions such as dress codes and compulsory chapel. He “seemed to strike the right balance between permissiveness and personal accountability at the very moment when a new paradigm was required,” said the writer William Cohan.34 Yet, even as Andover benefitted from Sizer’s ability to strike that balance in working with adolescents, the school left its mark on him. In The Red Pencil, he commented on the power of personalization at private and well-funded public schools generally: “rich people” with access to such schools, he wrote, “pay knowledgeably and dearly to make sure their children are known well and taught accordingly.” Sizer reinforced the point by citing his colleague Arthur Powell, who had written a book on lessons that private schools might offer to public education. As Powell had noted, “the average load of about sixty students per teacher in independent high schools”—as compared with 100 to 175 in many public high schools, Sizer added—“is one of the most telling statistics in American education.”35

From Subjects and Seat Time to “Intellectual Power” If Andover’s personalized environment was instructive for Sizer, there was also much about the school that he tried to change—and those desired changes anticipated his later critiques of American high school education. While outwardly it seemed nothing like a public high school, Andover by the late 1960s was not entirely different when it came to matters of educational purpose and practice. Granted, the school had an unusually impressive faculty (often accomplished scholars in their fields) and famously rigorous academic standards. It prepared its graduates so well for college that some found themselves bored in their first-year college courses, prompting the Academy to take a leading role in developing the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) exams in the 1950s so that its graduates could skip those introductory courses. And rigorous standards were not simply academic, but were part of a larger tradition of

64

J. P. SPENCER

building character—virtues of hard work, discipline, and service that had been emphasized throughout the school’s history.36 But even Andover’s signature strengths had some limitations and downsides. Unlike rival Phillips Exeter Academy, which had reorganized classes into seminars around Harkness Tables in the 1930s, Phillips Andover had not been known for pedagogical innovation.37 In a later interview, Sizer described much of the teaching as, “‘Sit down, and I’ll tell you what you need to know.’ It was about as good as that mode gets.” The students “knew a lot of things in a wonderful way,” but “there wasn’t the expectation that the kids would have to use any of what they were taught down the line.”38 Meanwhile, the academy’s fabled academic rigor had its limitations as well. “They work, work, work,” said the 1962 story in Time, but “the irony is that Andover’s soaring standards may encourage the widespread notion summed up by one senior: ‘We get good grades so we can get into a good college—a prestige college. That’s why we’re here’”.39 This tilt toward the extrinsic motivators of grades and Ivy League credentials was echoed in a 1970 study of “student unrest” in private schools, conducted by Andover’s recently retired Dean of the Faculty, Alan Blackmer. Blackmer emphasized nine major student grievances, and while about half were related to lack of student voice in shaping school policies, the other half focused on the nature of teaching and learning: “too much pressure for grades; boredom; lack of relevance of education to the ‘real world’; and too much emphasis on getting into college rather than on what is learned.”40 Since his doctoral studies on the Committee of Ten, Sizer had been bothered by the feeling that high school education had been reduced to the accumulation of grades and credits, without serious consideration of what should be learned, and to what end. Andover was not immune to these tendencies in secondary education, and Sizer was poised to push it in new directions. Sizer laid out his ideas for a new kind of teaching and learning at Andover in a series of long memos for the board of trustees and the faculty, which he jokingly referred to as numbered “screeds,” in Latin no less—for example “Screedum Secundo.” In those documents, we can see that Sizer’s views on school reform were well-formed by the time he arrived at Andover. For Sizer, perhaps the foremost educational question was, what was the purpose of school? Andover’s twenty-six-year-old founder, Samuel Phillips Jr., had been eager to foster civic virtue during the founding of a new republic in the 1770s. He started the Academy to teach boys

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

65

“English and Latin Grammar, Writing, Arithmetic, and those Sciences wherein they are commonly taught, but more especially to learn them the great end and real business of living.”41 Sizer also defined his sense of purpose not just in terms of the knowledge students would acquire, but, more importantly, the kind of people they would become. The goal was to develop “thoughtful, self-conscious people,” people who would be governed by reason rather than impulse. People who would “consider the alternatives before them and the effects of each,” as opposed to blindly following “some politician’s, religious sect’s or social class’s propaganda.” Sizer emphasized that he was not talking about “mere academic scholarship” and mastery of subject matter in math or French or physics, important though those were. He was focused on a broader notion of “intellectual power.” Intellectual power was about judgment, and deliberation, and logic; it was about using one’s mind well, not just in studying the academic subjects, but also in wrestling with moral dilemmas, or in everyday pursuits such as “chess, politics, football, business, or whatever.”42 Sizer’s broad conception of intellect, overlapping with moral education, was not entirely new at Andover. Again, it was consistent with the focus on character development and the “business of living” that had been part of the school since its founding. But Sizer’s vision did have implications for change in Andover’s curriculum. Echoing his critique of the Committee of Ten—and the purpose of developing “intellectual power”—Sizer proposed that Andover move from a curriculum focused on subjects to one equally centered on “habits of mind.” As an example, he cited a set of six goals for a liberal education that had been suggested by the president of Amherst College: the ability to express oneself with “intellectual precision and emotional force”; the ability to construct evidence-based arguments; self-awareness; the capacity for empathy; a sense of mastery through “sustained immersion in some question of importance”; and the “capacity to enjoy life, or at least find unending interest in it.” Usually, Sizer observed, such intellectual capacities were taught “piggy-back on something else—for us, a ‘subject’ (and the dormitory, athletics, theatre, and the rest of our informal program).” But could those intellectual capacities be seen as the primary end, and the academic subjects as a means to that end? And, to foster that mentality, could the fragmentation of the curriculum into many disciplines be replaced with a streamlined focus on fewer areas—say, Language and Literature, Arts

66

J. P. SPENCER

and Humanities, History and Social Science, Natural Science, and Mathematics?43 “We overstress ‘covering’ material and understress the learning of general and specific intellectual processes,” Sizer argued, with the result that students were “very adroit in providing facts and formulas” but “weak in formulating and answering questions which use the facts and employ the formulas.”44 Sizer’s curricular ideas extended to bold proposals to rethink the entire system of age-grading and graduation requirements. An Andover education, he argued, should be measured not in years attended but by performance—what students had learned and what they could do with that learning. If some needed three years to meet expectations rather than four, so be it. Citing research on individual differences in rates of development, Sizer even suggested that age-determined grade levels (what at Andover were called the junior, lower, upper, and senior classes) should be eliminated, with each student progressing at a rate appropriate for their own social, moral, and intellectual development. Above all, he argued, a diploma should represent “actual, rather than chronological, development”; demonstration of competence rather than “time served.”45 A notable attempt to implement Sizer’s reform ideas was a new “capstone” course for seniors called “Synthesis: A Course in Complex Issues.” Sizer was not alone in favoring interdisciplinary work that focused on intellectual skills and application of knowledge, and in 1974 he and some like-minded faculty began designing a course along those lines. The Synthesis course took a “problem-oriented” approach, asking students to address a complex issue, often with a moral dimension, by applying insights from various disciplines they had studied. For example, human population growth might be pursued through history, mathematics, geography, and life science. Euthanasia could be explored by drawing from literature, religion, and biology. This approach not only reflected a new way of thinking about curriculum and purpose, but it also had implications for the roles of teachers and students in the classroom. The problems that the course was designed around were not just complex, but also unresolved and debatable, and this shifted the role of teacher, from being an expert deliverer of accepted knowledge to a facilitator of investigations in which students would develop and defend their own views.46 The approach taken in the Synthesis course was affirmed in a student newspaper article published while Sizer and philosophy teacher Owen

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

67

Flanagan were piloting the course. “Traditional courses deal mainly with facts,” student journalist Dan Lieberfeld wrote. “The Synthesis course imparts a more fundamental and necessary knowledge: the ability to organize and cope with problems, an ability basic to almost every situation in that ‘real world’ that we speak of with such detachment.” One student interviewee captured the shift toward student-centered learning and teaching as facilitation: “The students make the course,” she said. “Its excellence is largely due to the constant exchange of ideas and resulting conflicts among the students. Sizer and Flanagan are very helpful in assisting the discussions.” In sum, Lieberfeld concluded, the Synthesis course offered a “totally different form of education which has been missing from Andover for too long.” Hopefully, he said, interdisciplinary courses like it would come to be regarded as part of Andover’s core curriculum rather than as a “little-known elective.”47 Sizer did his best to make it so, though, for much of his tenure, he was pulled toward other priorities. In the mid-1970s, in particular, he was focused on the ongoing transition to co-education, constant debates related to the disciplinary code, and, of note, a $50 million capital campaign in honor of Andover’s bicentennial to be celebrated in 1978.48 But as that campaign made steady progress, Sizer and colleagues turned attention to a major curricular overhaul. For several years starting in 1977, a newly established Curriculum Committee, including Sizer and a mix of other administrators and faculty, developed a bold new “long-range plan” for Andover. The Curriculum Committee moved in directions Sizer had promoted in his earlier addresses and in the Synthesis course (which he continued to teach). Stepping back from the assumptions of a curriculum organized around departments and their disciplines, the Committee started with a question of purpose: what qualities and abilities should be present in a graduating senior? Countless meetings and memos later, the group recommended a “unifying objective” to cut across disciplinary lines and bring coherence to the curriculum: the development of “sound and imaginative thinking, and inquiry into its processes.” Earlier drafts had used the term “critical thinking.” Either way, the goal was to emphasize not only deep understanding and application of ideas, but also an understanding of how knowledge was constructed, including self-awareness about the influence of one’s own cultural context. Meanwhile, accompanying the main objective of “sound and imaginative thinking” was a list of seven learning goals that were more specific

68

J. P. SPENCER

to subject areas but still focused broadly on methods of inquiry—for example, “some understanding of and ability to use scientific processes and method.” The goal was not to change radically the menu of required courses at Andover; students would develop the prescribed habits of thinking in existing or similar courses within departments. But those courses were to be framed less as the acquisition of a body of “material” (with skills and methods remaining implicit and often dimly perceived) and more as a means of explicitly teaching the intellectual skills at the heart of the disciplines and, more generally, of liberal learning itself.49 In one instance, the curriculum proposal did call for a new course and, with it, a new way of thinking about assessment and graduation at Andover. Seniors were to take an interdisciplinary, problem-focused seminar like the Synthesis course, partly as a learning experience in its own right, and partly as preparation for another new demonstration of mastery—a capstone exam that would ask students to display “sound and imaginative thinking” across disciplines.50 The work of the Curriculum Committee had another aspect that was of great significance to Sizer: strategies for expanding socioeconomic and racial diversity at Andover. Especially since his experience in the military, Sizer had been impressed by the worthiness and capability of people “from every quarter.” In the 1970s, he worked to expand access to Andover for low-income and minority students, through recruitment and scholarships, “short-term programs” that brought students to Andover for summer experiences, and “complementary” partnerships with public schools. In the process, he was struck by the impact of the experience; as he reflected later, “I watched students flourish intellectually and personally even though they came from…schools which the pundits sweepingly believed stunted their futures.”51 And yet, by the late 1970s, it was getting harder for low-income students and students of color to attend Andover. With inflation soaring and the stock market dropping, it cost more per student to run the school, driving up tuition and squeezing scholarship resources. At the same time, many families had less discretionary income. Andover was already too expensive for all but the most affluent families, and the trend was moving further in that direction. For Sizer and the Curriculum Committee, this created a moral imperative to brainstorm new approaches for expanding access. Indeed, Sizer insisted that these financial and moral considerations were key to curricular decisions.52

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

69

In the end, they landed on several variations on a basic idea: serving more students by having them on campus for shorter periods of time. The proposed ideas included a two-year diploma program, elimination of ninth grade, and an increase in short-term programs and day students—all aimed at stretching scholarship funds to cover more students and enabling families to finance a larger percentage of the education than was possible in the case of a four-year experience. For educational reasons alone, Sizer had been committed all along to the idea that graduation be based on demonstrated mastery rather than an obligatory four years of “time served.” Now this idea took on larger significance as part of a democratic vision for the school. “In somber, but honest, moments,” he wrote, “I believe that a failure to change will mean the end of a Phillips Academy that we respect, and its replacement by a rather threadbare school which serves any youngster who can pay the high tuition which the school finds necessary to keep going. That’s not the school the Phillipses had in mind, nor which we want. I hope we have the wisdom to chart the right new course, and the gumption to sail it.”53

From Andover to the National Stage To Sizer’s dismay, Andover apparently did not have the gumption to carry out his vision of a more democratic institution, at least not during the 1979–1980 school year. In the spring, the faculty voted 56–45 against adopting the “unifying objective” of “sound and imaginative thinking.” Some apparently felt that to name a single objective was too restrictive, and other components of the committee’s proposal seem to have been defeated as well.54 By the following spring, a new committee was working on the curriculum, and some of its proposals were strikingly different than those of the 1977–1979 group: more required courses overall and more in particular subjects such as science; a mandatory five-course load for juniors (“uppers”) and seniors; and a “guarantee that students’ programs are sufficiently comprehensive and intense.”55 In contrast, Sizer’s committee had been pointedly concerned that students, as well as faculty, had too much on their plates, resulting in “rushed, often superficial work and too little serious and imaginative reflection and contemplation.”56 In hindsight, Sizer and his committee were ahead of their time. Even in 1980, their proposal nearly passed and drew the support of many faculty. In subsequent decades, such sentiment only grew, to the point

70

J. P. SPENCER

where, in 2018, the Academy created a new Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, aimed at strengthening the school’s commitment to “integrative learning,” and the leaders of that initiative cast themselves as continuing the work of the 1977–1979 Curriculum Committee.57 Meanwhile, in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, headmasters such as Barbara Landis Chase and John Palfrey deepened Sizer’s focus on expanding access to Andover, now described in terms of “equity and inclusion.”58 But in 1980, all of this remained in the future. “The cliché has it that curricula are as difficult to move as are graveyards,” Sizer had said during the curriculum reform effort.59 The defeat of his committee’s work no doubt reinforced that notion for him, an early experience with how hard it can be to change even one school. And yet, by 1980, Sizer already was looking beyond Andover. As he had worked to build a school that respected adolescents and promoted a more powerful and useful kind of learning for them, Sizer’s preoccupation with questions of democracy and equity had come to the fore: it seemed crucial for a wider range of students to gain access to such schooling. But as the stagnant economy limited his efforts to realize that goal, Sizer began to turn his attention to public education and a more ambitious idea: that all students could have access to the kind of education he was promoting at Phillips Academy. Initially, Sizer’s efforts in this direction were based at Andover and were an extension of his work there. As a headmaster, he was involved in the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and an offshoot group, the Commission on Educational Issues (CEI), of which he became the chair in 1979, joining his old friend Art Powell, then the executive director. CEI was focused on the broader crisis facing public education, which was reeling from financial problems stemming from property tax revolts (epitomized by California’s Proposition 13) and public criticism of an alleged decline in the quality of education. In that context, Sizer and Powell pushed to launch a major study on the future of secondary education, which they framed as being in the tradition not only of Eliot’s Committee of Ten but also James Bryant Conant’s The American High School Today (1959). Conant was another (former) president of Harvard who had published a major study of high school education, in this case promoting the comprehensive high school and its differentiated curriculum as a necessary bulwark of democracy, more or less in line with the Cardinal Principles report of 1918. Sizer did not embrace the Conant approach any more than he was a fan of Eliot’s focus on listing

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

71

required academic courses, but he and Powell did aim to emulate the kind of influence that each of those reports had achieved in their day. Sizer’s study was to have two main parts: academic research and debate on the purposes of compulsory high school education; and ethnographic research on high school “cultures” and on what students were actually doing and learning in schools—all toward the goal of drawing conclusions that could lead to better public policy. The academic part began in 1979 as a series of regular meetings on the Andover campus, a “sustained conversation” that was explicitly modeled on the Coleman seminar Sizer had presided over as a Harvard dean in the late 1960s. A number of the participants were historians, including Sizer, Powell, David Cohen, Robert Hampel (a contributor to this volume), and Andover history teacher Robert Crawford. Over several years, these and other researchers explored the origins and evolution of high school education in order to challenge the inevitability of existing practices and re-imagine new possibilities.60 But while the high school study started at Andover, it soon took Sizer beyond the school and on to new challenges. In addition to support from the NAIS and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, Sizer and Powell got grants from the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and other foundations, for “A Study of High Schools.” By 1981, with three children in college and one in graduate school, Sizer was giving up the security of Andover to live on foundation grants and travel the country visiting high school classrooms. Andover board president Donald H. McLean, Jr. vigorously tried to persuade him to stay, but as Sizer told him, “my personal concerns are for high schools in general, for popular education…I seek the chance to work again on the broader issues of American schooling, for the poor and the middle class as well as for the advantaged.”61

The Coalition of Essential Schools A Study of High Schools led to the publication of Sizer’s influential book, Horace’s Compromise, as well as two others: Powell’s, Cohen’s and Eleanor Farrar’s The Shopping Mall High School and Hampel’sThe Last Little Citadel.62 And Horace, in turn, led to the formation of the CES, which grew from a dozen schools in 1985 to roughly a thousand by the mid-1990s. As head of this nationwide network of innovative schools, Sizer became perhaps the most influential school reformer in America.63

72

J. P. SPENCER

Amidst the slew of reports on secondary school reform that appeared in the 1980s (most notably A Nation at Risk), Horace’s Compromise and the Coalition stood out because they “got” students and teachers, and this perceptiveness was rooted in Sizer’s and his colleagues’ many hours of ethnographic research in classrooms. Yet, the core ideas and approaches of Sizer’s movement had roots earlier in his career, and especially in the preceding decade at Andover. The cornerstone of the Coalition was not a prescribed curriculum or program but rather a set of nine (later ten) “Common Principles.” Many of those principles had striking antecedents in Sizer’s work at Andover. For example, the Coalition focused on “learning to use one’s mind well” (principle no. 1) and a streamlined curriculum in which “less is more” (no. 2), two principles that shifted the focus from content coverage in subjects to the “intellectual and imaginative powers and competencies that the students need.” Principals and teachers were to show “commitment to the entire school,” acting first as interdisciplinary generalists and mentors and secondarily as specialists in their disciplines (no. 8). And instead of diplomas earned by accumulating a required number of credits, students would have to “demonstrate mastery” (no. 6) or what they could actually do, on “real tasks,” in “exhibitions” attended by family and community.64 In these principles on purpose, curriculum, and assessment, it is easy to see echoes of Sizer’s Andover curriculum “screeds,” his Synthesis course, and the work of the 1977–1979 Curriculum Committee. The same was true of other Common Principles aimed at improving relationships and the overall learning environment in the school. As at Andover, learning in the Coalition was to be “personalized” (no. 4), with high school teachers having smaller numbers of students (no more than eighty) whom they could get to know well. The tone of the school was to be one of “decency and trust” (no. 7), and teaching was likened to coaching (no. 5), with students actively doing the work (“student-as-worker”) under teacher guidance rather than passively receiving instruction.65 One of the most powerful Andover legacies in the Coalition can be seen in Sizer’s signature emphasis on “bottom-up” reform. Unlike Charles Eliot and later James Conant, Sizer launched his national school reform effort as the head of a secondary school. Running a school had showed Sizer just how idiosyncratic schools and learners could be, and how important it was to pay attention to the views of those on the ground.

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

73

Deeper Learning for All What he learned and developed at Andover helped propel Sizer’s movement to great heights in the 1980s and 1990s, but the fact that the Coalition had roots in an elite boarding school is also emblematic of key challenges and critiques it has faced, especially in recent decades as its influence has declined. Was it reasonable to take Andover experiences as an inspiration for changing American high schools in general? The boarding school was unusually well-suited to Sizer’s vision. Its faculty had the training to wrestle with new and imaginative approaches to teaching and learning. Its resources made it possible for those teachers to do the kind of time-intensive “coaching” of students that Sizer described in Horace’s Compromise. And even as Sizer worked to expand access to the school, its students were selected explicitly because their prior schooling made the rigors of the Andover program navigable. Over the years, critics (some of them sympathetic to the Coalition) have emphasized the limitations that many high schools have in precisely these areas. Some have argued that high school teachers did not need more autonomy so much as more guidance, perhaps even the “models” and “programs” Sizer resisted providing.66 Others have documented teachers’ active resistance to the CES approach to teaching and learning, even within Coalition schools67 ; or school cultures that are so full of mistrust that teachers and administrators lack the capacity to carry out reforms on their own.68 Still others have noted the challenges of Sizer’s “less is more” approach in urban schools with low test scores and students who, in some cases, have math and literacy skills in need of remediation. In contrast to Andover’s selectivity and the assumption that not all students are equipped for its rigors (an assumption Sizer expressed while he was headmaster), CES Common Principle no. 3 stated that the movement’s ambitious intellectual goals should “apply to all students,” even if the methods used to reach those goals should vary according to student differences. But while some Coalition schools, notably Deborah Meier’s Central Park East, showed encouraging results in urban schools or settings that previously had been known for low attendance and graduation rates, others struggled in those settings.69 When long-time CES senior staff member Paula Evans became the founding principal of a charter school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, she struggled with the fact that many students, especially students of color, came to her school

74

J. P. SPENCER

years below grade level in math, reading, and writing—to which she responded, in part, by cutting back CES features like interdisciplinary and elective courses in order to run double periods of math instruction.70 As the historian Jack Schneider has argued, the 1980s ushered in a school reform focus on “excellence for all,” which included the idea that schools with low test scores could be remade in the image of private schools, an “Andover in every neighborhood.” But while Sizer and other reformers tried to replicate some features of private schools— especially, with support from the Gates Foundation, their small size—they confronted the inherent advantages that such private schools enjoyed with regard to financial resources and the social and cultural capital of the families they served.71 Given the challenges of applying Sizer’s Andover-inspired approach on a wide scale—including his insistence on individual schools having autonomy in the process—some have felt the standards and accountability movement of recent decades has offered a more realistic approach to school reform. Not only did curriculum standards provide the clear guidance that some critics felt the Coalition lacked and teachers needed, but the use of standardized tests also gave teachers powerful incentives to align their teaching with the standards. Changing what teachers actually did in classrooms—what they taught and how they taught it—had emerged as one of the biggest challenges not just for the Coalition but in all school reform efforts.72 Under No Child Left Behind and the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, teachers could face consequences if their students did poorly on standardized tests. This approach seemed to offer a powerful mechanism for changing schools quickly and on a mass scale (in contrast to Sizer’s “one-school-at-atime” approach), and it also appealed to those parents and reformers who were eager to raise the academic expectations of low-income and minority students and hold educators accountable for reducing race–and class-based “achievement gaps.”73 And yet, it is for reasons of equity and access, among others, that it is useful to revisit the vision of teaching and learning that Sizer developed at Andover and promoted in the CES. The standards and accountability movement has had problems of its own. Test-driven accountability has failed to significantly reduce race—and wealth-based gaps in achievement, which is not surprising, in light of decades of research showing that those gaps are rooted especially in social and economic inequalities beyond the school.74 Gains have been made in some charter schools, such as those

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

75

portrayed in the 2010 documentary, “Waiting for Superman,” which argued that we need more such schools for urban students who are otherwise stuck in “dropout factories.” But some of those schools and networks have tended toward a test-driven rigidity that can narrow the curriculum and stifle deep intellectual engagement. In this sense, they are far from equivalent to the schools and programs that serve more affluent students, in suburban districts and especially in private schools like Andover.75 To be sure, even many of those affluent schools could benefit from revisiting the kind of teaching and learning that Sizer promoted at Andover and in the Coalition. Sizer’s legacy continues to hold relevance for a range of teachers, parents, and students who are dissatisfied with the primacy of standardized testing, as well as reformers who want schools to do better at fostering critical thinking or twenty-first-century economic innovation.76 But that legacy is especially applicable to debates over equity and inclusion. Sizer’s movement, with its roots partly in an elite private school, has stood for critical intellect and personalization for all students, not just those in affluent settings or Advanced Placement tracks. As Deborah Meier put it in the 1990s, “there’s a radical—and wonderful—new idea here—the idea that every citizen is capable of the kind of intellectual competence previously attained only by a small minority.”77 And, as Meier and others also have emphasized, providing such an intellectually challenging education for all students is neither easy nor cheap; it requires both imagination and money, which in turn requires political will that has been lacking. Those who pay dearly to ensure a 12:1 student–teacher ratio for their own children often downplay the notion that “money matters” in school reform, Meier argues. But we need to spend more so that all children can enjoy such personalized attention from highly qualified teachers, as well as improved health care, summer experiences, and other key ingredients of high-quality education.78 Sizer did not provide easy solutions for these problems, but his effort to address them illuminates the nature and depths of inequality— the fundamentally different kinds of education received by children of different levels of privilege. The difficulty and potential cost of addressing that problem does not make doing so any less worthwhile or necessary.

76

J. P. SPENCER

Notes 1. Madeline Will, “Iconic School-Reform Group Ends 33-Year Run,” Education Week, January 25, 2017. 2. See, for example, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine, In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019); and Ted Dintersmith, What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers Across America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 3. Arthur G. Powell, interviewed by the author at Powell’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 10, 2014, recording in possession of the author. 4. See, for example, Charles M. Payne, So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2008), 166–167, 180–181. 5. See, for example, Jeffrey E. Mirel, “The Traditional High School: Historical Debates Over Its Nature and Function,” Education Next (Winter 2006): 14–21; Arthur G. Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David K. Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), 233–308. 6. Mehta and Fine, In Search of Deeper Learning 37–38, 396–399; Zoë Burkholder, “Why We All Need Integrated Schools: A Critique of ‘Successful’ Urban Charter Schools,” Teachers College Record, September 22, 2011, http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16546. 7. Joseph Barrell, “Pomfret School Report,” June 1948, Theodore R. Sizer papers (hereafter “Sizer papers”), OF.1UF.S7, b. 154, f. 17, John Hay Library Special Collections, Brown University (JHLSC). 8. Theodore R. Sizer, The New American High School (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 2013), 22–23. 9. Theodore R. Sizer, The Red Pencil: Convictions from Experience in Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), ix-xi; xix. 10. Sizer, New American High School, 23. 11. Ibid., 143–151. 12. Mark F. Goldberg, “Here for the Long Haul: An Interview with Theodore Sizer,” Phi Delta Kappan 77, No. 10 (June 1, 1996): 685–88. 13. Theodore R. Sizer, Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964). 14. Mirel, “The Traditional High School”; Powell, Farrar, andCohen, The Shopping Mall High School, 233–308. 15. Sizer, Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century, 125–127, 141, 189– 192, 199–203; Sizer, The Red Pencil, 58–67. 16. Sizer, The Red Pencil, 5–15. 17. Theodore R. Sizer, “To Be Principal of a Private School–Educator First, Manager Second,” NASSP Bulletin 66, No. 452 (March 1982): 91–92.

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

77

18. “Education: Well Begun Is Half Done,” Time, October 26, 1962. 19. William D. Cohan, Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short (New York: Flatiron Books, 2019), 31. 20. David K. Cohen, “Draft of Article about Theodore Sizer for Harvard Alumni Bulletin,” September 13, 1973; Theodore R. Sizer Records, 1972–1981 (hereafter “Sizer Records”), Nancy Sizer records center box, f. “1973–74,” Archives and Special Collections, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA (PA Archives). 21. See, for example, Theodore R. Sizer, “Sanctuaries and Melting Pots,” The Review of Education 2, No. 3 (June 1976). 22. Theodore R. Sizer, “Address by Theodore Ryland Sizer at His Installation as Headmaster of Phillips Academy,” September 24, 1972, Head of School Records, Sizer Writings, 1972–1981 (hereafter “Head of School Records”), PA Archives; Fred M. Hechinger, “Education,” The New York Times , October 1, 1972. 23. Cohen, “Draft of Article About Theodore Sizer”. 24. Susan H. Greenberg, “Looking Back at the Merger…and Its Unfinished Business,” Andover, Spring 2013, 28. 25. Jeff Archer, “A League of Its Own,” Education Week, October 20, 1999. 26. Frederick Allis Jr, Youth from Every Quarter: A Bicentennial History of Phillips Academy (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1979). 27. Cohan, Four Friends, 5, 40; Helen M. Eccles, “It’s Only Bad If You’re Caught,” Andover Bulletin (Summer 1976), Sizer Records, Headmaster Sizer’s Correspondence and General File 1972–1977, b. 9.5, f. “Discipline 1974–1975,” PA Archives. 28. Theodore R. Sizer to Deborah Meier, January 14, 1993, Sizer papers, b. 65, f. III.32, JHLSC. 29. Theodore R. Sizer, “Reflection on Andover,” August 20, 1992, Sizer papers, b. 157, f. 11, JHLSC. 30. Meredith Price, “An Appreciation: Ted Sizer Reshaped Phillips, Education,” Andover Townsman, November 11, 2009, https://www.andoverto wnsman.com/news/local_news/an-appreciation-ted-sizer-reshaped-phi llips-education/article_7dac5c75-54f1-510c-a113-5c11dc73d745.html. 31. Cohan, Four Friends, 5; Archer, “A League of Its Own”. 32. Nancy Sizer, interviewed by the author at Sizer’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 16, 2017, recording in possession of the author. 33. Gordon Goldstein and Faith Hawkins, “School Closes Student Center,” The Phillipian, October 17, 1980. 34. Cohan, Four Friends, 41. 35. Sizer, The Red Pencil, 41–42. 36. Archer, “A League of Its Own”. 37. Ibid.

78

J. P. SPENCER

38. David Ruenzel, “The Essential Ted Sizer,” Education Week, September 4, 1996. 39. “Education: Well Begun Is Half Done”. 40. Alan R. Blackmer, An Inquiry into Student Unrest in Independent Secondary Schools (National Association of Independent Schools, 1970). 41. “Education: Well Begun Is Half Done”. 42. Theodore R. Sizer, “Memorandum to the Trustees,” July 13, 1972, Head of School Records, PA Archives. 43. Theodore R. Sizer, “Memorandum to the Faculty: Screedum Tertium; or a Distillation of Tentative Conclusions from the June Meetings of the Committee on Academic Policy,” September 18, 1974, Head of School Records, PA Archives. 44. Theodore R. Sizer, “Memorandum to Committee on Academic Policy,” April 18, 1975, Sizer Records, Headmaster Sizer’s Correspondence and General File 1972–1977, b. 9, f. “Curriculum 1972–1977,” PA Archives. 45. Sizer, “Memorandum to the Trustees”; Theodore R. Sizer, “Memorandum to the Faculty: Andover’s Formal Curriculum and Related Matters,” September 14, 1973, Head of School Records, PA Archives. 46. Owen Flanagan, “Agenda for Synthesis Committee Summer Planning Session,” July 7, 1975, Sizer Records, Headmaster Sizer’s Correspondence and General File 1972–1977, b. 24, f. “Synthesis Course 1974– 77,” PA Archives. 47. Dan Lieberfeld, “Two Alternatives: Synthesis Course,” The Phillipian, October 17, 1975. 48. Helen M. Eccles, “The Sizer Years,” Andover Bulletin, April 1981. 49. Curriculum Committee, “Draft Report of the 1977–1979 Curriculum Committee,” October 19, 1979, Sizer Records, Files 1978–1981, b. 9½, f. “Curriculum July-Dec 1979”; and “Final Report of the Curriculum Committee,” March 10, 1980, Sizer Records, Nancy Sizer document box, f. “1979–80, 2 of 2,” PA Archives. 50. Curriculum Committee, “Draft Report”; and “Final Report”. 51. Sizer, “Reflection on Andover”. 52. Theodore R. Sizer, “Memorandum to the Curriculum Committee,” August 24, 1978, Sizer Records, Nancy Sizer records center box, f. “1978–79,” PA Archives. 53. Ibid.; and Curriculum Committee, “Final Report”. 54. Gordon Goldstein, “‘Unifying Objective’ Defeated,” The Phillipian, April 25, 1980. 55. George Canellos, “Course of Study Committee Reports to Faculty,” The Phillipian, April 17, 1981. 56. Sizer, “Memorandum to the Curriculum Committee,” August 24, 1978. 57. David Fox, “Welcome to the New Endeavor,” Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (blog), September 9, 2018, https://interdisciplinary.and over.edu/2018/09/09/welcome-to-the-new-endeavor/.

4

“INTELLECTUAL POWER” FOR ALL …

79

58. Phillips Academy, “Creating an Equitable Community,” September 24, 2015, https://www.andover.edu/news/2017/creating-an-equitable-com munity. 59. Sizer, “Memorandum to the Curriculum Committee,” August 24, 1978. 60. Theodore R. Sizer, “A Study of High Schools,” October 31, 1979, Sizer papers, b. 153, f. 3, JHLSC; and Theodore R. Sizer to Philip M. Drake,” May 30, 1979, Sizer Records, Files 1978–1981, Box 16½, f. “1979 JanJune,” PA Archives. 61. Donald H. McClean, Jr. to Theodore R. Sizer, August 25, 1979; and Theodore R. Sizer to Donald H. McClean, Jr., June 12, 1980, Sizer Records, Nancy Sizer document box, f. “1979–80, 2 of 2,” PA Archives. 62. Powell, Farrar, and Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School; Robert L. Hampel, The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools Since 1940 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986). 63. For an indispensable account of the growth of the Coalition, see Joseph P. McDonald, “The Coalition of Essential Schools in Its Second Decade,” in School Reform Behind the Scenes (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 45–66. 64. Coalition of Essential Schools, “Common Principles,” accessed September 29, 2017, http://essentialschools.org/common-principles/. 65. Ibid. 66. Lynn Olson, “Teachers Need Nuts, Bolts of Reforms, Experts Say,” Education Week, April 30, 1997. For a supportive account of CES, from a researcher who nonetheless worried over teachers’ need for more guidance, see Richard A. Gibboney, The Stone Trumpet: A Story of Practical School Reform, 1960–1990 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 68–72. 67. Donna E. Muncey and Patrick J. McQuillan, Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 68. Payne, So Much Reform, so Little Change, 166–167, 180–181. 69. Kathleen Cushman, “Taking Stock: How Are Essential Schools Doing?” Horace 8, No. 1 (1992), http://essentialschools.org/horace-issues/tak ing-stock-how-are-essential-schools-doing/, The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). 70. Paula Evans, interviewed by the author at Evans’ home in West Newton, Massachusetts, May 18, 2017, recording in possession of the author; Paula M. Evans, “A Principal’s Dilemmas: Theory and Reality of School Redesign,” Phi Delta Kappan 84, No. 6 (February 2003): 424–37. 71. Jack Schneider, Excellence for All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America’s Public Schools (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011).

80

J. P. SPENCER

72. David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); and David F. Labaree, Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 106–162. 73. John P. Spencer, “Updating ‘No Child Left Behind’: Change, or More of the Same?” in Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, May, 2010. http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=41. 74. See, for example, Jal Mehta, The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling (Oxford University Press, 2015); and Louis Freedberg, “Achievement Gap Points to Ineffectiveness of Decades of Reforms,” EdSource (blog), September 22, 2015, https://edsource.org/2015/achievement-gap-poi nts-to-ineffectiveness-of-decades-of-reforms/86601. 75. Burkholder, “Why We All Need Integrated Schools.” For a similar analysis from an earlier era, see also Jean Anyon’s classic article, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work,” Journal of Education 162, No. 1 (Fall 1980). 76. On teacher as well as parental dissatisfaction with the reforms of the accountability era, see for example Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession (New York: Doubleday, 2014), 231–232. On student malaise, see Mehta and Fine, In Search of Deeper Learning, 27–29. On the need for Coalition-style reforms in the name of twenty-first century economic innovation, see Dintersmith, What School Could Be. Dintersmith describes Ted and Nancy Sizer as being “ahead of their time” in prioritizing the development of students’ creativity and problem-solving abilities. 77. Meier, The Power of Their Ideas, 4. 78. Deborah Meier, “Thoughts on a National Curriculum,” Education Week, March 12, 2009; Amanda Paulson, “A Plea to Trust Schools, Not Just Tests,” Christian Science Monitor, September 17, 2002.

CHAPTER 5

“A Living, Breathing, Curriculum”: Harlem Prep and the Power of Cultural Relevance, 1967–1974 Barry M. Goldenberg

“With much ado and a lot of hope for a new day in education for Negro youth in the ghettoes of America, Harlem Prep opened its doors for the first time,” proclaimed the New York Urban League News in October 1967.1 “Prep School in an Armory Begins ‘Revolution’,” echoed The New York Times with similar fervor.2 Such declarations should not have been a surprise. After generations of palpable neglect by the New York City Board of Education and reports by researchers of the era that claimed Central Harlem’s schools were steeped in “inefficiency” and “inferiority,” excitement was abound about the potential of what a new school in Harlem could do to quash deficit narratives.3 The birth of a studentcentered, community school in Central Harlem would be “the first of

B. M. Goldenberg (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_5

81

82

B. M. GOLDENBERG

its kind,” according to the Black-owned New York Amsterdam News, and Harlemites like Edward Carpenter—who later became the school’s affable headmaster—epitomized this community buzz.4 Carpenter, a lifelong educator who had previously served as a guidance counselor, middle school math teacher, and community services director at Queens College, had spent his life believing in the potential of young people and the transformational power that schools could still have. “These kids are going to destroy a lot of old myths about education,” he noted in the school’s first days. “Their potential has been grossly underestimated. They have the ability to change the world.”5 For seven years from 1967 to 1974, Harlem Preparatory School— known locally as “Harlem Prep” or “the Prep”—existed in Central Harlem as an independent, community-based school that would go on to become a local and national phenomenon.6 The idea for the Prep was bold but straightforward: to educate students who had dropped out, or more accurately were “pushed out” of school, and to create a college preparatory institution, one that aimed to send its students to higher education. Originally emerging out of the New York Urban League’s (NYUL) “Street Academy” program, the school opened its doors at the historic 369th Harlem Regiment Armory on Fifth Avenue with only 49 students and a handful of teachers.7 But the school quickly grew. By the fall of 1968, Harlem Prep had almost doubled its initial enrollment and re-located to its permanent location, an old supermarket building on 136th Street and 8th Avenue in Central Harlem, with enrollment growing to nearly 500 students or more annually by 1970.8 Harlem Prep had also separated from the NYUL, becoming its own incorporated school with a separate board of trustees and an official charter from the New York City Board of Regents.9 With the financial backing of some of the nation’s largest philanthropies and corporations, as well as widespread support of the local Harlem community and Black activists, the Harlem Prep experiment quickly blossomed—albeit with persistent financial troubles. Still, the Prep evolved from a small, private, tuition-free alternative school to a widely recognized community institution, one that, despite remaining independent of the New York City Board of Education, became the de facto public high school in Central Harlem. Because there were zero public high schools in Central Harlem, the Prep filled an egregious and racist void, serving both neighborhood youth and others from New York City and parts of New Jersey.10 During these seven years of independent

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

83

existence, the school graduated and sent to college nearly 750 students, almost all of whom were previously out of school or without a diploma. This chapter seeks to explore the history of Harlem Prep, with a particular focus on the school’s multicultural curriculum that was at the heart of its educational program. To be sure, there were many unique elements of the school that contributed to students’ academic success beyond its curriculum. For example, the school’s open-space classroom, which, as one student explained, led to the “breathability of the life of ideas,” was crucial to teachers’ pedagogy, student relationships, and the school’s broader multicultural philosophy.11 The eclectic and talented group of teachers themselves were likewise central to student learning. Not only did most of the teachers have rich life experiences—most did not have formal teaching credentials—but they were also selected to “reflect the diversity of the world,” and people of all races, ethnicities, religions, and ideologies made up the faculty.12 Their individual pedagogies and teaching styles, always grounded in what Carpenter called a “sincere belief that every youngster could learn,” was foundational.13 The talent and dedication of administrators, too, led by the husband-and-wife pair of Ed and Ann Carpenter, and the unorthodox rejection of age-grading (one only needed a college acceptance letter to graduate), should not be discounted. And, of course, Harlem Prep’s overarching multicultural philosophy, based on “strength through diversity,” undergirded all of its components.14 Yet, what should also be recognized in this school’s history is its robust curriculum—and how exploring the role of curricula in schools like Harlem Prep can help historians better understand the impact of schools in communities of color more broadly. The study of the curriculum in the history of education remains ripe for interpretation and reinterpretation. To be sure, curriculum has, in many respects, been examined ad nauseum for decades. From studies of Progressive Era battles between humanists and reformers, to focusing on anti-communism rhetoric during the height of the Cold War, to the so-called “culture wars” and the political leanings of certain textbooks of the 1990s, there is no shortage of scholarship on the tensions over curriculum in American educational history.15 This pattern of examining curriculum has continued in the last few decades, even as scholars have made important shifts to more critically assessing the intersection of race and schools.16 There has always been a consistent through-line of curriculum studies within the broader historiography of the field.

84

B. M. GOLDENBERG

Thus, the study of curriculum remains ever-relevant, and how scholars explore curriculum can—and should—evolve. This is particularly true within the nascent rise of scholarship on Black educational activism during the civil rights era. In recent years, historians of education have rightfully re-centered communities of color in the history of education whether it be ground-breaking work on Black women activism in the South, the less-known desegregation of private schools, complicated issues of busing and school desegregation, or community organizing in the fraught battles between parents and city officials.17 While scholarship on school equity and integration has highlighted the complex layers of activism in the midtwentieth century, and necessarily so, there also must be a continued focus on school curricula within the broader freedom struggles in education. What were Black students actually learning inside their classrooms in the midst of this activism? How was liberation being conceptualized by educational practitioners at this moment? Was curriculum key to the broader struggle for freedom? Partial clues to these questions can certainly be found in much of this recent scholarship on the era. For example, notable works from Martha Biondi, Russell Rickford, Jon Hale, Adina Back, among others, have illustrated how curricular and personnel representation inside schools at both the K-12 and higher education levels mattered to parents, community members, and students who were fighting for school equity.18 Yet, the field has only scratched the surface on what there is to know about the curriculum that Black educational stakeholders of the era developed and put into practice in powerful ways. Scholars must continue to look inside Black schools, not just around them. Closely examining a specific institution such as Harlem Prep is one such way in which to help answer these questions. As Ansley Erickson argues, a case-study or “microhistory” of one school “has the potential to redefine our understanding of the whole,” in this case the “whole” being a fuller portrait of the complex, dynamic relationship between education and activism in the 1960s and 1970s.19 Harlem Prep, bolstered by its multicultural curriculum, was certainly a part of this swell of activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. With the rise of Freedom Schools grounded in the “organizing tradition” of the South-led Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, to the growth of Pan-African schools across the North and West in the later 1960s and early 1970s (as well as the broader alternative public school movement happening everywhere), Harlem Prep’s emergence was part of broader educational trends.20 Moreover, Harlem itself—a “fabled Black Mecca” and “the cosmopolitan center for black

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

85

political activity,” as Manning Marable once referred to it—had a rich legacy of activism that made an idea like Harlem Prep seem natural.21 In all of this broader activism, the idea of representation and cultural relevance has always been significant in the struggle for civil and human rights. This has been particularly true when zooming into schools. And, it has often been the curriculum of a school where these ideas have been most present. As scholars continue to assess schools such as Harlem Prep and explore the history of American education, it is important that they take time to reassess how to understand the role that curriculum has played in both broader activist efforts and, specifically, in creating empowering institutions. Curriculum has often been treated as a static enterprise, through a binary approach or through distinct battlegrounds in which two sides sit. However, a curriculum lives and breathes, and is a reflection of the values of a school as well as the community in which that school operates. Harlem Prep is a powerful example of these principles. In order to continue understanding the history of education and various activist efforts of the 1960s and 1970s, scholars must continue to thoughtfully investigate school curricula, particularly during this period of dynamic change. This chapter specifically examines Harlem Prep’s curriculum within the context of the era, exploring both the school’s focus on cultural relevance and the specific courses available, which serves to illuminate how each was central to the school’s educational mission—and perhaps even the broader struggle for freedom.

“Everything Spoke to the Times”: Relevant Teaching in Class Spaces When renowned educational psychologist Edmund Gordon of Columbia University’s Teachers College visited Harlem Prep in 1972 as part of a federal government report on the school, he immediately commented on how the school’s teachers engaged their pupils in class. “They teach the student to relate the subject matter to his life in a way that is relevant to him as an individual,” wrote Gordon in his assessment.22 “Whatever the word ‘relevant’ meant to the student, the staff of Harlem Prep had to bring about a change in attitude so that learning could take on the quality of joy,” added headmaster Edward Carpenter.23 During Harlem Prep’s independent tenure, during which it was free to jettison the public school curriculum, the school’s teachers crafted lessons and

86

B. M. GOLDENBERG

shaped subject matter around the needs of the student and the issues of the time. Today, this approach is commonly known as Culturally Relevant (or Responsive) Pedagogy (CRP), popularized by influential scholars such as Gloria Ladson-Billings, Geneva Gay, and many others.24 Yet, as these scholars have noted, this idea of culturally responsive teaching was not a novel concept: Black scholars dating back to Carter G. Woodson and Anna Julia Cooper in the early twentieth century put forth similar ideas.25 Thus, it is important to recognize that the Prep—and other Black alternative schools—operated as part of a long tradition of centering cultural relevance in the classroom. The way in which teachers approached the material, and the flexibility with which teachers inserted relevant political issues and local concerns, was central to the educational program at the Prep. “Everything [at Harlem Prep] spoke to the times,” remembers alumnus Clifford Jacobs. “In addition to draft cards being burned, women were burning their bras, the whole women’s liberation [movement] was coming into full effect.” Jacobs, one of the few students who previously attended a private school prior to the Prep, left his Catholic school education—against the will of his parents—because he felt that he was soon going to be expelled for his political ideas and perceived radicalism. At Harlem Prep, however, Jacobs could not only be himself, but he could also connect with a curriculum that matched his own curiosity and helped him engage with the politics of the times. “The world was aflame, the world was alive…. My friends and I, we all felt apart of that. It wasn’t something that was removed from us, it was something that affected us directly, and I think the curriculum at Harlem Prep, the class discussions, all those things related to what was happening in the world,” explains Jacobs. “There was this sense of that everything was relevant, that this was a living, breathing, curriculum.”26 This “living, breathing, curriculum” included lesson plans based on discussions about real-life issues pertinent to students from “the streets,” as they put it, such as public housing policies in Harlem, the presence of drugs, and issues related to criminal justice.27 For example, math teacher Raymond Crawford understood that he needed to make explicit links to the everyday. “I felt it was my responsibility to make a connection with kids, to let them know that math wasn’t some ‘way out’ subject, that you could actually use math to figure out things in life, and it shouldn’t be a subject that could not be used at all.” Naledi Raspberry, a young English and drama teacher, similarly

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

87

encouraged students to create a class play depicting their lives while also frequently taking students to the nearby National Black Theater and other local spaces.29 “There was so much excitement in the world, and so we would write about it!” she remembers today.30 Without any mandated curriculum or standards to meet other than their own, Harlem Prep faculty were free to shape the curriculum in ways that made sense to the students, one of many factors that led class discussions to be “filled with electricity.”31 “We talked about anything and everything [related to current events]” affirmed former teacher Bari Haskins-Jackson. “We had to be aware of all of those things that were going on around us, because there were things that were happening and they were happening in everyone’s lives.”32 This relevance, of course, also centered on making sure the curriculum not only related to the students’ lived experiences, but also to their identities as Black men and women. “Every attempt is made to enrich the young Afro-American to create for him a sense of pride in his African heritage,” explained popular African history teacher, referred to as Dr. Ben, to the New York Amsterdam News, “showing his ancestors all the way from antiquity to 1966.”33 History teachers like Dr. Ben and George Simmonds—a student fondly remembers how the latter would often take students to the historic Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—stressed the countless achievements of Black people of the world, a point of view echoed by math and English teachers, too.34 Teachers like Gaywood McGuire and Duane Jones exposed their students to great Black mathematicians, and English teachers introduced students to iconic writers such as James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Nikki Giovanni, and Zora Neale Hurston, among others.35 “It [was] a cultural institution,” exclaims alumnus Mwanajua Kahamu, in reference to how students were constantly engaging in Black culture.36 As another student put it, “Let’s talk about why black history matters, let’s talk about why black is beautiful, is important—not just politically, but in terms of self-acknowledgement.”37 There was an abundance of classes that each provided “some type of relevance to the [student] population.”38 It is noteworthy that courses like these were very rare in the public educational landscape at the time; they were even “unusual” at universities, too.39 Despite the focus on Black culture, the ethos of multiculturalism still reigned, and students who identified as Puerto Rican or Middle Eastern, for example, were also encouraged to engage in lessons or assignments

88

B. M. GOLDENBERG

that spoke to their own interests. Harlem Prep’s curriculum was steeped in Black cultural traditions, yet also very proudly multicultural in ways that strategically exposed all students to a diverse curricular palette. Young people like Alberto Cappas, a Puerto Rican student, was able to gain self-confidence and explore his interest in Latin American history at the Prep.40 As headmaster Ed Carpenter wrote in 1973, a primary goal was to prepare students “to live and function in a multi-religious, multi-cultural, multi-racial society.”41 Harlem Prep’s culturally relevant style of teaching was intricately woven into the fabric of the school’s broader multicultural philosophy and the impact it hoped to have on students. To understand the school is to understand the way in which all of these principles undergirded its actions. This focus on cultural relevance was also highly dynamic. Teachers recognized that connecting with students’ interests required a certain malleability. The lines of hierarchy between teachers and students were often blurred, and students often described classes as “informal,” the latter further supported by the fluidity of open-space classrooms. As Ed Carpenter explained, “one important characteristic for successful teaching at Harlem Prep was the ability to be flexible.”42 The movable partitions allowed for different class set-ups each day, visits from Black musicians or entertainers who stopped by frequently, and the discussion of current events that percolated through the community and curriculum. Teachers welcomed this spontaneity and were comfortable even leaving the walls of the school or drawing from non-traditional materials. Math teachers, for instance, would casually take students to the pool halls to teach lessons— “those weren’t the types of things that were going on traditionally” explains former teacher Bari Haskins-Jackson—and a husband-and-wife pair of photography teachers once used familiar picture books to help encourage a student who had trouble reading.43 Long-time Harlem Prep administrator Hussein Ahdieh noted a similar ethos in his memoir: Teaching at Harlem Prep was spontaneous and organized around the needs and interests of the students. Textbooks did not allow for this level of flexibility so teachers often made their own materials. Students and teachers were in a constant dialogue about learning in which students were asked about their interests and teachers allowed their answers to shape the courses.44

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

89

Ahdieh’s recollection underscores the idea that the Prep’s focus on relevancy was part and parcel of its founding principles. “There is a desirable combining of humanistic and intellectual values,” education researchers reported in 1973 during an external study of the school. They described the Prep’s “aim as strongly academic, with a focus on traditional academic work, although this aim is accomplished in nontraditional ways.”45 This was an apt description. Even within the norms of letter grades, bell schedules, and homework assignments, the Prep’s teachers taught young people through the principle of cultural relevance by whatever creative means necessary.46

“A Curriculum that Holds Their Interests”: Course Selection and Educational Program Both Ann and Ed Carpenter, partners in the implementation of the school’s curriculum, knew that program breadth and an organic course selection process would be a key to student achievement and engagement, particularly since most Harlem Prep students had felt powerless and unrepresented in their previous schools. And the couple worked in tandem on this project: Ann Carpenter most visibly enforced, designed, and kept track of Harlem Prep’s courses, while Ed Carpenter was keen to sketch out its purpose in relation to the school’s broader philosophy.47 In a private progress report to the Ford Foundation, Ed Carpenter wrote explicitly about the “rationale for courses” at the Prep: “Because of the rise of cultural-pluralism in the existing pluralistic technological society, young people must receive an education that will sharpen their perceptions and heighten their awareness of the sometimes deleterious effect of racism, bigotry, the bombardment of the media, revitalistic movements, and the phenomena of ‘Future Shock.’” He believed, too, that a very wide selection of courses was a key to combating these “deleterious effects,” as well as preparing students for an ever-changing world. “Simply stated,” Carpenter continued: the philosophy of Harlem Prep is to present course work that will integrate the antiquities of ancient history with the contemporary problems of today; train students to evaluate themselves, their culture; to evaporate any barriers preventing their induction into a post-industrial society. It is therefore necessary that an interdisciplinary approach be utilized so that students can develop perspective and regard the phenomena of society from a global

90

B. M. GOLDENBERG

point of view. In addition, it is vital that students be trained to cope with the accelerative thrust of technology, advertising and propaganda.48

Ed Carpenter’s vision for the curriculum was forward-thinking, and, most notably, it was in line with his larger multicultural vision for education. Of note, the Carpenters envisioned the Prep’s multiculturalism as not just racial or cultural, but also as intellectual and technological. With respect to the latter, for example, they cared deeply about technological innovations, and their grant proposals often included the addition of programs around media production and media comprehension—what educational scholars would today refer to as “critical media literacy.”49 To be sure, they were committed to using the curriculum as a vehicle to explore a diverse range of political opinions within Black thought, but they gave considerable attention to immersing students in the changing role of media in society and a future-looking view of an interdisciplinary approach popular in educational research today. They saw the issues as inseparable. Once students entered Harlem Prep, they had almost full control of their path, choosing courses that most suited their interests. The sole exceptions were required courses in math (ranging from algebra to calculus) and English, and science (if students had not had any courses before) each term.50 Since the Prep was technically a private school, students did not have to fulfill state requirements, even if the school’s provisional charter with the New York State Education Department allowed for state-recognized diplomas. “The students had input,” verifies one alumnus, and “we could request and suggest what courses would be interesting for us [and courses] for the teachers to teach in.”51 Newspaper accounts also confirm this to be true; teachers would submit a list of courses each semester, and the courses that students found most interesting would be the ones offered.52 Courses were “designed for problem solving” and “developed to provide skills in individual research and the daily application of learned skills to everyday community and family problems,” explained Carpenter in a 1969 grant proposal.53 Thus, for all these reasons, the Prep “decided to provide a non-graded educational program in which each student could progress at his own individual rate;” with students leaving their prior high schools at different grade levels, there was no set curriculum or structured academic guidelines other than to promote students’ intellectual development.54 “The students are provided with opportunities to develop and progress according to their

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

91

individual capacities for learning,” explained Hussein Ahdieh in 1974.55 There was no tracking program of any kind, and, as stated, the only requirements to graduate—in addition to the required English and math courses—were faculty or administrator approval and a college acceptance letter.56 Essentially, with no set number of classes to take or specific courses to fulfill, nearly every class acted as an elective for the purpose of quenching students’ varied interests and “providing a framework for enabling each student to become a confident, independent individual.”57 Much of the responsibility to enact these curricular philosophies fell on the shoulders of Ann Carpenter. “Ann was very instrumental,” explains 1971 alumna Sherry Kilgore. “Ann to me was the point person” in helping to fulfill Ed’s vision, organizing curricula, and helping students choose classes and create educational plans.58 Her daughter, Casey Carpenter, remembers her mother telling her about the excitement that students would have during registration. “One year she was doing registration and she was standing behind a table, and there were students in a whole circle, like a couple of people knee-deep, and she said she turned around in an entire circle because there were so many students!”59 This was student engagement—around registration, no less—in its purest form. In line with higher education, Harlem Prep organized the faculty and course offerings into academic departments. The English department was the largest (it had over a dozen associated faculty members in 1972) and a wide array of courses.60 Sample English-related courses from 1968 to 1972 included: “Reading Skills Workshop,” “Creative Arts Workshop,” “Creative Writing, Communication Arts Workshop,” “Writing Skills, Principles of Play Writing,” “Eastern Literature,” “Writing Skills Workshop,” “Survey of World Literature,” “Being and Non-Being,” “Linguistics,” “Semantics,” “Women in Literature and Life,” “Shaping of the Modern Mind,” and “Issues in Comparative Literature.”61 More traditional courses such as “Writing Skills” sought to teach students to “communicate to difference audiences,” teaching them techniques for writing short articles, term papers, and reports based on “factual information.” Other classes such as “Eastern Literature” provided “a survey of philosophy and literature underlying Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam and Japanese and Chinese Poetry.” Still other “workshop” courses sought to help students prepare for college by relying on more independent-focused assignments and less-guided oversight.62

92

B. M. GOLDENBERG

The goal of personal growth and internalized hope through language— whether that be poetry, short stories, scriptwriting, or music—was emphasized through the Prep’s educational program, particularly in the large assortment of English classes. Expressions like this short poem, entitled “Perilous Journey Home,” by student Duane Peterson were a common occurrence: Through enigmatic ravines and over cascading waterfalls polluted by moral epidemics. I travel toward my home. Through Satanic beckoning passes I stumble as the vulture called mankind eagerly awaits my downfall into the slime. So that they may pick my soul clean of its character and individuality. Through parched lips I scream for want of recognition and of a pedestal like that of my oppressors. For with this spiritual nourishment I can rid my soul of its paranoiac tendencies. As soon as I can achieve this I may be able to erect a new standard of decency for myself and step forward onto a new horizon of respect. But until then I must still continue my journey towards my home.63

As Peterson’s poem and other alumni suggest, English courses at the Prep were not only about developing academic literacy skills, but about selfreflection and personal development.64 In the Mathematics Department, courses ranged from “brush up course[s]” like “Background Math” to college prep courses such as “Advanced Algebra” and “Calculus.” Other courses included: “Algebra I,” “Geometry as Existence,” “Pre-College Analytical Geometry,” “PreCollege Trigonometry,” and “Grass Roots Math.” “Grass Roots Math,” which took “old ideas and [gave] them a new face by attempting to relate math at its roots to people in their everyday life… in the ghetto,” was an example of the Prep working to make mathematical concepts more accessible—ultimately more relevant—to students.65 The faculty knew no subject matter in school was apolitical. Math seemed to operate a bit differently than other courses, too; classes were often taught on a one-onone basis or in small groups, and it was common for a class to be only a handful of students doing semi-supervised individual work.66 The Science Department, likewise, had a varied course selection with both traditionallooking courses such as “Biology Part I and II” and “Chemistry I and II,” as well as courses such as “Fundamentals of Science,” which acted as a general course and sought to teach students “scientific skills of problems solving, manipulative skills of the laboratory and research techniques.”

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

93

Other science courses included “Physics I and II” and “Oceanology I and II.”67 The Social Science Department was a conglomerate of historyfocused courses combined with various social science-focused courses from multiple disciplines.68 Ed Carpenter’s thinking on this was clear: “I thought it would be interesting to have all of these diverse young people in a school and present them with diverse materials that they might find interesting such as anthropology, political science, local state and government [courses], [and] all forms of studies like African studies and American studies, but from comparative points of view, so that they could test their personal philosophies and solutions against other models.”69 In terms of history, the popular “African Studies” course aimed “to illustrate that the Black people in the world have always recognized their common racial identity and interests.”70 There was also a separate “Ancient African History” course that focused on art and architecture in Ancient Egypt and other African civilizations, and included multiple “trips to museums.”71 Other courses that revolved around Black history and Black peoples’ engagement with the world included: “Black Theater in the 1900s,” “African Black Nationalism,” “Caribbean Studies,” and “History of the City and Urbanization.”72 However, as described, Harlem Prep also made sure to offer courses that exposed students to a wide range of topics and histories beyond Black culture. These included courses such as “Asian Cultures,” “Latin America: A Continent in Turmoil,” “20th Century History of America,” “History of WWI and WWII” (including a broad study of modern Europe), “The Individual in the Urban Setting,” and “History of Revolution and Social Change,” which covered political movements throughout the world.73 Again, this was the school’s multiculturalism at work. Courses that spanned the social sciences were equally diverse. “Introduction to Economic Theory and History” provided both a historical and contemporary look at capitalism and its inequities, while “Community Legal Problems” attempted to “give the student a practical view as to how the legal judicial and administrative affect the community.” Other courses in various disciplines included: “Principles of Sociology I and II,” “Archeology and Physical Anthropology,” “Historical Anthropology,” “Cultural Anthropology,” “Culture and Personality” (another anthropological course on “character formation”), and “Introduction to Psychology.”74 As administrator Hussein Ahdieh explained in 1974, “In a number of cases students have been able to take courses that most likely

94

B. M. GOLDENBERG

they would not have taken until they got to college,” but “Prep has been successful in teaching them in a high school curriculum.”75 Finally, there was also an array of courses in the Art Department and Communications Media Department. For art, courses included “Art Workshop,” where students could “extend and/or develop their abilities” in areas such as painting, drawing, sculpture, leather craft, and jewelry making. Additional classes and topics covered in various workshops included art history, advertising art, and aesthetics.76 One alumnus even remembers entering in an art contest and winning a scholarship at a local art museum.77 In terms of communications and media courses, two popular sequential courses were “Radio and Television Workshop” which focused on journalism and mastering the use of audio/video equipment, followed by “Filmmaking,” where students created their own films.78 The husband-and-wife teaching team of Gary and Minna Hilton spearheaded this department, and they encouraged Harlem Prep students to make their own films. One such production is “Four Women,” produced on 16-mm film by Ilanga Witt. In it, Harlem Prep women dance to Nina Simone’s “Four Women,” walking the streets of Harlem and providing a visual expression of Simone’s song about the injustice and suffering of Black women.79 There were also select music and dance classes at the Prep, the latter often led by students themselves.80 Overall, there were at least sixty different confirmed courses across all departments during the school’s independent tenure, and likely many more.81 These courses were not just peripheral to the school’s design, but a core reason for student engagement and, for many, academic achievement.

“It Was like an Open House”: Programs, Initiatives, and the After-School Space Harlem Prep’s relatively conventional academic structure should not distract from the many unique programs and initiatives that were embedded into the curricular program and the school’s fluid multicultural philosophy. On a logistical level, this meant students had flexibility and agency in their education—or, more simply, choices in curricula and choices in how to learn. For example, one novelty included the “StudentTeach-Student” program, which, owing to a demand for instruction that outpaced the budget, “identified students at the Prep who have expertise in various subject areas.” Teachers “sometimes let students teach” each other in formal classroom settings, as well as more commonly to act

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

95

as tutors for peers who were struggling.82 As one administrator wrote at the time, this helped “everyone involved in the program develop respect for one another.”83 Another example was how “free use [was] made of experts from colleges, industry, and the community,” as the Prep commonly worked to partner with outside individuals for handson programs and learning opportunities.84 For instance, the “Volunteer Teacher Program” relied on thirty-nine “experts” from entities such as Port Authority, Union Carbide, IBM, and AT&T to present various courses, “through in-kind services,” in law, advertising, investments, systems analysis, and other topics.85 Other examples of outreach-related programming included the Media Department’s work with a local TV affiliate, where students’ media projects—short films, news reports, and other community reporting—would be shown on a regularly scheduled local TV program called “As We Dig It.”86 The Media Department took “its [student] crew into the community and have been developing programs depicting the attitudes, desires, and efforts of community people in solving their daily problems.”87 Another notable program—albeit a temporary one—was the Adult Evening Program. During the 1968–1969 academic year, the Prep “sponsored Evening classes for adults desiring [a] High School Equivalency Diploma; upgrading in present employment; entrance to Evening College; and for those people wishing to learn to read.”88 Harlem Prep teachers and administrators volunteered to teach hundreds of adults four nights a week, many of them parents of Harlem Prep students.89 There were also, at times, short summer orientation and tutorial projects to help incoming students, current Harlem Prep students, and graduates who needed employment.90 Other one-time programs included the Engineering Concepts Curriculum Program (ECCP), which was co-created by the science and mathematics departments to “prepare our students for the technological age and the problems it has created so that they can be the problems solvers and creative builders in the post-technological age.”91 Harlem Prep teachers and administrators—particularly administrator and head of curriculum, Ann Carpenter—constantly sought to develop new programs and initiatives that spoke to the school’s interest in teaching practical skills that would prepare them for both college and society more broadly. For instance, throughout the school’s duration, administrators wrote dozens of proposals for various programs that the school hoped to incorporate into its educational program. These programs included bolstering

96

B. M. GOLDENBERG

the school’s academic departments such as: more robust sculpture and ceramics courses; building a “Computer-Technology Center Program”; a separate “Oceanology Institute” that would invite oceanology scholars to the Prep; a “Historical Sites” program where students would travel by bus to important historical landmarks and generate reports; a separate ten-month interdisciplinary course that would rigorously combine the humanities and social sciences; a “Drafting Course” to “enhance [students’] chance of success” in the fields of engineering, architecture, and designing; and the creation of a school band and orchestra department, among many others.92 More creative projects that were proposed included a Summer Activity Program in East Africa where students would travel throughout the region, volunteering, working in camps, attending lecture at universities, and engaging in other experiences. So, too, was the “Para-Professional Training” program, which sought to train community elders at the Prep and create bonds of connection between older citizens and students at the same time.93 Notably, this program differed from other paraprofessional programs in the city, encouraging older participants to seek training (as opposed to younger community members more common in other venues).94 Furthermore, the “Police Cadet Corps” program would “prepare young men and women to enter John Jay College, graduate and enter the employ of Law Enforcement” seeing that “many young black and Spanish speaking youth have strong feelings that police officers are hostile and insensitive to minority groups.”95 Both the paraprofessionals’ efforts and cadet programs met apparent needs in Harlem; similar grassroots programs to prepare police cadets and paraprofessionals were proposed by Dr. Kenneth Clark and his HARYOU team only a few years prior.96 There were also proposals that had great detail such as “Touch Typing Classes” to help students “turn in neat reports in college” (and parents in the adult evening program to make money as typists), as well as a “Boricuas-American Integrative Skill Development Program” to help teach Puerto Rican individuals various skills that could help their professional development.97 Ultimately, due to the school’s tenuous financial situation, many—if not most—of these programs and initiatives never came to fruition. However, some, like the adult evening program and additional resources in the oceanology department, seemingly did in rudimentary forms. More importantly, even if the Prep staff was unable to

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

97

expand its curriculum in the ways that they hoped, these proposed initiatives illustrate how the school envisioned a robust, community-focused educational program, and how the Carpenters wanted to prepare students for entry into a pluralistic society. It was notable that grant proposals and curricular sketches focused so heavily on additional programs as essential to not just student learning, but the school itself. Perhaps one of the most important components of the Prep’s educational program was its thriving after school space. “I don’t think there were any teachers that rushed out of there (unless there was something really important), but most of us stayed forever and ever [after school],” remembers English teacher Sandy Campbell. “It became almost a weekly thing that some of the teachers and students, on Friday, would sit down and plan out the activities and meals that we would have over Saturday and Sunday and everybody would just leave school and go to that person’s house, and just stay there for the weekend. I’m not exaggerating, it was like every week!”98 What Campbell describes—and his former pupils verify—is that part of the Harlem Prep experience (and perhaps an unwritten component of the educational program) was a deep camaraderie that encouraged collaborative learning and shared success. This often happened as much outside the classroom and during after-school hours, as it did inside school walls. There were, of course, planned extracurricular programs such as dance and music practices, where the Moja Logo dancers learned Africaninspired routines or where the Moja Logo chorus prepared for upcoming performances.99 Alumnus Beverly Grayman-Rich, for example, remembers one of her concerts at the Prep, where the chorus sang the whole album of “Lady Sings the Blues” based on Diana Ross’s portrayal of Billie Holiday; she also remembers going out on the road to sing, including giving a concert to prisoners at a state prison in New Jersey.100 Musician and alumnus Harry Smith fondly remembers playing after school hours and around New York City with the school’s jazz band—it was more a hang-out group of musicians who “jammed” than a formal band program—led by Arnold Jones who was the Prep’s music teacher and a well-known local musician.101 It was also very common for some of the more politically active students such as the Five Percenters to organize meetings after school, too.102 More than anything, however, students and staff remember the spontaneity inherent in the after-school space that Campbell and others depict. Impromptu lectures from different Harlem Prep teachers when school

98

B. M. GOLDENBERG

officially ended was an almost daily occurrence—“they just happened”— as a result of students often asking for teachers to continue a class discussion or lesson.103 Or, students themselves, after the final bell rung, “would go around and we’d have our own heated discussions about different things,” explains student Clifford Jacobs. “So even after classes were over, these conversations would go on—and I remember being there sometimes until later in the evening, just talking.”104 One administrator, from his vantage point, remembers this as well: “One of the things about Harlem Prep, was that nobody went home when they were supposed to. School was out at three o’clock—you had to throw those kids out of there at six. They didn’t want to leave!”.105 Although notes about the school’s unofficial late hours and afterschool meetings did not fill up official curriculum planning sheets, the vibrant after-school space was vital to the learning process.106 Failing to highlight the significance of these gatherings would not just be a disservice to students who valued this time—“it was good because you always learned new things,” explains one student—but because it was essential to the school’s character. And it was no secret that staff were expected to participate in this part of the unwritten curriculum.107 Not only did teachers and volunteers (such as those from IBM who would teach courses) stay after school, or assistant headmasters like Henry Pruitt, but so did Ed and Ann Carpenter.108 The school’s top administrators modeled this convergence of school, community, and home. Their daughter, Casey Carpenter, recalls how students very commonly visited the Carpenter’s house in New Jersey after school. “Students would come over [and] they would just ring the bell,” during both weekends and weeknights, unexpectedly and without warning. “It was like an open house,” she explains. Casey remembers students asking her when they entered the house, “‘Where’s Carp?’,” also sometimes calling her mother “Queen Bee.” Students would find Ann and Ed watching TV in the bedroom and join them in their room. “There was no school and home,” she asserts, and this attitude where students would sleep over on the weekends and come visit their administrators—or develop social relationships with their teachers—seeped into the educational program at Harlem Prep.109 Ultimately, the curriculum depicted on paper documents did not fully represent the school’s full educational program. The one-hour classroom block was not the only place where learning took place. After school gatherings and discussions, internships beyond school walls, and an overall

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

99

reliance on activities that were “educative,” as the late historian of education Lawrence Cremin argued, also were deeply embedded into the known and unknown broader curriculum of the Prep.110 By design, headmaster Carpenter, his wife and administrative partner Ann, and the entire diligent staff and faculty were able to design a curricular program reliant on extreme informality—in scheduling, in class selection, in the method and manner students acted inside these classes—interwoven with conventional educational components that were also necessary for tangible learning. Students still learned math, science, English, and history; they still were assessed via letter grades as they were before in the public schools. And, although Harlem Prep certainly had curricular shortcomings, and teachers—many of them inexperienced in the traditional sense—assuredly had pedagogical missteps, the unorthodox mixture proved effective. “The street is Harlem Prep, like all the learning is right here—this is the street…you don’t have to go out there and learn it,” said a student at the time.111 “Everything that happens in life, whether it carries material overtones or not, touches off a particular emotion within ourselves,” English teacher Sandy Campbell told students in 1971. “[An event] may spark an interest or a desire that we have to travel toward until it is fulfilled.”112 For hundreds of students, the event that Campbell speaks of—even if he and his students did not know it at the time—was attending, learning, and then graduating from Harlem Prep and experiencing the dynamic, multicultural educational program, buoyed by an expansive curriculum, that the school proudly offered.

In Perspective: Curriculum, the History of Education, and Social Justice Research “To say that [the Prep] was unique is like an understatement that I can’t even describe,” expresses alumnus Peter Hopson today. “It’s just hard to describe how dynamic and how fresh it was.”113 Hopson contends that there was “something special” that could be sensed upon walking in the building. Whether it was a student, teacher, or, on countless occasions, outside people such as philanthropists, educational evaluators, political figures, community members, or business people, all of them made similar claims.114 Plus, to be a student at Harlem Prep during this fraught era added to the intrigue. “This was 1970, you know? The sixties had just ended yesterday. Dr. King had just been shot, the whole deal—it was part

100

B. M. GOLDENBERG

of everybody’s psyche.” Hopson continues: “It was wild. I mean you had the Black Power people, but you had the quiet poets [too]…. You had to understand that the palette was so diverse.”115 While Hopson is surely referring to the entire Harlem Prep experience, this freshness and diversity that he remembers is also a fitting encompassment of the school’s curriculum. For students to enter into a school, choose classes that resembled a college catalog, and learn in a way that was deeply relevant to them was powerful. It was even radical. As this chapter illustrates, Harlem Prep’s curriculum (and its adjacent elements) were central to the school’s academic success and broader multicultural program. As Gloria Ladson-Billings aptly explains, “curriculum is the ‘stuff’ of schooling,” the “connective tissue” to extracurricular activities, and the “invisible structures” that define school environments.116 In this way, historians of education must continue to study the history of curriculum not as one fringe part of a school, a separate enterprise, or retread topic of past decades, but as (still) fundamental to the history of schooling in America. This is particularly true as it pertains to social justice-oriented educational research, including in the history of education field. The story of Harlem Prep demonstrates this view and the reason why curriculum still remains a necessary subfield to explore. Harlem Prep’s administrators and teachers used an eclectic, multicultural, and dynamic curriculum to empower and educate—and send to college— young people who were deemed “incorrigible and uneducable” by their own public system only years before. Perhaps it is no surprise that once the New York City Board of Education took over the school in 1974 until its closure in 1981, it ceased to be the same institution, particularly in terms of the curriculum.117 Studying curriculum through this lens also aligns with contemporary social justice education research. In the last few decades, curriculum and teaching have been at the center of conversations about school equity, often being one of the most significant factors in student achievement. For example, in the 1990s, seminal education scholars such as James Banks and Sonia Nieto wrote prolifically on the virtues of multicultural education, including the tenets of a multicultural curriculum that would significantly help close what Richard Milner and others have called the “opportunity” gap in education.118 Again, Ladson-Billings and her peers also introduced Culturally Relevant Pedagogy that forever changed not just the teaching and learning field, but educational research more

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

101

broadly. In the 2000s, adjacent to curriculum was the rise of critical pedagogy, which, while steeped in radical social thought dating back more than a century, helped usher in a wave of scholarship linking student achievement to teaching and learning that focused on popular culture and the lived experiences of Black and Latinx students.119 In recent years, scholars such as Christopher Emdin and Bettina Love have built on these traditions through concepts such as “Reality Pedagogy” and “Abolitionist Teaching,” respectively.120 This curricular focus is not unique to Black students, either, as Latinx scholars have prioritized student culture as keys to engagement in juxtaposition with the continued growth of mandated ethnic studies coursed in states like California and Connecticut.121 Plus, as it pertains to social studies curriculum specifically, engaging young people in the history of their own communities has proved effective and resonant.122 All of this prominent scholarship currently at the forefront of social justice and equity-focused research has something in common: it is focused on curricula that both reflects the students themselves and the interests they hold. Just as historians of education seek to use the past to provide blueprints for the future, perhaps all educational stakeholders should consider these important histories of curricula and cultural relevance in schools in the ongoing shared pursuit of educational equity.

Notes 1. “Harlem Prep Open: 60 Former Dropouts Pioneer Revolution in Education,” New York Urban League News, Fall 1967, Box 10, Folder 16, New York Urban League Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY (hereafter referred to NYUL Papers); “Harlem Prep Open,” New York Urban League News, Fall 1967, Box 10, Folder 16, NYUL Papers. 2. Ibid. 3. Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc., Youth in the Ghetto: A Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness and a Blueprint for Change (New York: HARYOU, 1964), 188; Most notable was the HARYOU Report, a 620-page document that examined Central Harlem schools led by acclaimed psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark of the infamous “doll study” from the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. In 1962 and 1963, Clark and his team of researchers created an organization called Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU) to research Harlem’s social life, including its educational achievement. This report included detailed

102

B. M. GOLDENBERG

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

statistics about enrollment, dropout and graduation rates, and information about grade level proficiency in various subjects. Recent scholarship on Central Harlem has confirmed these findings, such as Jonna Perrillo, Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Christina Collins, “Ethnically Qualified”: Race, Merit, and the Selection of Urban Teachers, 1920–1980 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011); and Heather Lewis, New York City Public Schools From Brownsville to Bloomberg: Community Control and Its Legacy (New York: Teachers College Press, 2013). “Urban League Opens Harlem Prep School,” New York Amsterdam News, October 7, 1967. “Harlem Prep Open: 60 Former Dropouts Pioneer Revolution in Education,” New York Urban League News (Fall 1967), Box 10, Folder 16, NYUL Papers. Due to financial issues, New York City Board of Education would take over Harlem Prep in 1974, and then remain in existence under board control until 1981, in which the school officially closed and the few remaining students merged into another local high school. However, during these years under board control, the school ceased to be the same institution that it was when it was independently controlled, as the school’s flexibility in curriculum, faculty hiring, and many others components stripped the school of its multicultural philosophy. “Harlem Prep, 1968,” July 2, 1968, Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Foundation Records, Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, NY (hereafter referred to as Rockefeller Records). The 369th Regiment Harlem Armory housed the famous “Harlem Hellfighters,” the acclaimed all-Black air force unit whom served in World War I; “27 Dropouts Get Diplomas and Will Enter College,” New York Times , June 18, 1968; See also Edward F. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School: Harlem Prep, 1967–1972” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 1973), 122. Standard Oil of New Jersey, “Moja Logo Booklet,” 1970, Series 3, Box 80, Folder 1324, Ford Foundation Records, Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, NY (hereafter referred to as Ford Records). Letter to Alan Pifer from Harvey Spear, Series III, Box 743, Folder 7, Carnegie Corporation of New York Records, 1900–2004, Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts (hereafter referred to as Carnegie Records). For an overview of the many supporters of the school that ranged from left-leaning Black activists to white-owned corporations such as the Ford Foundation and Standard Oil of New Jersey, see Barry M. Goldenberg, “The Story of Harlem Prep: Cultivating a Community School

5

11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

103

in New York City,” The Gotham Center for New York History Blog, August 2, 2016, http://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/the-story-of-har lem-prep-cultivating-a-community-school-in-new-york-city. Sterling Nile, interviewed by author, Ibrahim Ali, and Christopher Brooks, March 4, 2015, New York, NY. This interview was conducted through a youth-scholar research collaboration on Harlem Prep. For more information, see Barry M. Goldenberg, “Rethinking Historical Practice and Community Engagement: Researching Together with ‘Youth Historians’,” Rethinking History 23, No. 1 (2019): 52–77. Edward Carpenter, “Step by Step”: The Story of Harlem Prep, dir. Kurt Lassen (1971: Zebra Associates/Standard Oil of New Jersey), DVD. This DVD was given to author by a Harlem Prep alumnus. This documentary, while funded by Standard Oil of New Jersey, was produced and directed by Zebra Associates, the largest Black-owned (and principally-operated) advertising agency in the country, founded by Black entrepreneurs Caroline Jones and Raymond League. See “Step by Step, a Documentary Film,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 21, 1970; “Harlem Prep Story on TV,” New York Amsterdam News, August 31, 1974; For more information about teachers and their pedagogy, see Barry M. Goldenberg, “There’s a Lot to Know, and We’ll Learn It Together”: Emancipatory Teaching and Learning at Harlem Preparatory School, 1967–1974,” in Radical Educators Rearticulating Education and Social Change, eds. J. G. de Saxe and T. Gourd (New York: Routledge, 2018). See Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 35–46. See Barry M. Goldenberg, Strength through Diversity: Harlem Prep and the Rise of Multiculturalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, forthcoming). For example, among many, see Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958 (New York: Routledge, 2004); Andrew Hartman, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Campbell F. Scribner, “‘Make Your Voice Heard’: Communism in the High School Curriculum, 1958–1968,” History of Education Quarterly 52, No. 3 (2012): 351–69; and Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). For example, see Zoe Burkholder, Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900–1954 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Thomas D. Fallace, Race and Origins of Progressive Education, 1800–1929 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2015); and Ronald Butchart, Schooling the Freedpeople: Teaching, Lerning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861–1876 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

104

B. M. GOLDENBERG

17. Among much recent work, see Matthew F. Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016); Crystal R. Sanders, A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016); Ansley T. Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Michelle A. Purdy, Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018); John P. Spencer, In the Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Troubled History of American School Reform (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); and Derrick P. Alridge, “Teachers in the Movement: Pedagogy, Activism, and Freedom,” History of Education Quarterly 60, No. 1 (February 2020): 1–23. 18. See, among many, Russell Rickford, We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Jon N. Hale, The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016); Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Adina Back, “Exposing the Whole Segregation Myth”:The Harlem Nine and New York City’s School Desegregation Battles,” in Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940–1980, eds. Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 65–91; and David P. Levine, “The Birth of Citizenship Schools: Entwining the Struggles of Literacy and Freedom,” History of Education Quarterly 44, No. 30 (2004): 388–414. 19. Ansley T. Erickson, “How/Should We Generalize?,” History of Education Quarterly60, No. 1 (2020): 94; For a seminal book in the field that engages in microhistory, see Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 20. For example, on the “organizing tradition,” see Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom; The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); For Pan-African schools, see Rickford, We Are an African People. 21. Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking Books, 2011), 48, 54. For example, dating back to the 1920s activism on Marcus Garvey, see Colin Grant, Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) to more recent

5

22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

105

icons operating in Harlem such as Stokely Carmichael in the 1970s, see Peniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2014). In the 1960s and 1970s, books such as Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005); and Marable, Malcolm X, situate themselves in Harlem, too, with the latter providing rich descriptions of Harlem’s dynamism through the perspective of Malcolm X. For Ella Baker’s work around school equity in Harlem, see Ransby, Ella Baker and theBlack Freedom Movement, 69–71. More recently, see Ansley T. Erickson and Ernest Morrell, Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). National Center for Educational Communication, ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, Harlem Prep (New York, New York) by Edmund W. Gordon, ED124682 (Washington, DC, 1972), 10. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 48. A wave of Black scholars in the last two decades have written extensively about culturally relevant pedagogy, such as Gloria Ladson-Billings, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009); Geneva Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 2010); and Tyrone C. Howard, Why Race & Culture Matter in Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap in America’s Classrooms (New York: Teachers College Press, 2014). See Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990; originally published by The Associated Publishers, 1933); see Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (Xenia: Aldine Printing House, 1892). Clifford Jacobs, interviewed by author, November 18, 2013, New York, NY. Jacobs joked further about this point, saying that he “had to study Latin for two years [in college], [since] there was no dead languages being taught at Harlem Prep!”. “Step by Step,” dir. Lassen, 1971, DVD; Craig Rothman, interviewed by author via phone, October 19, 2017, New York, NY. Raymond Crawford, in Clifford Jacobs, “Harlem Prep Revisited,” group video interview, New York, NY, ca. 2010. A copy of the raw footage of the interview was given to author for use. Naledi Raspberry, interviewed by author, via phone, February 26, 2021, Los Angeles, CA; Hussein Ahdieh, “Sacrificial Education: For the Good of Others,” Bahaiteachings.org, July 20, 2016, http://bahaiteachings. org/sacrificial-education-for-the-good-of-others. Raspberry interview, February 26, 2021.

106

B. M. GOLDENBERG

31. “‘Why Harlem Prep?’ Booklet,” Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records; See George “Sandy” Campbell, interviewed by author, New York, January 14, 2015 and Aissatou Bey-Grecia, interviewed by author, New York, NY, February 25, 2015, for instances recalling staying late after school. 32. Bari Haskins-Jackson, interviewed by author, via phone, June 6, 2017, New York, NY. 33. Clayton Willis, “Harlem Prep School Gives Many A Chance (Last of a Series),” New York Amsterdam News, March 23, 1968; For a recent history of Dr. Ben’s influence in Afrocentric scholarship and in Harlem, see Sam Kestenbaum, “Contested Legacy of Dr. Ben, a Father of African Studies,”New York Times , March 27, 2015. 34. Ajuba Bartley-Grinage and Penny Grinage, interviewed by author, April 17, 2017; and Harry Smith, interviewed by author, March 7, 2017, via phone, New York, NY. 35. Clayton Willis, “Harlem Prep School Gives Many a Chance (Second of a Series)” New York Amsterdam News, February 24 1968; See also Collier, “A Dropout Picks Up Some Logic on His Way to College,” New York Times , March 14, 1968; See also Sandy Campbell, e-mail message to author, February 12, 2019. 36. Mwanajua Kahamu, interviewed by author, February 24, 2017, New York, NY. 37. Rothman interview, October 10, 2016. 38. Haskins-Jackson interview, June 6, 2017. 39. For example, see Biondi, Black Revolution on Campus, 48. 40. See Alberto Cappas, interviewed by author, November 19, 2016, New York, NY; and Jay Rosenberg, personal communication, February 5, 2021. Rosenberg, one of the few white students at Harlem Prep, commented about his deep interest in Egyptology and the opportunity that Harlem Prep afforded him to explore these interests. 41. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 30. 42. “‘Why Harlem Prep?’ Booklet,” ca. 1972, Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records; Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 37. 43. Haskins-Jackson interview, June 6, 2017. 44. Hussein Ahdieh and Hillary Chapman, A Way Out of No Way: Harlem Prep: Transforming Dropouts Into. Scholars, 1967–1977 (printed by author, CreateSpace, 2016 [memoir of Harlem Prep]), 64. 45. Institute for Educational Development, “An Assessment of the Alternative Educational Program at Harlem. Preparatory School,” June 22, 1973, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED0 91472, 6.

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

107

46. Peter Hopson student records, assorted documents, on file at Park East High School, New York, NY. Copies in author’s possession and viewed with permission. Author saw multiple grade reports and other records clarifying procedures. 47. Ann and Ed’s daughter, Casey Carpenter, feels strongly that the school’s “curriculum and the scheduling” was Ann’s design. Other alumni and former teachers agree with this characterization. See Carpenter interview, June 4, 2017. 48. Edward Carpenter, “Rationale for Use of Ford Foundation Grant,” September 18, 1972, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. 49. In addition to larger proposals such as Robert Mangum and Edward Carpenter, “Grant Proposal for 1971–1972 to Rockefeller Foundation,” January 1971, Rockefeller Foundation Records, Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records, see also, specifically, Robert Mangum and Edward Carpenter, “Proposal for Creative Literacy Program at Harlem Prep,” April 12, 1973, Series III, Box 743, Folder 7, Carnegie Records; Among numerous scholarship, see Ernest Morrell, Critical Literacy and Urban Youth: Pedagogies of Access, Dissent, and Liberation (New York: Routledge, 2008). 50. F. Champion Ward, “Recommendation for Grant/DAP Action to McGeorge Bundy,” June 22, 1970, p. 5, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; “Progress Report for Ford Foundation,” May 1972, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; See also Ahdieh’s description of the freedom, in Ahdieh, “Harlem Preparatory School: An Alternative,” 87. 51. Nile interview, March 4, 2015. 52. “How to Turn on the Turned Off,” Business Week, February 20, 1971, Series 3, Box 80, Folder 1324, Ford Records. 53. Edward Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 2, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. 54. Ibid., 1. 55. Hussein Ahdieh, “Harlem Preparatory School: An Alternative” (PhD diss., University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1974), 85. 56. On the lack of a tracking system, see Institute for Educational Development, “An Assessment of the Alternative Educational Program at Harlem Preparatory School,” 10. 57. Ahdieh, “Harlem Preparatory School: An Alternative,” 85. 58. Sherry Kilgore, interviewed by author, Glendale, MD, May 21, 2017. 59. Carpenter interview, June 4, 2017.

108

B. M. GOLDENBERG

60. See “1972 Commencement Program,” June 7, 1972, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. The other departments, minus communications, art, and music, had between six and eight faculty members. 61. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 130–133; Jacobs interview, November 18, 2013; Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 2, Ford Records; Letter from Edward Carpenter to Joshua Smith, July 5, 1972, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. 62. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 130–133. 63. Duane Peterson, “Perilous Journey Home,” in 1970 Harlem Prep Yearbook [no page numbers], in personal collection of Henry Pruitt. Copy of yearbook given to author. 64. See Jacobs interview, November 18, 2013. 65. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 134–136; Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 2, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D),Ford Records. 66. Ibid.; and Martin Nur, interviewed by author, via phone, Los Angeles, CA, July 17, 2017. 67. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 144–145. 68. This department was referred to as the “Social Science Department” but headmaster Ed Carpenter also referred to it as the “Social Studies Department.”. 69. Carpenter, in “Step by Step,” dir. Lassen, 1971, DVD. 70. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 137; See also Willis, “Harlem Prep School Gives Many a Chance,” New York Amsterdam News, March 23, 1968, which describes Dr. Ben teaching this course. 71. Ibid. 72. “‘Why Harlem Prep?’ Booklet,” Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records; Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 137–140; Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 2, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D),Ford Records; Carpenter, “Letter to Joshua Smith About Harlem Prep’s Use of Ford Grant,” July 5, 1972, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. 73. Ibid. 74. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 138–143. 75. Ahdieh, “Harlem Preparatory School: An Alternative,” 87. 76. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 147–148.

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

109

77. Nile interview, March 4, 2017. 78. Carpenter, “The Development of an Alternative School,” 149–150. 79. Ilanga Witt, “Four Women,” 16-mm. film reel, 1971, New York Public Library Reserve Film and Video archives. 80. See Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. 81. This number is derived from the author’s aggregation of all courses documented in primary sources, but most likely is still a rather low estimate of all courses taught at the school during its tenure. Casey Carpenter, Ann Carpenter’s daughter, contends that her mother said that over the course of Ann’s work at Harlem Prep, there were over 500 different courses. It is unclear whether or not this figure also included Harlem Prep courses post-1974. It is also unknown how many courses were offered at any given moment. However, clues from Carpenter’s dissertation, oral histories with teachers Sandy Campbell and Bari Haskins-Jackson, and the relative number of teachers—more than 45 at the school’s peak (including part-time teachers, volunteers, and administrators)—suggest that there were many dozens of classes being offered each academic term. 82. “Progress Report for Ford Foundation,” May 1972, p. 2–3, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; “‘Why Harlem Prep?’ Booklet,” ca. 1972, Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records. 83. Ibid., 2–3. 84. Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 2, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. 85. “Progress Report for Ford Foundation,” May 1972, p. 3–4, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; See also Ahdieh, “Harlem Preparatory School: An Alternative,” 87. 86. Howe, “Recommendation for Grant/DAP Action, to McGeorge Bundy, via Howard Dressner,” November 23, 1971, p. 4, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; See also, about this initiative, “Progress Report for Ford Foundation,” May 1972, p. 2, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. 87. Ibid. 88. Mangum and Carpenter, “Grant Proposal for 1971–1972 to Rockefeller Foundation,” January 1971 [no page numbers], Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records. 89. Ibid.; F. Champion Ward, “Recommendation for Grant/DAP Action to McGeorge Bundy,” June 22, 1970, p. 6,

110

B. M. GOLDENBERG

90.

91.

92.

93.

94.

95.

96. 97.

98. 99.

100. 101.

Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. A variety of documents discuss the existence of this evening school program, each which provide different enrollment numbers for the program. It is likely that enrollment numbers were estimates, and that somewhere between 120 and 250 adults went through the program. However, due to inadequate funds and the overbearing workload on the teachers who taught during the day and then also (as volunteers) at night, the program could not be sustained despite constant proposals to renew it. See Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 37, Ford Records. Mangum and Carpenter, “Grant Proposal for 1971–1972 to Rockefeller Foundation,” January 1971, p. 6, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Rockefeller Records. Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 10, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. See Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 7–41, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D),Ford Records; and Mangum and Carpenter, “Grant Proposal for 1971–1972 to Rockefeller Foundation,” January 1971, Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951,Rockefeller Records. Carpenter, “Harlem Prep Proposal: ‘Education for a New Era,’” January 5, 1969, p. 29–38, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. Nicholas Juravich, “The Work of Education Community-Based Educators in Schools, Freedom Struggles, and the Labor Movement, 1953– 1983” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2017). Mangum and Carpenter, “Grant Proposal for 1971–1972 to Rockefeller Foundation,” January 1971, Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records. See Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc., Youth in the Ghetto. Mangum and Carpenter, “Grant Proposal for 1971–1972 to Rockefeller Foundation,” January 1971, Series 200, Box 149, Folder 951, Rockefeller Records. Campbell interview, January 14, 2015. Bey-Grecia interview, February 25, 2015; M. A. Farber, “Harlem Prep Graduates 83 In a Festive Street Ceremony,” New York Times , June 11, 1970; “Progress Report for Ford Foundation,” May 1972, p. 4, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; Beverly Grayman-Rich, interviewed by author, via phone, New York, NY, May 11, 2017. Grayman-Rich interview, May 11, 2017. Smith interview, March 7, 2017.

5

102. 103. 104. 105.

106.

107. 108. 109.

110.

111. 112. 113. 114.

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

111

Jacobs interview, November 18, 2013. See, for example, anecdote from Campbell interview, January 14, 2015. Jacobs interview, November 18, 2013. Henry Pruitt, interviewed by author, Teaneck, NJ, May 4, 2017. English teacher Sandy Campbell, who attended the interview, added in response to Pruitt’s comment that it was often later than 6 pm before students and teacher left. After school space and programming more broadly continues to be a ripe subject of debate among education scholars today. For example, see Glynda Hull and Jessica Zacher, “What Is After-School Worth? Developing Literacy and Identity Out of School,” Voices in Urban Education 26 (Winter 2010): 20–28. For the effects on students of color, see Maisha T. Fisher, “Open Mics and Open Minds: Spoken Word Poetry in African Diaspora Participatory Literacy Communities,” Harvard Educational Review 73, No. 3 (2003): 363. See, among many, Jacobs interview, November 18, 2013. See Pruitt interview, May 4, 2017; and Carpenter interview, June 4, 2017. Carpenter interview, June 4, 2017. Of course, since the Carpenter’s lived in Teaneck, NJ, it would seem that most student visitors lived close by, whom were also a minority considering a large majority of students lived in New York City; Campbell interview, January 14, 2015; See also Haskins-Jackson interview, June 6, 2017; and Rosenberg, personal communication, February 5. There are hints of both Ed and Ann Carpenter’s educational philosophy that relate to the ideas of historian of education Lawrence Cremin. In Cremin’s The American Experience, he, in part, explains how there were countless elements in society that were “educative” beyond just schools. While the Carpenters (and Cremin) of course believed in the importance of traditional education and the pivotal role of the school, based on Harlem Prep’s ideas for a more expansive curriculum, partnerships with companies, and social aspects where learning continued, there is some congruence between Cremin and the Carpenters’ conception of education. For more on Cremin, see Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York: Vintage, 1964) and less prominently, Lawrence Cremin, Traditions of American Education (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Anonymous student in “Step by Step,” dir. Lassen, 1971, DVD. Sandy Campbell in “Step by Step,” dir. Lassen, 1971, DVD. Peter Hopson, interviewed by author, New York, NY, February 11, 2015. In addition to researchers and educators who evaluated Harlem Prep, see, for example, Letter from U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits to James

112

B. M. GOLDENBERG

115. 116.

117.

118.

119.

120.

121.

Allen, February 19, 1970, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; Letter from Charles Rangel to Carnegie Corporation, August 13, 1973, Series III, Box 743, Folder 7, Carnegie Records; Memo from Joshua Smith to Edward Meade, October 13, 1970, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records; and Letter from Leslie Dunbar to Edward Carpenter, June 12, 1969, Field Foundation Archives, Box 2T32, Harlem Prep - 1968, Field Records Hopson interview, February 11, 2015. Gloria Ladson-Billings, “And Then There Is This Thing Called the Curriculum: Organization, Imagination, and Mind,” Educational Researcher 45, No. 2 (2016): 100–104. John Hopkins, “Draft of MARC Assessment of Harlem Prep,” March 19, 1970, p. 2, Microfilm Reel 1781, Folder Harlem Preparatory School (FA732D), Ford Records. Among many, see James A. Banks, ed., Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), and Sonia Nieto, The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999); For “opportunity gaps,” See H. Richard Milner IV, “Beyond a Test Score: Explaining Opportunity Gaps in Educational Practice,” Journal of Black Studies 43, No. 6 (2012): 693–718, and Barry M. Goldenberg, “White Teachers in Urban Classrooms: Embracing Non-White Students’ Cultural Capital for Better Teaching and Learning,” Urban Education 49, No. 1 (2014): 111–144. See, for example Antonia Darder, The Critical Pedagogy Reader (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003); and Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell, The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). Christopher Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (New York: Beacon Press, 2016); Bettina L. Love, We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom (New York: Beacon Press, 2019). For example, see Cati V. de los Ríos Cati, “A Curriculum of the Borderlands: High School Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies as Sitios y Lengua,” The Urban Review 45, No. 1 (2013): 58– 73; See recent examples, such as Nina Agrawal, “California Is Still Debating Ethnic Studies in Public Education. Can the State Finally Get It Right?,” Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-23/cal ifornia-debating-ethnic-studies-public-education; and Leah Asmelash and Anna Sturla, “Connecticut Will Become the First State to Require

5

“A LIVING, BREATHING, CURRICULUM” …

113

High Schools to Offer Black and Latino Studies in Fall 2022,” CNN , December 9, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/us/connec ticut-high-schools-black-latino-studies-trnd/index.html. 122. Barry M. Goldenberg, “Youth Historians in Harlem: An After-School Blueprint for History Engagement through the Historical Process,” The Social Studies 107, No. 2 (2016): 47–67; Barry M. Goldenberg, “Rethinking Historical Practice and Community Engagement: Researching Together with ‘Youth Historians,’” Rethinking History 23, No. 1 (2019): 52–77; Barry M. Goldenberg, Andrew Wintner, and Carolyn Berg, “Creating Middle School Harlem Historians: Motivating Urban Students Through Community-Based History,” Voices from the Middle 23, No. 1 (2015): 73–79.

CHAPTER 6

Gendered Anxieties Pave the Way for a Separate and Unequal Co-educational High School Erika M. Kitzmiller

On September 26, 1914, thousands of Germantown residents gathered on the corners of Haines and High Streets to lay the cornerstone of their new high school, Germantown High School.1 At the turn of the century, Philadelphia’s center city neighborhoods included a diverse array of people—working-class Black and immigrant residents lived in small row homes in close proximity to Philadelphia’s white elite. The city’s outlying neighborhoods, such as Germantown, reflected this diversity with sprawling mansions for affluent white families, modern twin homes for white middle-class families, and modest row homes for immigrant and Black families who worked as gardeners, caterers, and domestics in the

E. M. Kitzmiller (B) Barnard College, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_6

115

116

E. M. KITZMILLER

community and beyond. At the time, all of Philadelphia’s high schools were located in the city’s center miles away from Germantown. For nearly a decade, Germantown residents fought city council to allocate funding to build a public high school to serve the community’s youth. Germantown’s civic and business leaders understood the appeal of having a high school in their predominantly white, bourgeois neighborhood. They wanted a high school to mitigate the anxieties of residents who did not want their children, particularly their daughters, traveling on the crowded electric trolleys to attend high school in the city’s center. They wanted a high school to attract more upper and upper-middleclass families to move out of the city’s center to take advantage of the community’s modern homes, reputable schools, and segregated neighborhoods. After a fierce campaign, elected officials caved and appropriated funding to build three high schools in the city’s outlying, bourgeois, white communities including one in Germantown. The residents who attended that high school’s cornerstone ceremony that day had much to celebrate: they finally had a high school tucked neatly away in their quaint suburban neighborhood on Philadelphia’s northwest corner far from the city’s center.2 The school opened as a co-educational high school, but as this story suggests, from its founding, Germantown High School provided female and male youth with separate and unequal educational experiences. This chapter shows how the anxieties about the dangers of city life for upper- and middle-class white girls motivated the push to establish new high schools, and ultimately, shaped the foundation of the school when it opened. Germantown High School opened as a co-educational institution, but, from the beginning, it offered female and male youth different and, often, unequal educational experiences. While there has been considerable scholarship on the history of women and gender in higher education, historians have paid much less attention to the history of women and gender in primary and secondary schools.3 Those that have examined this history in K-12 institutions have illustrated the close connections between the expansion of women’s education and work.4 Others have leveraged theories of gender and sexuality to illustrate the gendered and heteronormative nature of public schools. These historians seek to demonstrate that gender and sexuality were central to the decisions that schools make about curriculum and staffing.5 Finally, scholars have examined the expansion of American co-educational high schools and the role that these institutions played in creating a democratic, egalitarian ethos that seemed distinctly American.6

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

117

The emphasis on the proliferation of co-educational schooling as a model for American progress and opportunity obscures the ways that American co-educational high schools limited educational opportunity, and ultimately, future trajectories for the young women who attended and graduated from these institutions. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence, this chapter asserts that the experiences that female and male youth had inside their high co-educational high schools often differed drastically. Germantown faculty segregated female and male youth in separate wings of the building in sex-segregated classrooms and routinely barred female youth from some of the school’s extracurricular activities and programs. Scholars have often downplayed these differences because they have typically examined the history of American high schools either through the words of national school leaders or large-scale quantitative data.7 The story in Philadelphia pushes historians of education to reconsider the actual experiences that youth might have had inside co-educational high schools.8 While school district leaders in Philadelphia built co-educational high schools, these institutions reflected the gendered anxieties among bourgeois white elites. Rather than allowing girls and boys to learn together, school officials in Philadelphia segregated female and male high school youth the moment they entered the school building. This chapter, and the book manuscript that it is drawn from, seeks to challenge the ideas that co-educational high schools reflected the ideas of social progress and equal opportunity.9 Even though Germantown High School was founded as a racially integrated, co-educational institution, it provided female and male youth with separate and unequal educational experiences the moment they entered the schoolhouse door.

The Expansion of American High Schools Fuels Debates About Co-Education In the nineteenth century, educational leaders, such as Horace Mann, argued that the nation’s economic and moral prosperity was directly tied to a strong system of public schools.10 The high school was the pinnacle of Mann’s educational system. However, only a tiny fraction of youth attended high school during the nineteenth century, and of those youth, the majority were sons and daughters of the middle class.11 Historians have suggested that the link between the middle class and high school attendance stemmed from socioeconomic uncertainties during this period. Technological advancements coupled with the advent of industrial

118

E. M. KITZMILLER

capitalism weakened the social and economic positions that the middle class had enjoyed during earlier times. As machines replaced their timehonored craft skills, the goods that they produced lost market value. At best, middle-class families lost earnings. At worst, these families closed their businesses and shops. As this economic change rattled their security, middle-class families looked for other means to help their children secure employment in the emerging manufacturing and commercial sectors.12 The rising tide of middle-class anxiety during the first half of the nineteenth century fueled the development of the public high school, and within a few years, these families were totally committed to this innovative, yet controversial, institution. Labaree asserts that middle-class loyalty to public high schools was directly linked to the value of the diploma as a marketable good. In Philadelphia, Central High School, which was founded in 1836, admitted only male students who passed its difficult entrance exam. The school even restricted the number of admissions each year despite a dramatic rise in applicants. This combination, high demand and low supply, made Central’s credential valuable and legitimate, which in turn, “provided a powerful incentive for middle class families to pursue it.”13 The relationship between the middle class and the high school was mutually beneficial: high schools survived because middle-class families sent their children to these schools; middle-class children enrolled in public high school to earn a merit-based credential that was the “ticket to a white-collar occupation.”14 While the ticket to a white-collar occupation probably benefited young men more than young women in the long term, many Americans had a deep commitment to guaranteeing that their sons as well as their daughters had access to high school education. In the middle of the nineteenth century, school officials argued that co-education represented a more economical and efficient way to educate high school-aged youth. In 1857, the Michigan Superintendent of schools surveyed school officials throughout the state to gauge their feelings and sentiments about co-education. The survey revealed strong support for co-educational schools. Other school officials asserted that combining the sexes in one school allowed for larger and better classrooms given the higher costs for high schools and limited funding in their districts. Some officials argued that the presence of young women in co-educational schools tamed unruly and unfocused male youth. Officials in other states argued that co-educational spaces relieved the “sexual tension” that girls often experienced in single-sex institutions.15

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

119

In 1890, the National Council of Education, an elite group of school leaders focused on questions about national educational policy and practice, met to discuss their views on co-educational schools. Even though a few urban school leaders objected to the idea, the council asserted that educational practice and theory supported the idea that co-education was a better structure for American schooling. According to the council members, co-education enhanced instructional practices, promoted better discipline, and contributed to healthy psychological and sexual development for young men and women. The council dismissed the idea that co-education harmed female youth arguing that young women had proved that they were equal to men in academic studies and intellectual capacities. The council said that the idea that co-educational study would make women bullish and aggressive and men weak and emotional “will soon be numbered among the infinite host of dead theories that lie strewn all along the path of human progress…the course of study for the sexes should, in all grades of schools, be identical.” The question about the benefits of co-educational schooling, council asserted, “in every grade of schools in this country, in its practical aspect, is settled.”16 By 1895, 94% of US public high schools were co-educational.17 As the number of co-educational institutions expanded, educational experts, political leaders, and social reformers raised concerns about the advancement of educational opportunities and outcomes among white bourgeois women. These individuals—mostly men—worried that academic education strained women’s bodies and threatened their ability to assume their “proper” role as obedient wives and dutiful mothers. While they did not always explicitly state it, they were equally anxious that men were being shortchanged by the presence and success of American women at all levels of education. Statistical data substantiated their fears. From 1870 to 1910, the number of women who attended school and earned academic credentials increased steadily. Women made up 56% of high school graduates in 1870 and 60% of high school graduates in 1910. Even more impressive, they represented 15% of college graduates in 1870 and 34% of college graduates in 1910 (see Table 6.1). The increase of women entering and graduating from high school and college incited a heated debate about the effects of intellectual activity on their bodies, particularly their reproductive functions. In 1873, Dr. Edward H. Clarke, a prominent professor of medicine at Harvard University, published Sex in Education: Or a Fair Chance for Girls, based on seven case studies of women in his medical practice. Clarke asserted that

120

E. M. KITZMILLER

Table 6.1 High School and Postsecondary Graduates, Percent Female, 1869–1910

Year

High school

Postsecondary institutions

1869–1870 1879–1880 1889–1890 1899–1900 1909–1910

56% 54% 57% 60% 60%

15% 19% 17% 23% 34%

Note The percentage for postsecondary education includes women who earned their college or professional degrees. Source “120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait” (National Institute for Educational Sciences, January 19, 1993), 55, http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=93442; Louise Michele Newman, ed., Men’s Ideas/Women’s Realities (New York: Pergamon Press, 1985), 59.

the expansion of educational opportunities for bourgeois white women “fostered” deadly illnesses that “torture a woman’s earthly existence.” He argued that rigorous academic study caused hysteria, nervousness, and infertility among female youth. Clarke stated that some women retained their fertility, despite their education; however, he asserted that advanced education bred “germs” which threatened women’s health later in life and produced a “feeble race” of children.18 Alice Freeman Palmer, the president of Wellesley College, and Mary Putnam Jacobi, a prominent physician, lambasted Clarke for publishing a book that lacked scientific evidence and threatened women’s advancement, but many college leaders heeded Clarke’s unsubstantiated warnings.19 Stanford University’s co-founder Jane Stanford implemented a quota system to limit female admissions and to encourage “able men” to return to the institution and earn their college degrees.20 Women’s colleges, including Palmer’s Wellesley College, implemented physical fitness programs and routine medical screenings to monitor the effects of academic study on their students’ bodies.21 The debates about the adverse effects of co-education eventually seeped into conversations about the benefits and limitations of coeducation for high school-aged youth. In the late nineteenth century, Boston residents pressured school officials to consider female admissions to the city’s elite all-male Boston Latin School. John Philbrick, a prominent local educator, voiced his opposition to the proposal arguing that single-sex schools promoted the “best result, physical or mental, and the best preparation for the functions and destination of active life.” Philbrick

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

121

urged school officials to establish separate schools, one to educate boys and another to educate girls. City officials followed Philbrick’s advice and opened Boston Latin Academy, an all-female, academic high school, to appease families who wanted an academic high school for their daughters to attend. Statistical evidence from the 1900 United States Census gave new credence to Clarke’s ideas about the adverse effects of academic learning on female bodies and reproduction. Data indicated that native-born white women had fewer children than either foreign-born white women or Black women, and social scientists and political leaders blamed this trend on the growing numbers of high school and college-educated white women who had delayed or rejected marriage and childbirth.22 Even President Roosevelt, worried about the effects of these trends, said in 1903 that “the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race.” Roosevelt called the decline in the birthrate among native-born white Americans “race suicide,” setting off a wave of warnings that advanced blatantly racist ideas about reproduction in American society.23 The connections between Roosevelt’s white supremacy and concerns about women’s education circulated across the nation in leading medical and scientific journals, as well as leading women’s journals and magazines.24 In 1904, G. Stanley Hall, a Harvard trained psychologist, brought new evidence to these ideas with his highly-acclaimed book, Adolescence. Excerpts and shorter pieces that built on this work appeared in leading educational journals and circulated widely. Hall’s arguments added detail and intellectual weight to Roosevelt’s “race suicide” thesis, adding concerns about the reordering of gender norms as bourgeois, native-born, white women seemed to be outpacing their male peers in education. Hall told readers that he had surveyed hundreds of the latest scientific studies conducted around the globe to verify the validity of sexual differences and the fragility of adolescent development. In his book and journal articles, Hall asserted that adolescence represented a period of immense growth that often led to male aggression and feminine maternity. He argued that this rapid development made adolescent youth susceptible to disease and infection.25 During adolescence, Hall believed that “every sexual difference should be emphasized—men made

122

E. M. KITZMILLER

more manly and women more womanly.” If educators did not differentiate high school learning based on sex, Hall asserted that “a large percent of girls [would] actually wish that they were boys.”26 While Hall argued that boys needed “a different discipline” and “method of work” to prevent them from dropping out of high school, he warned readers that the risks of academic learning were much greater for urban youth and young women.27 Hall asserted that cities, with their dense populations and corrupt activities, increased the chances that urban youth might contract a deadly disease or fall into despair during adolescence. Hall worried that adolescence placed unique strains on the female body, making it vulnerable to illness and immorality. He wrote: American girls come to this crisis [adolescence] without having much control or restraint, and with their habits and actions almost entirely unsystematized. They appear rosy and healthy because energies, which should go to perfecting other parts and functions, have been diverted to cerebration. Influences from those about her tend to make her give up free and girlish sports and romping, and to feel herself a woman too suddenly.28

Hall asserted that adolescence presented grave dangers to young women because they were often unable to restrain their wild emotions and desires. He argued that academic study compounded these ailments and threatened to destroy a young woman’s nerves, body, and morals and often provoked a deep aversion toward marriage and motherhood. Hall encouraged school officials to build high schools for girls situated “in the country in the midst of hills” to help them develop healthy breathing and strong bones.29 Even though Hall’s theories received considerable criticism, his work’s positive reception influenced ideas about the risks of urban space and academic education for white upper and middle-class girls.30 Hall’s theories were published as many school leaders, particularly those in cities in the northeast and the Rust Belt, were advocating for funds to expand their secondary school system. And as the next section shows, Hall’s ideas about the fragility of the female body had a significant effect on the debates about where to build new high schools in Philadelphia.

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

123

Leveraging Hall’s Theories to Advance the Campaign to Build New High Schools In 1907, Philadelphia had five high schools. These schools included three manual training schools—Central Manual High School, Northeast Manual Training High School, and the Philadelphia Trade School that provided vocational training for young men who were interested in pursuing careers in city’s union-controlled trades and small firms. Philadelphia had two elite, academic single-sex high schools—the all-male Central High School and the all-female Philadelphia High School for Girls. Central High School graduates assumed positions as professionals, managers, and clerks throughout the city. Philadelphia High School for Girls entered the labor market as professionals, nurses, social workers, and teachers and married some of the city’s most eligible suitors.31 Philadelphia’s high school system presented two distinct, but related problems for middle-class residents who lived in the city’s outlying neighborhoods including Frankford, Germantown, and West Philadelphia. First, the demands for high school among upper- and middle-class families outweighed the supply of seats in these schools.32 The manual schools only admitted boys; the elite schools required a rigorous entrance exam. The challenge of securing a high school seat was particularly pronounced for young women in Philadelphia. While male students had four high school options in Philadelphia, female students only had one option: The Philadelphia High School for Girls. In response to the growing demand, school officials in Philadelphia opened a series of makeshift, and often unsafe, annexes to expand the number of seats at Central High School and the Philadelphia High School for Girls. Between 1902 and 1907, Central High School’s enrollment increased by 39%; the Philadelphia High School for Girls’ enrollment increased by 76%.33 While the annexes alleviated the immediate crisis, it did little to avert the long-term shortage of public high school seats for Philadelphia’s young women. In addition to these challenges, Philadelphia’s five high schools were located in the city’s center far from the middle-class communities in the city’s outlying neighborhoods. It cost money to cover the costs of trolley fares to and from these schools and the school lunches that children needed to purchase when they were far from home (see Fig. 6.1). The commute generated other anxieties for the bourgeois, white families who sent their adolescent daughters to attend high school in the city’s poor, Black and immigrant communities in the city’s center. Some of

124

E. M. KITZMILLER

Fig. 6.1 Philadelphia’s High School Enrollment by Ward, 1909

the families were worried about the dangers of commuting on the trolleys. Newspapers published accounts of young women who went up in flames after their long skirts caught on the trolley’s electric wires and rails. The city even had a safety campaign to warn young women about these dangers. Other families were worried that the long commute might

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

125

have adverse effects on their daughter’s bodies, including as Hall warned, on their reproductive functions. Black and foreign-born residents were much more likely to live in the city’s center than its outlying districts, including Germantown. Many white bourgeois families in these outlying districts were concerned that their young daughters might be seduced by a recent immigrant from Italy or a Black migrant from Virginia in the neighborhoods surrounding the public high schools in Philadelphia’s city center. In 1907, Martin G. Brumbaugh, Philadelphia’s superintendent of schools, used the opening of Southern Manual Training School for Boys to highlight the challenges associated with the high school shortage. On that crisp September morning, over 15,000 cheering young boys and hundreds of civic and business leaders gathered with Superintendent Brumbaugh, Philadelphia’s Mayor Reyburn, and Pennsylvania’s Governor Stuart to commemorate this momentous occasion. Residents in the school’s vicinity decorated their homes with flags and stood outside their homes to show their support for this new school. After a long parade down Broad Street, more than 1,000 students, families, and officials crammed into the school auditorium to listen to a series of speeches including one that Brumbaugh delivered. In his speech, Brumbaugh expressed his concerns that the city’s inadequate high school system denied “an army of boys and girls” the benefits of a high school education “within reach of their homes.” He continued and said: To ride two hours each morning and evening in crowded trolley cars, to pay for carfares daily and to purchase luncheon, is a tax that many an honest and worthy family cannot pay, a tax in education that it is a crime to assess upon any citizen of this great city of Philadelphia.34

In this speech, Brumbaugh delivered remarks that he hoped might appeal to the city’s Republican base. Rather than push for the city to support public education, he urged voters to think about the additional “tax” that they had to pay to send their children to high schools in the city’s center far from their upper- and middle-class homes on the city’s periphery. Brumbaugh’s decision to highlight the long two-hour commute also fed into the gendered anxieties that many upper- and middle-class white families had about their daughters traveling on the trolleys to attend high schools.

126

E. M. KITZMILLER

Brumbaugh and the members of the school board continued to push rhetoric that appealed to residents who were anxious about their daughters traveling to the city’s center to attend high school. Even before they had the funds, school officials announced that they planned to build co-educational high schools with two separate wings: one “devoted” to the education of female youth and another devoted to the education of male youth. School board members told taxpayers that the new high schools would include a central space that contained administrative offices and “an auditorium to be used at different periods by both groups of students.” Board members asserted that they intended to build high schools with separate laboratories “to be used interchangeably by both groups of pupils” for scientific discovery.35 In other words, the high schools would be co-educational, but as one national education leader noted, “co-education does not always imply co-instruction.”36 In Philadelphia, school officials planned to build co-educational high schools with separate wings, and as we shall see separate and unequal educational experiences, for female and male youth. In 1909, Brumbaugh hosted another ceremony to commemorate the opening of the William Penn High School for Girls. School board members expressed their excitement that the city had yet another new high school for students, but voiced concerns that from the school’s founding the school enrollment exceeded the building’s capacity. Rather than turn students away from school, the school board opened a series of annexes near the school to accommodate the students who wished to attend. Once again, school administrators testified that these annexes were unsuitable for academic learning. The buildings were antiquated structures, the rooms were dimly lit, and the hallways lacked adequate ventilation. Moreover, these annexes cost the school board, and in turn taxpayers, additional money to operate. School board members argued that it would be a “better and saner” policy to build new high schools in the city’s “unprovided districts” than to pay for unsafe annexes in the city’s center.37 The arguments that school officials advanced during the city’s high school campaign centered on the dangers that the commute posed to young women who lived in the city’s “unprovided districts” and wanted to attend high school. School board members argued that the long commute to and from the city’s high schools “endangered” the “physical strength, good manners, and sound morals” of the women who commuted each morning to attend high school.38 Echoing Hall’s earlier

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

127

concerns, Brumbaugh asserted that high school-aged girls were “at an age when they need and should receive the finest moral and physical protection.” Forcing young women to make the arduous commute to attend high school in the city’s center might result in “a frightful loss to the future of womanhood and motherhood in the city.” In other words, city officials had to provide funds to build high schools in the city’s “unprovided districts” to protect young women from the exhausting effects of the commute on their fragile bodies. School officials wanted the city council to understand that their refusal to allocate funding for new high schools threatened the livelihood of young white women.39

Germantown Residents Receive Funds to Build a Permanent Public High School While Brumbaugh appealed to city council members to allocate funding for new high schools, Germantown residents mobilized to convince Brumbaugh to build one of these new schools in their bourgeois, predominantly white community. On May 12, 1908, civic leaders hosted a community wide meeting to discuss the demand to build a high school in Germantown. The men who spoke at the meeting reiterated citywide concerns that Philadelphia’s high school system lagged behind other cities—Philadelphia had six high schools whereas Boston, a much smaller city, had 12. They presented data that indicated that Germantown had one of the highest rates of high school enrollment in the city despite the fact that it was miles away from any of these institutions. Then, the men turned to the concerns about the commute that their children had to make to attend high school. Milton C. Cooper, Germantown’s regional superintendent, argued that the city’s high schools were “located far from the [city’s] outlying sections.” Cooper stated that Germantown’s high school-aged youth traveled between ten and sixteen miles daily to attend high school. The commute presented a significant “drain upon the resources of many parents.” Cooper believed that many students dropped out of high school before graduating because their families could not afford trolley fares. Robert Ellis Thompson, the president of Central High School, substantiated Cooper’s claim and told the men gathered at the meeting that he knew several boys who had been walking several miles to attend Central because their “parents were too poor” to pay for the trolley fares.40

128

E. M. KITZMILLER

Thompson then shared his perspectives on the annexes that the board of education had rented to alleviate overcrowding at Central and other high schools. Thompson told residents that the annexes were unsuitable for learning and unsafe for children. One of the annexes was located on the fourth floor of a carriage factory with no fire escape.41 Instead of waiting for the city council to allocate funds to build a new high school, Thompson urged residents to convert an empty building into a high school annex for Germantown girls. Bayard Henry suggested that they use vacant space in the Germantown YWCA to open a girls’ annex and prevent Germantown’s young women from being exposed to the “temptations…in the city’s centre.”42 Protecting and preserving bourgeois white female virtue motivated the campaign to build Germantown High School.43 The men who attended this meeting praised Henry’s suggestion and unanimously adopted a resolution detailing their plan to use the local YWCA as a high school annex for Germantown girls. The resolution stated that “the remoteness of the [Philadelphia’s] existing high school” made it difficult for many Germantown youth to pursue a high school education. The long commute to and from high schools located in the city’s center severed high school-aged youth from “the restraints of home” and produced a “grave risk to their physical health and moral well-being.” Their proposal had other benefits. The men argued that Philadelphia’s high schools were already overcrowded. Opening this annex would relieve overcrowding in the city’s high schools, and thus, could benefit residents in the city’s center who wished to send their children to these schools. They sent the resolution to local council members, the members of the board of education, and the mayor.44 The men who drafted this resolution represented some of Philadelphia’s most influential and wealthy leaders. They naively believed that they would receive the funds to open a high school annex for girls in Germantown. And so, they moved forward with their plans. They contacted the local YWCA board and outlined their plan. The YWCA board agreed to let the school district use two stories of their building “without cost” for a girls high school annex if the board of education agreed to pay for necessary renovations, janitorial services, and heating expenses.45 The leaders of Germantown’s high school campaign sent a letter to the board of education arguing that this plan could be implemented with “practically no expense,” and thus, the board of education should act immediately.46

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

129

The board of education refused and argued that it had to use its limited resources to build elementary schools. High schools had to wait.47 Over two years later, the board of education allocated funding to open two single-sex high school annexes in Germantown: one for male youth in a local elementary school and one for female youth in Germantown’s Young Republican Club.48 Even though the schools were located a few blocks from one another, school officials implemented different structures and curricula in the two schools. School officials modeled the boys’ annex after the elite all-male Central High School. School administrators adopted Central High School’s academic curriculum and hired Central High School faculty to ensure instructional fidelity to Central’s aims and purposes.49 School officials modeled the girls’ annex after the William Penn High School for Girls, which had a more commercial and clerical focus, than the city’s academic Philadelphia High School for Girls. Once again, school administrators adopted William Penn’s commercial curriculum and hired faculty from the school to guarantee that the curriculum adhered to William Penn’s aims and purposes. Germantown residents praised school officials for moving them closer to their goal of securing a permanent public high school in their bucolic bourgeois white community.50 Despite the widespread enthusiasm about these new high school annexes, data indicate that Germantown residents were much more likely to enroll their daughters in the local high school annexes. When the annexes finally opened, the girls’ annex immediately filled to capacity with 175 students while the boys’ annex only had 35 students. The leaders of Germantown’s high school campaign worried that the skewed enrollment might have an adverse effect on the community’s desire to have a comprehensive, co-educational high school. And so, they urged their neighbors and friends to enroll their sons in the local high school annexes to show their support for a permanent high school.51 The pressure worked. Six months later, enrollment at the two high school annexes soared. Enrollment in the boys’ high school annex increased by 149% (from 35 boys in September 1910 to 87 boys in February 1911); enrollment in the girls’ high school annex increased by 63% (from 175 girls in September 1910 to 285 girls in February 1911).52 As enrollment surged, some Germantown residents worried that their children, especially their daughters, might not be able to attend the local high school annexes because they had already reached or exceeded their capacity. Germantown mothers circulated a petition to pressure school

130

E. M. KITZMILLER

officials to open new annexes for their daughters to protect them from the “moral corruption” in the city’s center.53 They sent the petition to the board of education and begged them to allow their daughters to attend high school in the community instead of traveling to the high schools in the city’s center. School officials responded to their demands and allocated additional funds to open another girls’ annex in Germantown’s vacant Taylor Mansion. Residents, once again, praised school officials for providing them with an additional girls’ annex on a sprawling wooded plot located a few blocks from the original girls’ annex.54 It was a short-term solution. In September 1911, Germantown’s boys high school annex reached capacity with 114 students. Enrollment in the girls’ annex had nearly doubled from 285 students in February 1911 to 425 students in September 1911.55 To accommodate this enrollment surge, school officials implemented shift schedules in the girls’ annexes. Half of the girls attended high school in the morning; the other half attended high school in the afternoon. While there were clear drawbacks to this approach, most Germantown residents preferred to send their daughters to their local high school annexes rather than have them travel several miles to attend high school in the corrupt city’s center.56 Enrollment in Germantown’s high school annexes continued to grow. In February 1912, a record number of girls, 453 students, enrolled in the school. School officials transferred 40 girls and 30 boys from the annexes to two high schools in the city’s center, William Penn High School and Central High School.57 Frustrated with these actions, Germantown residents organized a series of town meetings to express their outrage that their children were denied admissions to the local high school annexes due to overcrowding.58 On April 12, 1912, dozens of white residents gathered for a mass meeting to pressure school officials, including several who lived in the area, to allocate funds for a permanent high school. William T. Tilden, a school board member and Germantown resident, promised that he would “do everything in this power” to secure funding for a new public high school. The residents also sent a resolution to the school board outlining their frustrations and demands.59 However, the problems persisted. In September 1912, the enrollment reached new records with 477 girls and 112 boys. School officials instituted shift schedules and transferred about 100 girls and about 25 boys to William Penn and Central High School.60 Germantown residents, once again, lambasted the school board for transferring their children to high schools located miles away from their homes and for refusing to allocate funding

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

131

to build a high school in their community.61 The pressure worked. Later that year, school officials announced that they had secured funding to build a series of new high schools including one in Germantown.

Germantown High School: A Separate and Unequal Co-Educational High School In 1914, E. A. Zeller, a school official who lived in Germantown, shared the plans for the new high school with local community leaders. According to Zeller, Germantown High School’s architect, Henry deCourcy Richards, had planned a high school with an eastern wing to accommodate 1,000 male students and a western wing to accommodate 1,000 female students. There would be a shared auditorium in the middle of the school to accommodate 2,000 students. The school board put a large iron gate in the middle of the school to prevent female youth from crossing over to the boys’ side of the building and vice versa. Zeller also shared that “a number of friends of education in Germantown” had proposed that the Board of Education could take over the Young Republican Club to provide additional campus facilities for female youth tucked neatly away in a wooded area near the high school.62 Even though Zeller tried to convey the majesty of this new school building, school officials replicated the same high school design throughout the city to save costs. deCourcy Richards served as the architect on virtually every school project at the time. The only visible difference between West Philadelphia High School, which opened a few years earlier, and the plans for Germantown High School was that West also had separate auditoriums for female and male youth. It was cheaper to build co-educational institutions, but school officials, at least in Philadelphia’s new early twentieth-century high schools, refused to let high school-aged boys and girls learn together. Virtually every high school that school officials built in Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century reflected the gendered anxieties about co-education. The experiences that students had inside their high school as they moved to sex-segregated classrooms and participated in sex-segregated clubs and activities reinforced and replicated these norms. To understand the differences between the policies and practices that the school district officials promoted and the ways that they implemented them, we need to look inside the high school. Philadelphia school officials insisted on

132

E. M. KITZMILLER

the value of co-educational institutions because, like many school officials across the nation, they knew that co-educational institutions were less costly to build. But, when we look inside these co-educational institutions, the story of inequality emerges. Female and male youth did not learn together inside Germantown High School. Rather, school officials segregated them the moment they entered the schoolhouse door. The iron gate that divided the female and male sections of the school served as a constant reminder that school officials had no intention of allowing female and male youth to interact inside their beautiful, modern co-educational school. Germantown residents desperately wanted school officials to build a high school in their bourgeois, white community so that their sons and daughters could attend high school in their community. They did not want them traveling several miles to attend high schools in the “corrupt” and “dangerous” city center. But, at the same time, they did not want their high school to disrupt the gendered norms of their upperand middle-class white lives. Germantown residents did not challenge the fact that their daughters went to the west side of the school for their classes while their sons went to the east side of the school for their classes. They did not challenge the fact that school administrators implemented sex-segregated afterschool clubs and activities for their children to keep female and male youth separate. Finally, they did not challenge the fact that a high school diploma often prepared Germantown’s female and male youth for distinctly different pathways due to the gendered nature of the labor market. Rather than simply celebrating the progressive nature of co-education in American high schools, historians should think critically about how these elements factored into separate and unequal educational experiences for female and male youth at Germantown High School, and perhaps, beyond. Germantown High School might have been a coeducational institution, but it offered female and male youth separate and unequal educational experiences from its founding.

Notes 1. “To Lay Schools’ Cornerstone,” Independent-Gazette, September 18, 1914; “Sunday School to Have a Big Parade,” Independent-Gazette, September 25, 1914. 2. D. R. Contosta, Suburb in the City: Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, 1850– 1990 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992).

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

133

3. Margaret A Nash, Women’s Education in the United States, 1780–1840, 1st ed (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 4. John L. Rury, Education and Women’s Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991). 5. Jackie M. Blount, Fit to Teach: Same-Sex Desire, Gender, And School Work in the Twentieth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006); Karen Graves, Girls’ Schooling During the Progressive Era: From Female Scholar to Domesticated Citizen (New York: Routledge, 1998); Karen L. Graves, And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida’s Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Roland Sintos Coloma, “Who’s Afraid of Foucault? History, Theory, and Becoming Subjects,” History of Education Quarterly 51, No. 2 (May 2011): 184–210; Victoria Bissell Brown, “The Fear of Feminization: Los Angeles High Schools in the Progressive Era,” Feminist Studies 16, No. 3 (Autumn 1990): 493–518. 6. David B. Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992); Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race between Education and Technology (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). 7. Tyack and Hansot, Learning Together; Goldin and Katz, The Race between Education and Technology. The obvious exception to this is David F. Labaree, The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and Central High of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), but this work examines a single-sex all-male high school. 8. While it does not deal directly with gender, other books have done this, see more recently Kyle P. Steele, Making a Mass Institution: Indianapolis and the American High School, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020). 9. Erika M. Kitzmiller, The Roots of Educational Inequality: Philadelphia’s Germantown High School (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). 10. Labaree, The Making of an American High School, 16–23. 11. William J. Reese, The Origins of the American High School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 175; Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform, Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 12. Goldin and Katz, The Race between Education and Technology, 164–67. 13. Labaree, The Making of an American High School, 37.

134

E. M. KITZMILLER

14. Goldin and Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology, 169. 15. St. Louis Report for 1870, 19–20 cited in Tyack and Hansot, Learning Together, 103. 16. Anna Tolman Smith, “Coeducation of the Sexes in the United States,” in U.S. Com. Ed. Report for 1891–92, 2: 783–791 cited in Tyack and Hansot, 104. 17. U.S. Commissioner of Education Report, 1894–1895, vol. 1, 1115–18 cited in Victoria Bissell Brown, “The Fear of Feminization: Los Angeles High Schools in the Progressive Era,” Feminist Studies 16, No. 3 (Autumn 1990): 496. See also, Julius Sachs, “Coeducationin the United States,” Educational Review 33 (March 1, 1907), 299. 18. Edward Hammond Clarke, Sex in Education: Or, A Fair Chance for the Girls (J. R. Osgood and company, 1873), 20–26. 19. Tyack and Hansot, Learning Together, 146–55. 20. Earl Barnes, Woman in Modern Society (B. W. Huebsch, 1912), 72. 21. Louise Michele Newman, ed., Men’s Ideas/Women’s Realities (New York: Pergamon Press, 1985), 60; Sue Zschoche, “Dr. Clarke Revisited: Science, True Womanhood, and Female Collegiate Education,” History of Education Quarterly 29, No. 4 (December 1, 1989): 545–569, https://doi. org/10.2307/369063; Elaine Showalter and English Showalter, “Victorian Women and Menstruation,” Victorian Studies 14, No. 1 (1970): 83–89. See also, Tyack, 152. 22. Michael R. Haines, “American Fertility in Transition: New Estimates of Birth Rates in the United States, 1900–1910,” Demography 26, No. 1 (February 1, 1989): 137–148, https://doi.org/10.2307/2061500. 23. Theodore Roosevelt, “Prefatory Letter for Theodore Roosevelt,” in The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experience of Two Ladies as Factory Girls, by Bessie Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1903), vii–viii. 24. Charles Franklin Emerick, “College Women and Race Suicide,” Political Science Quarterly 24 (June 1909): 269–283; G.S., “Race Suicide,” The Lancet, June 27, 1908, 786–787; Margaret Grant, “Race Suicide,” Beauty and Health, August 1, 1903, 227; A. Lapthorn Smith, “Higher Education of Women and Race Suicide,” Popular Science 66 (March 1905): 466– 473. 25. G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, vol 2. (New York: D. Appleton, 1916), 575. 26. G. Stanley Hall, “Co-Education,” The Journal of Education 60, No. 4 (July 14, 1904): 72. 27. G. Stanley Hall, “Coeducation in the High School,” 58, No. 3 (July 9, 1903): 71.

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

135

28. Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education., 575. 29. Hall, 636. 30. Edward S. Martin, The Unrest of Women (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1913); Woods Hutchinson, “The Girl Versus the High School,” Good Housekeeping 55, No. 4 (October 1912): 533–538; James E. Russell, “Co-Education in High Schools: Is It a Failure?,” Good Housekeeping 57, No. 4 (October 1913): 491–495. 31. John L. Rury, Education and Women’s Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 214–215. 32. Labaree, The Making of an American High School. See also, Walter Licht, Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840–1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). 33. Henry R. Edmonds, “Report of the President of the Board of Public Education,” Eighty-Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Public Education, School District of Philadelphia, 1907, 10–11. Free Library of Philadelphia/Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania. 34. “All Downtown Out to Dedicate School,” Public Ledger, September 22, 1907. 35. “July 14, 1908,” in The Journal of the Board of Public Education for the Year 1908, Journal of the Board of Education, (Walther Printing House: Philadelphia, 1909), 172. 36. W.R. Harper, “Co-Education,” The Journal of Education 61, No. 4 (January 26, 1905): 88. 37. “September 14, 1909,” in The Journal of the Board of Public Education for the Year 1909, Journal of the Board of Education, (Walther Printing House: Philadelphia, 1910), 171. Free Library of Philadelphia. 38. “September 14, 1909,” in The Journal of the Board of Public Education for the Year 1909, Journal of the Board of Education (Walther Printing House: Philadelphia, 1910), 168–173. See also “Meeting of the Improvement Association,” November 16, 1909? Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XIa, p. 59, Germantown Historical Society; Meeting minutes, November 15, 1909, Box, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association, Minutes, 1908–1929, Germantown Historical Society. 39. Martin G. Brumbaugh, “Report of the Superintendent of the Board of Public Education,” in Ninety-First Annual Report of the Board of Public Education, 1909, 84. 40. Central High School’s principal was known as its president to mark the school’s prestige. 41. “Germantown Hits Out from Shoulder for a High School,” Independent Gazette, May 8, 1908. George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Box 3 Schools, Public, Germantown Historical Society. See also, Resolution, June 10,

136

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49. 50.

E. M. KITZMILLER

1908, Box, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association, Minutes, 1908–1929, Germantown Historical Society; “Enthusiastic High School Meeting,” Germantown Guide, May 16, 1908. Jane Campbell. “Germantowners Visit this Ward’s Board of Trade,” May 14, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society, Box 3 Schools, Public, Germantown Historical Society. See also, “Germantown Hits Out From Shoulder For a High School,” Independent Gazette, May 15, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Box 3 Schools, Public, Germantown Historical Society. “Germantowners Visit this Ward’s Board of Trade,” May 14, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society, Box 3 Schools, Public, Germantown Historical Society. “Germantown Hits One Out From Shoulder For a High School,” Independent Gazette, May 15, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society, Box 3, Public Schools, Germantown Historical Society; “Committee Adopts Resolution,” Germantown Guide, May 30, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society; “No Money for High Schools,” Public Ledger, June 8, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society; “Germantown Gives School Rent Free,” Philadelphia Press, June 13, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society. “For Local High School, Y.M.C.A. Offers Use of Hall to Board of Education,” Independent Gazette, May 29, 1908; “Germantown Gives School Rent Free,” Philadelphia Press, May 13, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Box 3 Schools, Public, GHS. “High School Resolutions Presented,” Germantown Guide, June 13, 1908, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. VI, p. 62, GHS. See also “An Energetic Committee,” Independent Gazette, June 12, 1908. “No Money for High School,” Public Ledger, June 8, 1908; “Urge New Loan for Education,” Inquirer?, June 18, 1908, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society. “High School a Certainty,” June 23, 1910, Independent Gazette, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XIIIa, p. 68, GHS; “Club House Can Be Leased for School,” Independent Gazette, June 17, 1910; “July 12, 1910,” in The Journal of the Board of Public Education for the Year 1910 (Walther Printing House: Philadelphia, 1911), 180. The Reflector, December 1911, Germantown Historical Society, Box 1, Public Schools. “Thirty-five Boys in New High School,” September 9, 1910, Independent Gazette, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XIVa, p. 19, GHS; “The Boys High School Annex,” September 24, 1910, Independent Gazette, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XIVa, p. 19, GHS.

6

GENDERED ANXIETIES PAVE THE WAY …

137

51. Jane Campbell, Chronicles of Germantown, September 1910, Germantown Historical Society. 52. Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association Meeting Minutes, October 1910, Box, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association, Minutes, 1908–1929, GHS; “Report of the Principal of the William Penn High School for Girls,” Annual Report, 1910, p. 241; “Good Results at New High Schools,” October 21, 1910, Independent Gazette, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XIVa, p. 60, GHS; “More Students for the High Schools,” February 3, 1911, Independent Gazette, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XVa, p. 59, Germantown Historical Society. 53. “District High Schools in Peril,” February 24, 1911, Independent Gazette, Germantown Historical Society. 54. “To Enlarge High School,” July 7, 1911, Independent Gazette, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XIVb, p. 89, Germantown Historical Society. 55. “Girls High School Annex,” No Date, No Name, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XIVb, p. 89, Germantown Historical Society. 56. “High Schools Big Gains,” September 15, 1911, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XVIIa, p. 22, Germantown Historical Society; “Not Enough Seats for All Pupils,” September 29, 1911, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XVIIa, p. 23, Germantown Historical Society. 57. “High School Pupils Sent Down Town,” Independent Gazette, February 2, 1912. 58. “Six Mass Meetings for High Schools,”Independent Gazette, March 22, 1912, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XVIIIb, p. 109, Germantown Historical Society. 59. “People Will Rally for High Schools,” February 23, 1912, Independent Gazette; “Enthusiastic in High School Fight,” March 8, 1912, Independent Gazette; “High Schools Coming,” Independent Gazette, April 5, 1912; “April 9, 1912,” in The Journal of the Board of Education of the First School District for the Year 1912 (Philadelphia: Walther Printing House, 1912), 62. 60. “High Schools’ Big Enrollment,” Independent Gazette, September 13, 1912. 61. “October 8, 1912,” in The Journal of the Board of Education of the First School District for the Year 1912 (Philadelphia: Walther Printing House, 1912), 172. 62. “New High Schools for 2000 Pupils,” 1914, Germantown High SchoolBuildings, Germantown Historical Society.

CHAPTER 7

A Window into the World of Students: An Analysis of 1920s High School Student Newspapers Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen

“Mr. Mahnke, please xplain [sic] your pi,” implored a 1924 editorial in an issue of the Devil’s Pi, the student newspaper at Superior (Wisconsin) Central High School. The name of the newspaper—“pi” in particular— drew on old printer’s slang that referred to spilled type, and was not a common part of the vocabulary of 1920s high school students. “What does the name mean? Some poor sophomore blurts out the question before he thinks and then suddenly feels by the way folks look at him that he has asked something he ought to know. His situation is pathetic for this matter of pies is perplexing…Angel Cake and Devil’s Food we can understand, but we can’t get at Devils Pi.” Harold L. Mahnke, the bespectacled Pi adviser and Superior Central printing instructor, had

C. Cieslik-Miskimen (B) University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_7

139

140

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

inherited the name when he took over the publishing of the newspaper and kept it, despite its tendency to confound students. The paper’s first masthead described it as a “mixed up matter of school news, put together by printer’s apprentices.”1 A veteran of the newspaper and printing trades, Mahnke viewed the publication’s esoteric name as a reflection of the students’ unusually active role in producing the paper. Throughout the early 1920s, the Devil’s Pi was the complete product of high school students. They wrote articles, solicited news items, sold subscriptions, designed pages, set type, and operated the ancient platen presses in a cramped 200-square foot classroom that housed the printing department and gave life to the newspaper. This level of student involvement and student control, Mahnke asserted, was essential to the success of any student publication, especially the newspapers that were becoming increasingly common from coast to coast in the 1920s. Mahnke was active in the Central Interscholastic Press Association, a scholastic journalism organization and the lead organizer and inaugural president of the Central Association of Printing Teachers, and he often stressed the importance of student involvement in published articles for newspaper advisers and printing instructors.2 The resulting “all home product” would generate greater interest from the student body as a whole.3 Minimal faculty involvement, as well as limited input from school administrators, created a more authentic publication that would be sustained primarily by student support rather than advertising. Further, a strong student newspaper would reflect well on the community and help establish its high schools as modern and progressive. These early high school student newspapers represented an important journalism trend. Observers called student newspapers the “most significant new type of publication in American journalism,” in part because of their service to both schools and students.4 The result of collaboration between English departments and vocational instruction (or manual arts) programs, these publications were not intended to serve as a practical training ground for future journalists, despite their attempts to mimic the practices of their professional counterparts. Rather, the production of student newspapers sought to provide practical training that drew on the lessons of other academic programs, such as English, mathematics, and civics. While early newspaper editions were largely experimental in terms of content, and displayed a wide variety of professional markers (such as a bureaucratic management structure, a standardized format, and training in writing, production, and advertising sales for staff members), they often

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

141

reflected a decidedly pro-school theme in their content, no matter the level of faculty control. Supporters of high school journalism often applauded its ability to support the objectives of the era’s leading secondary education reformers, specifically their calls for a focus on “vocation,” “citizenship,” and “ethical character,” three of the seven broad objectives listed in the 1918 Cardinal Principles report, the era’s most influential educational report on high schools. Student newspapers not only signaled a commitment to these educational objectives, but they also provided a way to create community among students as enrollments soared. Further, they served as an important promotional vehicle for school boards looking to win support for new building initiatives and increasing school budgets. These print products were incredibly popular, and their numbers soared in the 1920s. Before 1910, only 22 high school newspapers were recorded in the United States. According to the 1939 National Survey of High School Journalism, of 506 newspapers reporting the date of origin, nearly three-fourths were founded before 1930.5 Despite this rapid rise, the vibrant world of high school print culture has been largely unexamined by historians and communication scholars alike. Neither the origin nor the production of high school publications has been the subject of extensive scholarly inquiry, despite a push against histories that prioritize educational administration and institutions. Of late, historians are increasingly looking to student artifacts—ranging from newspapers to yearbooks to personal letters and diaries—to better understand the student response to the cluster of activities that the sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd described as a “fairly complete social cosmos in itself.”6 Examining student print culture, specifically newspapers and yearbooks, is useful in this regard because it holds the power to contextualize the high school experience through the student lens, a window into the high school world, as seen and interpreted by students. These publications offer a glimpse into the expanding world of extracurricular activities and the demands placed on students preparing for a new, modern age. They also allow scholars to see the exchange between students in more unofficial spaces—the margins of yearbooks, the joke column in a newspaper, the suggestion box placed outside a student newsroom. School administrators embraced the high school newspaper movement, but administrative support did not necessarily make the student staffs mouthpieces for the school system. Students did reliably express a proschool viewpoint and focused much newspaper content on cultivating

142

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

school spirit and encouraging their peers to be upstanding members of the school community, in part because of the make-up of their staffs. Yet, they attempted to do this less as a top-down directive, and more so on their own terms, a process of give-and-take that should be explored in other contexts. Along those lines, 1920s high school newspapers also give us a vital perspective on youth culture, a distinctive, and potentially troublesome, phenomenon emblematic of the tensions of the decade. Equipped with more education and leisure time than previous generations and more unencumbered by notions of genteel manners, youth in the 1920s signified a distinct break with the past. New institutions challenged the old in the moral education of youth, and less time at home meant the family had to compete for influence alongside peers. For many places, the public high school promised to provide adolescents with the training they needed to be successful in a new, modern age. Expanded educational offerings— especially those included as part of the extra curriculum, such as student publications—helped symbolize a city or town’s own progress, allowing smaller locales to align themselves with their larger urban counterparts. By granting more opportunities to their students, school administrators, and school supporters viewed themselves as investing in the next generation. But this investment also raised issues of control, especially for student journalists. Drawing primarily from the print materials produced by students at two high schools in Superior, Wisconsin throughout the 1920s, as well as supplementary local and state education reports, this chapter demonstrates how high school publications won institutional support—from teachers, administrators, and parents—and how the student newspaper became closely associated with a progressive, modern school system. Additionally, this chapter examines the content of high school journalism textbooks published during the 1910s and 1920s. These texts not only offer national perspectives on the trends in high school journalism, but also show how those trends were adopted on the local level. Specifically, this chapter makes use of issues of the Scholastic Editor, a monthly publication for high school newspaper advisers; commentary from leading advocates for journalism education that appeared in publishing trade magazines such as Editor & Publisher; and educational trade magazines including The English Journal , The High School Journal , and The School Review.

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

143

A bustling port city on the southern shore of Lake Superior in Northern Wisconsin, Superior was one of the most active shipping harbors in North America and home to the eastern terminus of the Great Northern Railway. Its population had grown dramatically in the early twentieth century—from 655 residents in 1880 to more than 39,000 residents in 1920—and city boosters were eager to align it with the booming industrial and shipping centers of the United States, such as Chicago, Cleveland, and Buffalo. Strong financial support for the city’s high schools emerged as one of the avenues its politicians, business class, religious leaders, and educational advocates pursued as a way to continue the city’s growth. Superior spent much of the 1920s building and expanding its public school system, with special attention paid to the development of its high school curriculum. The city’s school district enrolled as many as 11,428 students during the decade,7 and its high school enrollment was well above the Wisconsin state average.8 There were two public high schools in Superior: Superior Central High School, which enrolled between 1,100 and 1,400 students, and the smaller Nelson Dewey High School (later Superior East High School), which enrolled between 300 and 500 students. Demographically, these were predominantly white institutions, which reflected the racial make-up of Superior itself. Black residents made up only 0.3% of the city’s population in the 1920 U.S. Census, and no Black students appeared on the yearbook pages of the city’s two high schools. Superior’s only daily newspaper, the Telegram, presented the city as a unified, cohesive community that was predominantly middle class, free of ethnic and racial conflict, and adhered to a Christian morality. The portrait presented was that of fully Americanized residents, despite the city’s substantial immigrant population. The reality of life in Superior was much more complicated and ethnically diverse. More than 27% of the population was foreign-born, according to the 1920 U.S. Census, and many of the city’s citizens were first-generation Americans. Most emigrated from Sweden, Norway, Poland, and Finland. This diversity extended to the city’s high schools and the staffs of its newspapers. Many of the students involved in the production of the newspaper—including its leadership positions—were the children of immigrants or first-generation Americans. Though rooted primarily in Superior in the 1920s, the chapter begins with a discussion of the new role of the American high school nationally in the 1920s, and demonstrates how student newspapers fit into a larger push for an expanded extracurriculum that would equip students with

144

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

the skills they needed to be successful in a modern age. It then describes the production process of the newspaper and the role students occupied in this new media environment in the early 1920s. This was largely an era of experimentation in terms of format, content, and student control. The faculty advisors tasked with overseeing these student newspapers— such as Harold Mahnke—pursued different management and teaching strategies, including the “home product” approach Mahnke advocated. With students responsible for content, they were able to make choices about how they represented themselves within the school community and beyond. However, as the popularity of high school journalism soared and the number of publications increased, questions about control began to emerge among school administrators and educators, a trend reflected both nationally and in Superior. While some educators may have initially embraced a hands-off approach in order to win student support for high school newspapers, it was not a viable long-term strategy. By the end of the 1920s, the period of student control and experimentation was over. The student newspaper was a professional product, the result of a more standardized high school journalism curriculum, the oversight of education administrators, and pressure from university journalism programs.

The Progressive High School and Its Newspaper: A Natural Fit As this volume has made clear, high school attendance, by the turn of the century, had become more of a normative experience among the children of the professional and business classes. Between 1880 and 1900, in fact, cities and towns went on a building spree and the number of public high schools increased 750 percent.9 In Wisconsin, which reflected national trends, the number of high schools increased from 169 to 288, enrollment from 11,449 to 27,768, and the number of teachers from 376 to 1,334 between 1890 and 1906.10 High school enrollment doubled between 1915 and 1925.11 High schools popped up in rural areas, small towns, and large cities across the state as a sign that not only were these communities growing, but that they were invested in the needs of citizens. By the 1920s, high schools became central to a city’s or town’s social structure. Enrollments increased and students spent more time in the classroom and filled their spare time with extracurricular activities.

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

145

High schools challenged the family and the church as the most significant institutions for teenagers. In addition to providing a comprehensive curriculum, public school teachers believed high schools should serve as an agency of socialization and provide civic training. They acculturated newly arrived immigrants and imparted middle-class, American values on students.12 They inculcated the values of hard work and efficiency that were prized in the marketplace.13 They gradually expanded the school’s extracurricular offerings and began taking responsibility for more aspects of a student’s life. As a result, high school became the “defining experience of American adolescence,” and one of the dominant sites of culture creation in the twentieth century.14 They also became integral to the community experience. Their elaborately designed buildings, such as that of Superior High School, occupied prominent places in town and used the elements of classical architecture, such as columns and elaborate facades, to signify their importance. As the historian William J. Reese noted, the cost, design, and location of high schools revealed dominant attitudes about cultural authority, centralized power, and the role of high schools. Especially in Northern cities and towns, public high schools “helped shape urban identity.”15 In just a few short decades, high schools were transformed into pillars of community building and, to some, acted as an antidote to the negative effects of modernity. The “primary importance” of the high school, according to University of Wisconsin Professor Thomas Lloyd Jones, was to prepare students who could effectively participate in the “affairs of the world.” Jones, a faculty member in the Department of Education and the university’s high school relations director, issued a call to Wisconsin residents for “cooperation among the home, the community, and the school in the interest of a society that is yet to be.”16 By the end of the decade, the questions surrounding high schools no longer centered on whether the high school should exist and to what extent a community should embrace it, but instead on how best to fund them and how to ensure access to all students, not just those continuing their education at a university, college, or state normal school. The modern high school was never a site just for the acquisition of knowledge. For all the benefits high schools offered in the present, one of the most important contributions was preparing students—and the towns and cities where they lived—for the future. As part of this preparation, a new kind of educational environment emerged that emphasized academics along with extracurricular activities.

146

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

For many educators, organizations such as debate teams, the school chorus, booster clubs, high school versions of the YMCA and YWCA, among others, supplied an arena in which students could exercise selfdetermination and self-government, cornerstones of the American democratic ideal, and put into practice concepts learned in the classroom.17 In order for the high school to fulfill its mission and train the next generation of American citizens—which had won it support and quieted critics—a consensus emerged that the social functions of the modern high school had to expand in order to meet the challenge of preparing students for life in an increasingly complex society. Schools needed to grow the social side of education, just as they had grown enrollments.18 Educational administrators in Superior recognized participation in clubs, societies, and athletic teams as an “integral part of the work of secondary education,” perhaps just as important, if not more so, than the scholarly pursuits of the classroom.19 The only way for the school to give the type of training required to be a good, active citizen is to “develop a live school community with organizations similar to that of the adult community.”20 The modern high school needed to offer more than a robust academic program; it needed to provide access to clubs, associations, and activities. Scholastic print culture occupied a crucial position within the school activities movement. By the mid-1920s, educators recognized the school newspaper as one of the essential assets of a modern, progressive school. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, who articulated the centrality of communication to a vibrant democracy, educators promoted student newspapers for their ability to foster democratic ideals and forge a sense of community among high school students. Producing newspapers, yearbooks, and handbooks would teach students skills such as accuracy and reliability, and instill a sense of personal responsibility.21 “Though the development and the display of English is its chief aim, the study is an active force for democracy,” wrote high school English teacher and newspaper adviser Bessie Huff in a journalism textbook. “It seeks to furnish many students a laboratory in which to develop American ideals … The personal growth in self-control, business achievements, and executive ability that students gain from actual work in a school paper alone justify the establishment of a school paper in any school.”22 The introduction to another textbook explained the rationale for these programs thusly: By working on the staff of a school publication, students developed an understanding of the newspaper as an “organ of democracy,” and were ready to assume their civic duties upon graduation.23 The introduction

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

147

for the 1918 textbook Journalism for High Schools put it more simply: “Every high school should have a paper.”24 Educators also saw the role student publications could play in promoting the activities of the high school and fostering goodwill among the community, a key asset when public support might be needed for future building projects or budget referendums. They became “useful interpreters” of school activities, and published not only the interesting personal items related to daily life within the classroom, but also more significant news about academic courses, new faculty members, and the activities of clubs and organizations. In other words, they would mimic the content and style of a “real newspaper” to help the school “acquire a healthy self-consciousness and educate the community to a better appreciation of what the school is doing for its young people.”25 This ability to act as a liaison between the school and the community, and capacity to serve the individual, the faculty, and the school, was one of the most important attributes of student publications.26 Viewing the newspaper as a publicity organ allowed administrators to highlight the “progressiveness” of their schools. “The school is the workshop of the community where the future leaders are prepared,” wrote Dan A. Edkins, the executive secretary of the Indiana High School Press Association, in a 1925 edition of Scholastic Editor. As such, the general public would be naturally interested in what happened within the school building.27 Promoting its activities and the work of students was a natural use of student publications. Outwardly, the seemingly rapid growth of student publications (and the newspaper boom in particular) fit within the democratic framework the school promoted. For school administrators looking to modernize their offerings and provide educational opportunities that would prepare their students for the challenges of a new era, the establishment of printing vocational courses and the practice of journalistic writing helped them achieve their objectives. The number and variety of high school publications significantly increased during the 1920s. A 1935 Columbia University study described the rapid expansion and the importance of journalistic enterprise as “one of the phenomenal developments of modern life…It is natural, then, that high schools should have been greatly affected by these journalistic activities of adult society.”28 The study, which based its conclusions on a survey of 269 student newspapers, revealed the number of student print materials that grew substantially during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Most student newspapers were introduced after World War I. The

148

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

average year for the introduction of magazines was 1900; for yearbooks 1907; and for handbooks, 1922.29 A questionnaire sent to Kansas high schools in 1928 found 55 of 72 schools published papers, 48 had classes in journalism, and five offered advanced courses.30 Scholastic organizations sprang up across the country to provide guidance and resources to the growing number of teachers tasked with advising newspaper and yearbook staffs, and those teaching journalism courses.31 The most prolific of these, the Central Interscholastic Press Association (which reorganized later in the decade as the National Scholastic Press Association) introduced its own magazine, Scholastic Editor, which claimed a circulation of 3,700 by 1930.32 It held an annual conference for its members, offered professional critiques of student publications (on request), and awarded national prizes for the best high school newspapers and yearbooks. By the middle of the decade, the organization’s annual gathering routinely attracted close to 1,000 delegates from across the United States and Canada, and its 1924 meeting was thought to be the largest journalistic meeting in the world.33 While student newspapers did win seemingly universal institutional approval, there was no standard approach to an early newspaper format, content, and student control. Educators agreed that students, by and large, should shape newspaper content, sell subscriptions and advertisements, and promote the importance of a newspaper to their peers. But how much control should they have? A successful student newspaper, as University of Wisconsin journalism Professor Grant M. Hyde noted, was an all-school enterprise that stood alongside other more established extracurriculars.34 But discussions over the extent students should control the production of newspapers—and to what extent a faculty advisor should act as an editor or censor—varied largely. Arguments for a tightly controlled newsroom focused on several concerns. First, the students in charge of the publication would use it as a platform to promote their friends and viewpoints, rather than those representatives of the school. C.K. Reiff, principal of Central High School in Muskogee, Oklahoma, argued against total student control in A Laboratory Manual for High School Journalism as a way to prevent a select group of students from using the newspaper to air their “petty grievances, politics or personal prejudices.”35 A second concern was that student reporters and editors lack proper “news sense,” and would overemphasize the thrilling and entertaining. Journalism textbook author L.N. Flint worried that that, without supervision, student newspapers

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

149

would devote more space to athletics than academics. Finally, journalism textbook authors and college journalism professors argued that proper faculty supervision would be the only way to ensure the quality of the publication. “To conduct the enterprise without competent direction is to waste time and material and to injure the school,” wrote textbook author Charles Dillon.36 But while these textbook authors and journalism educators expressed concern about unsupervised high school newspaper production, they also emphasized the importance of publishing student writing that resonated with the audience. To create an unauthentic product—or one that reeked of administrative oversight—would be to lose the subscription dollars and student support that was needed to make these newspapers an essential part of school life. Records about the actual extent of school control are scarce. Historians are left with the final product, not the debate and back-and-forth that happened behind the scenes. The best way, then, to describe these early papers is experimental in terms of form, content, and control. Some early newspapers resembled highly professionalized products, such as the Shortridge Daily Echo, which started publishing a daily newspaper in 1898 for Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, and had faculty members that served as editor and managing editor in the early 1920s. The High Life, published by students at Greensboro High School in North Carolina beginning in the 1920–1921 school year, was a six-page, four-column newspaper that published photos and featured a large professional layout with distinct headlines, column dividers, sections (such as sports and class notes), and textbox insets. But most of these early student newspapers bore a closer resemblance to a pamphlet, and were haphazard in their style, format, and publishing schedule. The Scholastic Editor chastised newspapers from smaller schools that seemed to be in a “continual state of transition” and blended elements of magazines and newspapers.37 These student newspapers did not reflect a cohesive understanding of what a newspaper was or the role it should play. Many of these newspapers, such as early editions of the Devil’s Pi, were four small pages, filled with text and few illustrations. There were no standard sections, and the type of stories covered varied from issue to issue. The content choices of these publications reveal several priorities, each responding in some capacity to the educational demands placed on students, concerns articulated about the youth culture, and social expectations. Primarily, these print products sought to cultivate a sense

150

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

of school spirit—or its close relative “pep”—by establishing participation as a character ideal among high school students. They defined school spirit, offered suggestions on how to boost it, and reproached the student body when it seemed lacking. By admonishing their peers for disappointing displays of spirit, and reprimanding other behaviors including smoking, improper lunchroom behavior, and fashion choices, high school newspapers exhibited their second priority: an attempt to set a standard of behavior for students during the decade that largely reflected societal expectations, and to celebrate certain characteristics and personal qualities prized during the decade. Even in school newsrooms with minimal faculty oversight, such as at Superior Central High School, students tended to develop content that reflected a pro-school mentality. However, these outlets also provided a space to challenge social conventions. Through jokes, poems, and short stories, high schoolers articulated their values, aired their grievances about academics and adult expectations, and contemplated their place in society. Throughout, high school print culture fulfilled a broader mission—these publications created a sense of community and established the boundaries of youth identity among their peers.

The Beginning of High School Newspapers, 1910–1923 High school journalism programs developed largely through the collaboration of two distinct departments: the English department and vocational instruction. Several early journalism and newspaper textbooks specifically targeted English teachers in order to encourage the establishment of news writing courses. An advertisement for Journalism for High Schools described it as a “welcome help” for the English teacher looking to develop a course on a subject “that is growing daily in importance.”38 These textbooks never intended the instruction of journalism as a replacement for traditional literature and grammar courses. Instead, they viewed it as a complementary course, one that would build on the skills English teachers were already emphasizing. “The excellence of the high school newspaper, then, rests primarily on the foundation built with good books,” observed Journalism for High Schools .39 One of the more prominent textbooks of the 1920s, Bessie Huff’s How to Publish a School Paper, argued high school journalism classes were just English taught in a laboratory setting.

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

151

Many of these early journalism textbooks were quick to draw a distinction between the courses they outlined and vocational training. They were not intended to serve as a practical training ground for future journalists, they argued, and were rather intended to spark an interest in journalism as a future career. “[T]he scope in school news writing is not vocational in character,” read the introduction for How to Publish a School Paper.40 Journalism classes exist “not for the purpose of making newspaper men and women of high school boys and girls,” wrote Selden Carlyle Adams of the National Education Association in the preface for Writing for Print .41 While some students were likely to become interested in newspaper careers, the high school journalism course should not take the place of the more advanced college course. This differentiation was easier to maintain in print than in practice, especially for those high school programs that relied on the equipment, expertise, and administrator support of their manual arts programs. These expanded programs won the backing of administrators that demanded the high school develop to serve all students, not just the college bound. This thinking reflected the core tenets of the Cardinal Principles report, which stated the goal of the high school was to serve society as well as the individual by teaching “common ideas, common ideals, and common modes of thought, feeling, and action” which would allow students to live a rich and fulfilled life in service to American democracy.42 In order to achieve these objectives, high school administrators expanded their courses beyond their so-called “academic” tracks. They introduced classes that would provide vocational training for skilled trades, and emphasized the practical, rather than the theoretical, in courses such as math and English. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, whose biennial reports and studies provided guidance and recommendations for the operation of high schools, admonished principals and school systems across the state for their critical lack of vocational course options and inability to prepare students for jobs in in-demand industries, such as printing. In its 1920–1922 report, it noted that only three school districts in the state offered an expanded manual arts department that included printing. Superior was one of these three.43 Superior Central started its printing program in 1915, and the earliest record of printing classes at the city’s other public high school, Nelson Dewey, was in the 1919–1920 schoolyear.44 Academically, this area of study offered students the opportunity to apply the skills learned in courses such as English, mathematics, and art courses in a practical

152

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

setting. At Central, where Mr. Mahnke led the newspaper, most students took printing as a means to improve their knowledge of English and spelling, not necessarily because they aspired to be printers or work at newspapers.45 The department’s objective was to enhance lessons learned in other classrooms, and make the student “self-reliant, observative, creative, original, and accurate,” skills that would easily translate beyond the halls of the high school into any number of professions.46 The ability to offer academic as well as economic advantages solidified the Superior school district’s decision to back these programs.47 In addition to student newspapers, the print shop at Superior Central High School, and later at the new Superior East High School, produced report cards, pamphlets, programs, Board of Education reports, and other printed materials. Printing classes at Superior Central saved the school (and district) thousands of dollars,48 and Principal C.G. Wade applauded the efforts of Mr. Mahnke and his students: “I would rather lose any other department of my school than the printing department. It is one of the most useful in the building.”49 Student yearbooks similarly tended to memorialize the centrality of the department to high school life. “But yet one profession alone, that of printing, can least afford to be removed…The printing department has become an almost indispensable part of the daily routine of the school,” the staff of Superior Central’s yearbook wrote on the five-year anniversary of the printing department. During its tenure, it had been of “incalculable value to the students and thus to the school.”50 The print shop of Nelson Dewey High School was the “Bee Hive” of the school, despite its lack of equipment and a full-time printing instructor.51 Both schools emphasized the importance of printing to the school as a whole and its ties to other subjects, and published enrollment statistics in their respective yearbooks as a testament to its utility. The production of newspapers further underscored this fact. The move to publish a newspaper came from the students in the printing class at Superior Central, who decided in 1917 to produce a four-page, two-column issue of the Devil’s Pi on small paper stock. An unpretentious affair, the paper was a “good start” for a school with population of 800 students, but it was short lived and discontinued the following school year. A push from administrators in 1919 revived the Devil’s Pi, and it began production again in February 1919.52 Nearly one year later, in March 1920, the first edition of the Waste Basket rolled off the presses at Nelson Dewey High School, also due to the demand

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

153

from the printing students to “record the happenings of the school and to express the school spirit.”53 These early student newspapers in Superior bore a closer resemblance to a Colonial-era pamphlet than to the more modern commercial newspaper, and reflect the experimentation present in the student newspapers produced at other high schools.54 Slim and short, they were often four to eight pages, with news items arranged in a simple two-column or threecolumn layout. Headlines appeared in the same font size, and no more than four news items appeared on the front page. The front page of a 1921 issue of the Gleam (the Waste Basket’ s successor) for example, carried two articles, one announcing the formation of a Nelson Dewey alumni association, and the other detailing the activities of the school’s new Latin Club. The front page of the first issue of the Devil’s Pi for the 1920–1921 school year was typical: two articles, one thanking the Rotary Club for hosting a dental clinic, and the other chronicling senior class elections. The rudimentary design of these early newspapers did not distinguish between sections, and often did not adhere to a set structure nor a set number of features. Illustrations were rare, as were photographs, due to their cost and the limitations of the printing equipment provided. When they were included, they were typically of athletic contests or teams. Often, only short articles packed the newspapers, broken up only by black lines of varying weights, and advertisements were minimal in number and diminutive in size. These pieces usually focused on various activities associated with the school’s athletic teams and extra-curricular organizations, as well as reports from the classroom. Poems, short stories, and jokes appeared alongside the news articles. Some were submitted by students, others lifted from the other student newspapers the Devil’s Pi and Waste Basket received through exchanges (a system where high school newspapers were mailed to other schools), and in the early years of both publications, these types of literary and humorous features accounted for the majority of content. The newspapers aimed for a weekly publication schedule, but that was often hard to maintain. A 1919 issue of the Devil’s Pi proudly described its publication schedule as “when we feel like it,”55 which was later updated to read “Issued when we have the time, the inclination, and the copy. Usually every Friday.”56 This appeared as part of the newspaper’s masthead for at least one academic year. Part of the reason these early newspapers were so haphazard was due to the organization of their staffs. As an extracurricular activity, the editors

154

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

and writers rotated each semester based on student interest. At Superior Central, editing duties initially alternated between two clubs, the Red Domino Club and the Wranglers, on top of their other obligations. While not necessarily, outwardly exclusive in their membership, these clubs tended to draw from students already active in the school. The Red Domino Club was an all-girls organization of the most popular and “livewire” girls of the school, and oversaw editing and reporting duties for the fall semester.57 The Wranglers, an all-boys debating and oratory club, claimed to be a truly representative organization of the school and “the spirit of the student body as a whole.”58 They took over in spring. The clubs followed a similar tactic in their management of the paper and relied heavily on the student body to submit content to supplement the little reporting they actually did. Consequently, the news presented in the paper tended to represent the interests of the organizations where the staff had connections, either through friends or as an active participant, and embodied a decidedly pro-school mentality. While less is known about the staff and newspaper management structure of the various Nelson Dewey and Superior East publications, the high school’s yearbooks reveal that the staff, when listed, was similarly involved in school activities. Even when the students of the schools’ journalism classes replaced clubs as the primary source of reporters and editors, this tendency for students already active in extracurricular activities to occupy reporting and management roles at the Devil’s Pi did not dissipate. When the Pi ran a front-page article on its new managing editor for the 1926 school year, Viola Wick, it listed her qualifications: three years of experience on the newspaper staff, one summer spent reporting at the Superior Telegram, and “wide connections with school activities and well-deserved popularity.”59 The Pi editor-in-chief for the 1924 school year, Margaret Lang, listed 12 school activities under her senior photo, including her election as a commencement speaker. Bruce Black, the editor-in-chief for the East Hi Times in 1927, was a two-time varsity basketball player and member of the Commercial Club. Despite this position as a school activity for the popular and the connected, the student newspapers did boast a nearly level of involvement among female and male students throughout the decade. The staff of the Devil’s Pi was made up of at least 50 percent women, with female students often occupying leadership roles at the newspaper. This marked another important point of differentiation from their professional counterparts. The Telegram, for example, employed two

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

155

female editors and reporters in the 1920s, and relegated most of its female employees to roles as secretaries.60 These early editions were an all-school effort. The Waste Basket often advertised a hallway box as a means to solicit articles: “We hope that the pupils will put little stories and jokes, and anything that will help us to publish a better paper for you.”61 The Devil’s Pi editors routinely pleaded with their peers to submit items. “Everybody, stray freshman included, is requested to hand in all copy possible … Stories, poems, and jokes or any new events of interest to the students will be gratefully received. Come on now, bring on your masterpieces. This is a paper of the students, for the students, by the students.”62 The newspaper staffs focused on delivering a product that best reflected the needs of the school and the students in order to cultivate a base of support. If the paper was to be a success, the entire student body needed to help by submitting news tips, writing jokes and poems, and “boosting” for the papers in every way possible. “A school paper is almost as important as school studies, because it lets all the students ‘in’ on everything going on in the building of interest to the school,” read a Devil’s Pi editorial.63 Part of the value in these newspapers lay in creating a sense of community within the halls of high schools that were seeing increasing enrollments. In order to create this community, students needed to not only know what was going on in other classrooms and clubs, but also what standards of behavior and dress they should follow. These newspapers were happy to act as guides to the modern high school. As a result, the two papers frequently chastised their readers for their lack of contributions or poor subscription sales. When the Devil’s Pi only sold 250 subscriptions in 1920—less than 25% of its total student population of 1,100—its editors published a somewhat exasperated editorial and asked “Does that mean that only that many are interested in a school paper? Are the rest planning on reading their neighbor’s paper?”64 When subscription sales remained slow in 1921, the new staff tried a much more dramatic approach, with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “Now, what’s the matter?” they asked. “If you don’t want the ‘Pi’ to exist anymore just keep up the FINE spirit you are showing, otherwise wake up and do some boosting.”65 The popularity of candy sales over subscription sales annoyed the Waste Basket staff: “What has happened to the Dewey spirit? No school paper can keep up with only twenty-five percent of the students supporting it. When a candy sale is being conducted inside of five minutes

156

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

after the candy has appeared it is all gone. Why can’t this happen to the Waste Basket?”.66 Despite the initial difficulty in soliciting submissions and selling subscriptions, the newspapers quickly established themselves as a key part of the high school’s academic and social world, due in part to their persistence, the social connections of their staff, and involvement of all students. As a result of their reliance on a network of informal correspondents, these early issues provide a more unfiltered glimpse into the trials and tribulations of the high school student than the more professional editions that emerge in the second half of the decade, albeit one that heavily favored the more involved, pro-school students. Typical of both the Devil’s Pi and the Waste Basket was a sprinkling of miscellaneous observations which appeared scattered throughout the paper. These quips, witty one-liners, and limericks often offered general social commentary, and they chronicled life within high school walls. These jokes played into a larger thematic element of early student newspaper content, which sought to define and cultivate a sense of school spirit, primarily by emphasizing student participation in events and extracurriculars. The newspapers highlighted the exploits of certain individuals within each school, primarily those who were actively involved in athletics, clubs, debate and dramatics. By celebrating pro-school individuals, the newspapers helped define what it meant to be a successful high school student, and showcased what value high schools should deliver to students. In many cases, the editorial pages and columns went as far as discussing the definition of, and merits associated, with school spirit. School spirit was critical to a high school’s intellectual reputation, as well as its athletic status in the community. “It is school spirit to get high grades. It is school spirit that makes us want people to know that at Superior High you’ve got to be up to standard to be counted in. Are you 100 percent School Spirit?” asked the Devil’s Pi.67 A strong extracurricular program was part of a progressive school with strong spirit: “A wide awake school always has different clubs or leagues which rival one another in trying to be bigger, better, and stronger than the other, and clubs which try to do things worthwhile.”68 The burden to participate, and drive these programs further, fell on students. Often, the newspapers described strong school spirit as the duty of a well-intentioned high school student. They reminded readers that while more students were extending their education to include high school, it still remained a rarity and a privilege. Those who did not take advantage

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

157

of the activities school had to offer through participation wasted an intellectual opportunity. “It’s the student who takes in all school activities and enjoys them that gets the most out of his school life,” wrote the Devil’s Pi in an editorial published during a semester that was especially preoccupied with school spirit and student decorum. “The boy or girl who is to be someone in the world is the one who takes all he can get good out of observation of many different events.”69 Two weeks later, the newspaper asked: “Are you getting all that the school has to give you? Are you making the school proud of your work? Are you leaving the school a little better than you found it?”.70 In addition to editorials focused on encouraging participation, the newspapers also published a variety of tips and tricks to help students reflect on their role within the school, and society more broadly. The Devil’s Pi offered a 10-point list during the fall semester of 1920, which included admonishing students to “start school work in earnest from the beginning,” to “remember that you are a part of a great organization and that things you do reflect credit or discredit on the school,” and to “remember that a bad record is hard to live down.” Finally, they concluded with a call to participation: “Go in for some high school activity and go in for it strong. Remember all your education doesn’t come from books.”71 By devoting so many editorial column inches and space within the newspaper to the question of school involvement and spirit, the student newspaper staffs were echoing the pro-extracurricular arguments of school administrators within a student-friendly framework— despite the lack of oversight from their faculty supervisor. By equating spirit with pro-school boosting and participation in extra-curriculars, the student editorial staffs behind these newspapers reflected the important role administrators assigned to these activities. They portrayed them as an essential part of the high school experience, and a critical place for students to derive value that would help them in their future role in society. Leaving school having demonstrated strong support for the institution, and being active within its hallways, meant that a student was adequately prepared for the next stage of life, and high schools had fulfilled their community promise. The student newspapers furthered this effort by actively policing student behavior. They accomplished this by discussing abhorrent behaviors or student trends on their fledgling editorial pages, publishing student complaints about their peers, and celebrating certain characteristics and

158

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

qualities of their peers, especially in their coverage of athletics. The editorial page became the primary platform for critique student behavior and articulating concerns associated with the new youth culture, which represented an unhinging of the social order. Students were forced to address concerns related to a perceived relaxing of sexual standards and a stripping of Victorian-era genteel manners; a change in dress and fashion (primarily for women); an upheaval in social relationships; and an increase in temptations offered by new social spaces, such as the automobile and the motion picture theater.72 In their writing, students demonstrated a preoccupation with how the community at large viewed them and their actions, specifically women. Editorials critiqued the childish behavior of students during assembly, their lack of courtesy and deference to teachers, their disrespect of public spaces (the lunchroom and women’s bathroom in particular), and their de-valuing of long-held ideals such as friendship. Discussions of flapper fashion and dress codes generated substantial coverage in the Pi. One editorial asked “Did you ever notice how some girls around you dress?” noting how there seemed to be an abundance of freshman in bobbed hair walking around in silk stockings and high heels. “Why can’t we girls start a uniform dress campaign,” the Pi wondered, pleading with the girls of the school to commit to wearing only decent, sensible clothing.73 Later issues of the newspaper discussed the possibility of a dress code, and encouraged seniors to take the lead in demonstrating appropriate apparel, as the preoccupation with fashion was creating distractions among the younger students. Fashion was but one extension of an overall tendency to spend frivolously that attracted the ire of the newspapers. The revelation that most young people spent their money on cosmetics, tobacco, candy, and other luxuries generated consternation among the Pi editorial staff: “Come on boys and girls, economize as much as possible, and boost the money used on education and reduce the money on luxuries.”74 Cigarettes and students were particularly troublesome, as the Pi believed the smoking habit reflected poorly on high school students. The newspaper canceled its subscription to another high school paper upon the discovery that it carried cigarette advertisements—a “deplorable habit, even in its lightest forms” and one that might induce the “moral downfall” of students—and published critical letters from students regarding cigarettes.75 “If we become careless and allow the actions of a few indifferent feeble minded over grown infants to sit on the sunny side of our

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

159

building and suck cigarettes in plain view of all who chance to pass, what sort of an opinion will the patrons, friends, and tourists form of the best high school in Wisconsin?” read the letter.76 The newspaper’s attitude toward cigarettes reflected the heart of most of its criticism of its readers and fellow students. Greater attention was being paid to high school students, and it was crucial students carry themselves with a decorum that challenged public perception of adolescents. By demonstrating that they embodied the character ideals of the decade, they delivered on the promise of the high school to train men and women equipped to handle the demands of the modern age.

The Professionalization and Standardization of the High School Press, 1924–1929 By the mid-1920s, high school newspapers began to evolve. At the Devil’s Pi, H.L. Mahnke made the decision in 1922 to increase the size of the newspaper, change the format to a four-column layout, and raise the subscription cost to 50 cents, which allowed the paper to carry more illustrations. “There is little from preventing the Devil’s Pi from being recognized as one of the greatest high school papers in the United States,” the Echo, Superior Central’s yearbook, proudly boasted in its 1923–1924 edition. What began as a one-page edition grew to regular editions of eight pages and special editions of more than twenty pages. Subscription rates increased steadily; in the 1924–1925 school year, nearly 1,105 students, 85 percent of the student body, purchased subscriptions.77 Mahnke continued his push for newer and better equipment for the students, and in 1926 the newspaper moved into more spacious quarters and added a cylinder press to its equipment, allowing Mahnke to justify using an even larger format. When the first issue of the 1926– 1927 school year rolled off the presses, the five-column Devil’s Pi bore a striking resemblance to professional daily newspapers. Photos of newsmakers appeared on the front page. There were clearly labeled sections, covering clubs, sports, and society. The newspaper’s circulation peaked at 1,500, making it the largest school newspaper in northwestern Wisconsin. For the first time, students felt they were producing a “real honestto-goodness newspaper,” with almost every student in the school a subscriber.78 The newspaper regularly won awards in national student press contests throughout the decade, including first-class honors from

160

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

CIPA in 1927, 1928, and 1929.79 Its students found work at the city’s daily newspaper, where they served as high school correspondents and club reporters (without any additional training). The improved quality of the student newspaper coincided with the addition of journalism to the curriculum of the two high schools. No longer was working for the Pi or the Waste Basket (now renamed The East Hi Times ) solely an extracurricular activity. It was now a required part of journalism coursework. Very few high schools initially included journalism when newspapers were founded; a Columbia University study found only one in five used newspaper production as a classroom activity. A small handful of high schools offered journalism courses as part of their curriculum, initially offering them as adjunct to English courses. By the mid-1920s, more high schools had begun offering standalone journalism courses, a practice Superior adopted in the 1923–1924 school year. Early classwork for the course at Superior East High School included editing the school newspaper and annual, as well as intense study devoted to composition, current events, and the methods used in newspaper work. Two years later, Superior Central introduced its journalism class with a goal of teaching the “basic principles and fundamental knowledge of gathering, writing, and editing news.”80 However, the decision to have the course’s students produce newspaper was not without its critics. In addition to the improved equipment and the introduction of journalism coursework, the professionalization of the high school press raised more concerns about issues of control and journalistic practice. As high school newspapers gained in popularity and started to more closely resemble their professional and commercial counterparts, school administrators cast a wary eye at the content that rolled off the presses. Journalism textbooks had been quick to identify the need for control in the classroom and the importance of “mature supervision” in overseeing the production of a newspaper, especially one that wished to be seen as “high-class” and reflect positively on the school.81 Scholastic Editor routinely published articles for newspaper advisers, and instructed them on how to elevate student voices without challenging educational institutions. Not all articles advocated a strict, censorship-like approach; as previously mentioned, H.L. Mahnke and the Devil’s Pi stood out for its lack of adult supervision (beyond instilling the basic concepts of news writing and editing in the classroom). However, the Devil’s Pi staff enjoyed much of this freedom when the newspaper was still largely run as an experiment. As it grew

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

161

in popularity and prominence, local administrators became increasingly cautious about the impact of student voices left unchecked. Further, the boom in student print culture coincided with both the expansion of journalism education at the collegiate level and a broader push to professionalize reporting as an occupation.82 A relatively new phenomenon in higher education, college journalism programs and schools had undergone a similarly rapid expansion, beginning with the founding of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in 1908. Within two decades, journalism schools and programs were introduced at leading public and private universities and colleges nationwide, including the University of Wisconsin, University of Kansas, and Columbia University. Advocates for university journalism programs positioned them as key to producing the accurate, responsible, reliable, and informed reporting critical to modern democracy. Only these college-level programs could provide the intellectual training that reporters needed. On-the-ground training in newsrooms was an outdated and poorly structured apprenticeship model, and high school programs, although popular, did not produce the mature, level-headed, and well-read reporters the world needed. Part of the concern rested on fears that newsrooms across the country would be filled with recent high school graduates, emboldened by their high school coursework but ultimately unqualified for the task because they lacked a college education. Primarily, these trepidations originated with collegiate journalism instructors, such as Willard Bleyer and Grant Hyde, who themselves were trying to establish credibility for their program at the University of Wisconsin. Writing for The English Journal in 1919, Bleyer stated that “we cannot afford to let high-school boys and girls harbor the mistaken notion that, because they have developed a certain facility in writing for the school paper, they are ready, on leaving school, to enter the profession of journalism.”83 For Hyde, high school journalism was “chaotic and un-standardized,” despite its soaring popularity.84 For Bleyer, Hyde, and other college instructors, the rush to embrace high school journalism and incorporate newspapers, yearbooks, and other printed materials as part of the curriculum was done with little consideration as to how these moves fit within a field undertaking its own efforts to set professional standards. Many of their complaints centered on the labeling of high school courses as “journalism” or “vocational,” which they believed would dissuade students from pursuing a collegiate course of study. At the Association of American Schools and Departments of Journalism, questions

162

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

related to high school journalism education was one of the most discussed topics at the organization’s 1920 meeting. The group approved a resolution adopted by the National Council on Teachers of English which condemned the labeling of high school classes as “courses in journalism.” The resolution, which “recognizes the value of the use of journalistic writing in secondary schools,” argued that “the value of the press in shaping public opinion depends to a large degree on the education, judgment and character of newspaper editors and reporters.”85 “Let us do our part toward maintaining a high professional standard for journalism by teaching our students to discriminate between mere proficiency in the technique of newspaper writing and substantial preparation for the profession of journalism,” Bleyer pleaded. “Let us discourage them, their parents, and the public generally from assuming that, because the reporter begins at the bottom of the journalist ladder, immature high-school graduates with a little training in newspaper writing and a little practical experience on school publications are prepared to furnish the food of opinion for hundreds of thousands of American citizens.”86 Comments like these, however harsh, were less about trivializing high school newspapers than an effort by college and university journalism educators to demonstrate their own relevance and necessity. Despite the concerns from journalism educators and school administrators, journalism courses remained on the books in Superior’s high schools, and the popularity of high school newspapers continued to grow. While records are not available as to their enrollment levels, photos of journalism students that appeared in yearbooks, in student newspapers, and even in the Telegram show full classes of twenty students or more diligently working on upcoming issues. The classes regularly arranged visits to the Telegram’s newsroom to see professional newspaper production first hand, and several journalism students became contributors to the Telegram’s Central and East High Notes sections (and at least one worked as a cub reporter during her summer vacation). Mahnke, along with Superior Central’s journalism instructor Alice Baker, coordinated a joint one-day educational session for the city’s high school journalism classes with a University of Minnesota journalism professor, and supervised Superior’s delegation to scholastic journalism conventions. In the short span of just a few years, a largely experimental print medium transformed into one that closely resembled its professional counterpart. On the page, these standardized, more professional student newspapers largely muted the levity and experimental form of earlier

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

163

editions. The work produced by the student staffs demonstrated the impact of those early arguments that positioned student newspapers as a training ground for future citizens. Through their reporting and content selection, the students exhibited an understanding of the role newspapers played not only in cultivating a sense of community among high school students, but also in providing their peers with the information they needed to be engaged citizens. ∗ ∗ ∗ Throughout the 1920s, cities and towns across the United States constructed versions of the modern high school, institutions designed to equip the next generation with the skills and knowledge they needed in order to ensure the community’s success. Student newspapers—and later journalism classes—were part of the expanded offerings of the high school. Educators eagerly embraced these print products for several reasons. First, they provided an environment to practice the lessons learned in the English and civics classrooms, and fit into a re-evaluation of the high school’s purpose that emphasized the practical over the theoretical, aiming to provide all students the training they needed to be successful in society (and not just the college bound). Second, they provided a way to create a sense of community within the halls of the high school at a moment when enrollments—and building size—were increasing rapidly, and the school experience was becoming more impersonal. Third, they operated as a publicity vehicle for the school itself. By publicizing the academic and extracurricular activities of students, as well as demonstrating the work students were capable of producing, they served as an important link between the classroom and the broader community. The rapid expansion of journalism programs within high schools and increase in the number of student newspapers nationwide marked a significant development in journalism. Their beginnings were largely experimental, with no set format, publication schedule, or content formula, and with unresolved questions over the extent of faculty and administrative oversight. Winning student support for these print products was a key, and debates over how best to create an authentic product that would appeal to all students often centered on the degree of student control. In some cases, such as that in Superior, Wisconsin, faculty supervisors adopted an approach that favored near-complete student control.

164

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

But as these newspapers grew in number as a category, and individual newspapers grew in size and influence, they quickly became professionalized products with large student staffs and a bureaucratic management structure. College and university journalism programs were quick to draw boundaries between the study of journalism at a four-year institution and in a high school classroom in an effort to define the educational training required for “real” reporters and editors. Despite these efforts to control the production of student newspapers, these publications remain a valuable window into the world of high school students. Through content choices, jokes, short stories, and cartoons, they provide a snapshot into the values held by high school students, as well as their attempt to meet societal expectations of their generation. While most content reflected a decidedly pro-school attitude, in some cases, students were able to use their training in the high school newsroom to form their own identity and try out their new role as engaged citizens.

Notes 1. H.L. Mahnke, “School Printing Shop Problems,” The Scholastic Editor, June 1929, 10. 2. Founded in 1925, the organization initially featured 34 printing instructors from across the United States. Its goal was to “promote the welfare and improve the status and aim of printing teachers, and especially those engaged in the supervision of the printing of school publications.” The Scholastic Editor, March 1926, 6. In addition to writing, Mahnke also spoke about high school printing and publications during CIPA’s annual conventions. 3. Mahnke, “Producing the School Paper,” 10. 4. Carl G. Miller, High-School Reporting and Editing (New York: McGrawHill Book Company, 1929), 28. 5. Laurence Campbell, “A Capsule History of the School Press,” School Activities 1963: 104. 6. See Paula S. Fass, Children of a New World: Society, Culture and Globalization (New York: NYU Press, 2006); Thomas W. Gutowski, “Student Initiative and the Origins of the High School Extracurriculum: Chicago, 1890–1915,” History of Education Quarterly28 (1988): 49– 72; Stephen Lassonde, Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven’s Working Class (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005); and John Rury and Frank A. Cassell, eds., Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee Since 1920 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin

7

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

165

Press, 1993). Robert S. Lynd and Helen Lynd, Middletown: A Study in American Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956), 211. “School Census Drop Untrue,” Superior Telegram, October 10, 1927. The city of Superior enrolled 92.3% of 14–15-year-olds (compared to 77.8% statewide), and 62.6% of 16–17-year-olds (compared to 46.2 statewide), according to the 1920 U.S. Census. Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 197. John D. Buenker, The Progressive Era, 1893–1914 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 371. Paul W. Glad, War, A New Era, and Depression: 1914–1940 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 259. Mintz, 198. For immigrant families, high school stood at the juncture of tradition and change. As children learned individualistic, middle-class values through schools, they gradually forgot the family-centric lessons their parents hoped to impart. High school was a key to this process. For more, see Steven Lassonde, Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven’s Working Class, 1870–1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). See also Jeffrey Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism: Americanization Education and European Immigrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Paula S. Fass, The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 128. Reese, The Origins of the American High School, 81. Thomas Lloyd Jones, “High Schools Train Citizens,” Superior Telegram, June 4, 1927. Paula S. Fass, The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting From Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 139. William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 189. Board of Education Report, Superior, Wis., 1926, 110. Board of Education Report, Superior, Wis., 1926, 111. Handbooks were the least popular of these three print products. These typically outlined school policies and procedures, and contained information on school traditions (such as school colors, cheers, and fight songs). Willard Bleyer, “Journalistic Writing in High Schools,” The English Journal 8 (1919): 593–601; Leo A. Borah, News Writing for High Schools (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1925); L.N. Flint, Newspaper Writing in High Schools (New York City: Noble and Noble, 1917); Louis Graves,

166

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

“News Writing as Practice in High Schools,” The High School Journal 5 (1922): 12–13; Bessie M. Huff, How to Publish a School Paper (New York: Mentzer, Bush & Company, 1924); Carl G. Miller, High School Reporting and Editing, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1929); and W.C. Reavis, “Student Publications in High Schools,” The School Review30 (1922): 514–520. Huff, 1. L.N. Flint, Newspaper Writing in High Schools (New York: Noble and Noble, 1917), 7. Charles Dillon, Journalism for High Schools (New York: Lloyd Adams Nobel, 1918), 1. Flint, 31. Huff, 2. Dan A. Edkins, “School Publicity,” Scholastic Editor 1925 (December): 17. Galen Jones, Extra-curricular Activities in Relation to the Curriculum (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1935), 79. Jones, 17. The study found 22 newspapers originated prior to 1910; 44 from 1910 to 1919; and 85 from 1920 to 1929. Lockman, 444. Often these press associations were tethered to a university or college program in journalism. The University of Washington organized a Washington High School Press Association, Michigan State University was behind the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, and Columbia University introduced the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, and other organizations popped up in Indiana, Illinois, Texas, California, and elsewhere. Initially based at the University of Wisconsin, CIPA was the largest of these early organizations. N.W. Ayer, Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals, 1930. As reported in the Journal of Education 99 (1924). Grant M. Hyde, Journalistic Writing: For Classes and for Staffs of Student Newspaper and Magazines (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1929). Huff, 91. Dillon, 1. “Get out of the Middle of the Road!” Scholastic Editor 1(2). Dillon. Dillon, 3. Huff, iv. H.F. Harrington, Writing for Print (Boston: D.C. Heath & Company, 1929), iv. Clarence Kingsley, quoted in William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 192.

7

A WINDOW INTO THE WORLD OF STUDENTS …

167

43. Department of Public Instruction, Biennial Report 1920–22, 140. 44. Nelson Dewey High School closed its doors in 1922, and beginning in the 1923 school year former Dewey students attended the new Superior East High School. The schools are referred to throughout this chapter. 45. Mahnke, “Producing the School Paper”. 46. The Echo, 1924, 73. 47. City of Superior, Wis., Report of the Public Schools 1914–1915. 48. The Echo reported the printing department saved the school district $2,000 in 1920, and then $3,000 in 1925. 49. H.L. Mahnke, “School Printing Shop Problems,” 32. 50. The Echo, 1920. 51. Wa Wa Ta, 1921, 30. 52. Mahnke, “Producing the School Paper,” 10. 53. The Waste Basket, March 12, 1920. The student newspapers at Nelson Dewey High School and later Superior East High School went through a number of name changes. The Gleam succeeded the Waste Basket in 1921, and was later renamed the Spatterinx in 1924 and the East Hi Times in 1925. 54. While no complete runs of either the Superior Central student newspaper or Nelson Dewey/Superior East newspaper exist, there are fairly substantial collections of the early years of both publications. The Devil’s Pi (April 1919); Devil’s Pi (March 1920); Devil’s Pi (September 1920May 1921); Devil’s Pi (March 1924); Devil’s Pi (May 1924); Devil’s Pi (May 1924); Devil’s Pi (September 1926-May 1927); the Waste Basket (March 1920-May 1921); and the Gleam (November 1921). 55. Devil’s Pi, April 23, 1919. 56. Devil’s Pi, September 24, 1920. 57. The Echo, 1921, 76. 58. The Echo, 1921. 59. Devil’s Pi, October 8, 1926. 60. The Echo reflected a similar staff diversity, with a disproportionate number of female students acting as editor-in-chief. A male editor-in-chief was such a rarity during the 1920s that the Telegram covered the election of the first male editor in five years in 1927. 61. The Waste Basket, April 22, 1921. 62. The Devil’s Pi, September 24, 1920. 63. The Devil’s Pi, October 1, 1920. 64. The Devil’s Pi, October 1, 1920. 65. The Devil’s Pi, February 18, 1921. 66. The Waste Basket, May 5, 1921. 67. The Devil’s Pi, October 7, 1920. 68. The Waste Basket, May 13, 1921. 69. The Devil’s Pi, November 5, 1920.

168

C. CIESLIK-MISKIMEN

70. The Devil’s Pi, November 19, 1920. 71. The Devil’s Pi, October 7, 1920. 72. Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 20. Fass’ examination of American youth culture focuses almost exclusively on the experience of college-going native, white, middle-class youth from heavily urban areas. However, there was a complementary relationship between high schools and colleges. Fass noted the importance of changes in adolescence on this segment of the population, and the increased attention given to high school as enrollments increased. Additionally, high schools often took their cues—both in terms of instruction and extracurricular activities—from colleges. 73. The Devil’s Pi, October 29, 1920. 74. The Devil’s Pi, February 25, 1921. 75. The Devil’s Pi, May 20, 1921. 76. The Devil’s Pi, October 7, 1920. 77. The Echo, 1925, 77. 78. Mahnke, “School Printing Shop Problems,” 10. 79. Kathy Laakso and Teddie Meronek, Central A to Z: The History of a Superior School (Duluth: Xpresso Books, 2010). The Devil’s Pi won CIPA second class honors in 1921 and 1926. 80. The Echo, 1925–26. 81. Dillon, 3–4. 82. Carolyn Bronstein and Stephen L. Vaughn, “Willard G. Bleyer and the Relevance of Journalism Education,” Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs 166 (1998). 83. Bleyer, 595. 84. Hyde, 715. 85. “Against Journalism in High Schools,” Editor & Publisher, January 1, 1921. 86. Bleyer, 601.

CHAPTER 8

Books, Basketball, and Order of the Fish: Youth Culture in Midwest Small-Town High Schools, 1900–1930 Patricia Stovey

Central Illinois student Hubert Nelson was a devoted diarist who spent his high school years engaged both academically and socially. By January 1924, Hubert was a senior and had earned the right to sit in the “senior corner” of Petersburg’s Harris High School’s 150-seat assembly. Throughout the Midwest, the assembly room was the heart of small-town high schools. It housed each student’s assigned seat, was the place for opening exercises—oftentimes singing—was where announcements were made, complements given, and scoldings handed out en masse. It was the point from which students marched off to class, their footsteps pounding in time to the teacher’s piano, and, when not in class, where students were expected to quietly do their homework, for what sometimes amounted to

P. Stovey (B) University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_8

169

170

P. STOVEY

hours at a time.1 The assembly, however, was also the location for student high jinx, where ideas that had nothing to do with Latin verbs or mathematical equations came to life, and oftentimes became the highlight of the day. It was in this spirit of independence and merrymaking that, early one morning, Hubert and two classmates wrapped wire around the seat of Scott Dawson’s desk, locking it in its upright position. The plan, Hubert explained, was for Scott to arrive and not be able to sit down. “Of course it wouldn’t be much trouble to unwind the few turns of wire from around the seat,” Hubert wrote in his diary, “but it’d give Scott something to do.” Before Scott arrived, however, Miss Bell and her “eagle disciplinary eye” noticed that something was wrong and decided to investigate. Miss Bell knew to be on watch because for some time Hubert and his classmates had been chipping away at Harris High School’s faculty’s patience. In the senior corner, there had been constant chatter, note passing, and even eating. Hubert and several other seniors had organized a club they called the Order of the Fish. They had given each other names—Octopus, Black Bass, Whale—devised a Fish greeting and logo, and even created a number of Fish terms and phrases that only members would understand. Ultimately, the prank was discovered, determined harmless, and Hubert helped remove the wire. Yet, the joke had rankled Miss Bell. “She didn’t swear [‘fiddlesticks’],” Hubert wrote, “but she did keep up a line of peeved comments.”2 In Hubert’s estimation his actions accounted for nothing more than “simple burlesque fun,” but to many adults they demonstrated a level of youthful rebelliousness that had become identified with a larger youth culture. By the 1920s, young people’s taste in music, liberal use of slang, bobbed hair, dress, and rapid adoption of modern technology had caught the nation’s attention, making it the subject of much debate. In the media, Americans received a largely sensationalized image, yet, as historian Paula Fass explained, in the wanton behavior of the stereotypical young rake and flapper, adults found something to unite against because exaggerated images had the ability to “evoke rather than to describe and finally to comfort through rebuke.”3 Unwittingly, universities and high schools encouraged the rise of youth culture because, as Fass noted, it was within their walls where “the society of peers flourished, enclosing the young in a world that was theirs by right of possession.”4 From 1900 to the early 1930s, the rise

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

171

in the number of high schools and teen-aged scholars was phenomenal, increasing 650% with nationwide construction and, as this collection of essays takes care to point out, averaging almost one school built daily.5 In the Midwest, high school expansion quickly extended beyond urban districts. In 1914, for example, Iowa had 490 state-approved high schools (courses of study ranging from one to four years), but only seventeen were located in towns whose population surpassed 10,000 people. Similarly, in 1917, over half of all Wisconsin’s and Minnesota’s high school students went to rural or small city schools, communities with a population under 5,000.6 As a result, small-town high schools became what Fass called the “setting and home” where an increasing number of American teens first experienced a daily and robust youth culture.7 At the time, Hubert’s misbehavior may have been blamed on youth culture, but his teacher’s reaction to his conduct was really nothing new. Fifteenth-century schoolmen in Oxford, England cited scholars for everything from being a nuisance to fighting. Teachers complained about students’ treatment of books, how they dirtied them with spittle and food bits, and defiled them with doodling.8 Objections continued through the centuries. By the early 1800s and the dawn of the American high school, teachers kept detailed records of behavior in a “black book” devoted to deportment. As historian William Reese makes clear, “scholars were not ordinarily ruffians or ne’er-do-wells,” and most followed the rules and did their work, but teachers were alert to infractions nonetheless. Giggles, whispers, and pranks were assiduously recorded and then answered to with various punishments, demerits, and even expulsion. The job was never done.9 By the twentieth century educators had largely abandoned the “black book,” but deportment—or citizenship—was still a line on students’ report cards, marked by percentage points or the even more subjective, very good, good, or poor. In The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s, Paula Fass used the college setting to study youth culture broadly. As “pacesetters” she argued, college students’ “behavior, interests, and amusements, caught the national imagination and were emulated by other youths,” including high schoolers. Her work divided students’ in-school lives into three tiers. The first was the formal structure of classes, where attendance was required and students’ actions were tightly controlled by the adults in charge. Next was the semi-formal layer, which consisted of extracurricular activities: here students expressed their personal interests and released energy, all within the rules of the institution. Sports, music,

172

P. STOVEY

and social clubs—all central to the high school—are examples.10 In 1928, for instance, 90% of Wisconsin high schools offered basketball, 78% had glee clubs, 74% had a baseball team, and over 50% reported literary clubs, track and field, or orchestra. In smaller districts, second tier extracurricular participation was often mandatory. Freshmen were assigned membership in school literary societies, juniors had to host the senior banquet, and when it came time for graduation, every graduate had a part in the senior play. Sports were not similarly assigned, but any team demanded a given number of players, which for small schools often meant full cooperation.11 The third tier, Fass explained, existed largely outside of adults’ purview and consisted of friends, dating, roommates, and other informal relationships. On college campuses, fraternities and sororities were the heart of this part of peer society. But, in places like Harris High School it was the assembly’s senior corner where the third tier came to life. Though challenging for historians to capture, antics like those of Hubert and his fellow seniors were part and parcel of high school life, and they demand the field’s attention.12 This chapter will examine the lived experience of early twentiethcentury small-town student life through the students’ perspective of extracurricular and student-led informal activities. It focuses on the Midwest, a region John Dewey once called “the middle in every sense of the word and in every movement... Fairly well to do, enough so at least to be ambitious... believing in education and better opportunities for its own children, mildly interested in ‘culture,’ it has formed the solid element in our diffuse national life and heterogeneous populations.”13 Scholarly research on the origins, rise, and shaping of America’s public high schools has often focused on the nation’s largest cities or on the educators running them. But by the 1900s, most high school students did not live in Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or even Des Moines.14 Youth attended high schools close to their home, which, despite the country’s majority-urban status, meant small cities and towns. Therefore, to take into account the experiences of most American youth it is essential to look at the small places—communities with populations at or under 5,000—which in the 1910s and 1920s, the Midwest had a plethora.15 To capture the world these students knew, this study uses a range of primary sources to reconstruct an understanding of how youth culture shaped the day-to-day happenings of Midwest small-town high schools. Student memoirs and oral histories provide a first-hand perspective of how, as adults, former high school students recalled their forays into youth

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

173

culture. Yearbooks, including the personal messages added to the pages, demonstrate the range of activities in which small-town teens engaged, both sanctioned and not. Town newspapers (published weekly) were another valuable source. Most had a regular section dedicated to the high school, which depending on the paper’s or school’s editor, provide different levels of insight into what students did in and out of school. Lastly, there is Hubert Nelson. Few teens kept daily records of their high school career, but Hubert never missed a day. Indeed, by the time he had reached the ninth grade, Hubert owned a typewriter and had a level of typing proficiency that allowed him to devote pages (all single-spaced) to his experiences and thoughts. While in many ways Hubert may have been an exceptional individual, the youth culture he participated in, and recorded, was not. His diary is the point from which aspects of smalltown youth culture will be examined: a world of books, basketball, and Order of the Fish.

The Assembly: The Home of Youth Culture A traveler passing through a small town in the early decades of the 1900s had little trouble identifying the local high school. Like one-room schoolhouses, or even the school buildings of today, they had a look about them that people recognized. Typically built out of brick or block, most were symmetrical two-story structures that lacked the turrets and other ornamentation common to their larger urban counterparts.16 Instead, small-town high schools were no-nonsense structures whose most prominent features were clean lines, a central stairway, and large windows. They often shared space with other programs or grades. For example, in Petersburg, Harris High School also housed the seventh and eighthgrade students, while in the town of Viroqua, Wisconsin, the high school used only the first floor of the building, while the county’s normal school was located on the second. The high school’s largest room was the assembly, as gymnasiums were generally not a part of small-town high school architectural plans until the 1920s. Minerva Hall, the name of Harris High School’s assembly, was a homage given to Minerva Fisher, a long-time resident of Petersburg and the person most instrumental to the high school’s construction. The room had fifteen rows of desks bolted down in straight lines with ten desks per row. There were two tables positioned in front where the principal and a teacher could work and survey the room for misbehavior.

174

P. STOVEY

Upfront was also a piano positioned diagonally in the right corner, and next to that a Victrola record player. The room had no flag on display, but standing in the left corner was a statue of the Roman goddess of wisdom—Miss Fisher’s namesake—sending a not-so-subtle message to the scholars seated before her. The wall that the students faced also had three exits, a central double door leading to the main corridor, and, to its right and left, doors to the principal’s private office and a recitation room, which also doubled as the school’s library. Windows let in light and fresh air from three sides, while the radiators underneath stood poised to do battle with the harsh winter17 (Fig. 8.1). The assembly was where students reported each morning for opening exercises—sometimes called morning exercises—and when not in class, where they were expected to silently do homework.18 But the assembly

Fig. 8.1 Hubert Nelson’s Drawing, or “Plat,” of Minerva Hall, Harris High School, Petersburg, Illinois, 1921

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

175

was also the location for pep rallies and school-wide meetings. Under Minerva’s watchful eye, Petersburg’s student body practiced their school yells prior to sporting or declamatory competitions, and at report card time, listened to the class rankings read aloud.19 Helen Jensen Shannon, a 1930 graduate of nearby Athens High School remembered how her principal used the assembly to get messages out in a single telling.“I can see him standing up in front... either giving us a bawling out or telling us the good things that were going to happen, because both went on.”20 The time students spent together created a sense of community that was one of the hallmarks of small-town schools. In separate letters written close to sixty years after their 1914 graduation, two classmates from Central Illinois’ Mansfield High School remembered the day their principal became a father. The students kept vigil out of the window for their mentor to bring news of the baby’s arrival. But watching was not enough, so in honor of the occasion the school dispensed with the usual morning routine and sang lullabies instead.21 The fact that Mansfield’s student body would sing en masse was nothing unusual. Singing and music were regular parts of the high school day. At Petersburg, the fifth period was reserved for singing. The assembly provided students or local musicians a venue for sharing their talent, as well as a location for listening to recorded performances. One day during his sophomore year, Hubert hiked up the hill in town to borrow two classical recordings from a local townsman for use during opening exercises the next day.22 Whether active or passive, the assembly afforded every student the chance to participate in the same activity, share in the same beauty, soak up the same inspiration, or be served the same dose of the principal’s wrath. While the assembly did promote a sense of solidarity, the same room also cultivated rivalries. Most notably, students sat grouped by grade level, creating an easily recognized hierarchy. Seniors were always opposite the freshman. In Viroqua, for example, the freshmen sat on the west side of the room and generally toward the front. “As you progressed through the sophomore, junior and senior years,” 1914 graduate Roy Bangsberg explained, “you gradually were seated farther toward the east side.”23 No one ever wanted to return to the past. Once during his junior year, Hubert’s classmates along with the seniors gave up their seats to visiting alumni by filling in vacant desks on the opposite side of the room. “I felt so humble and blue when I sat over in the freshmen section again,” Hubert recalled. “A freshmen atmosphere and attitude of mind came over me.”24 In 1971, Ethel Beasley, a 1922 graduate of Mansfield

176

P. STOVEY

High School told how one “memorable day” the seniors were forced to abandon their desks and move in among the “lowly freshmen” as a punishment for talking. We had been warned, Beasley stated, but had not changed our behavior. “There [were] tears all over the place that morning.”25 The students who filled the desks of high school assemblies ranged in age from pre-teen to early twenties. Rural Minnesotan Barbara Gantenbein was eleven years old when she became a freshman. In the common grades, she had been the only student in her grade, so her one-room teacher pushed her through reader after reader until she caught up with the next group. “[The teacher] opened that examination ahead of time and knew what she had... to teach me,” Gantenbein figured out, “so [there I was] eleven years old going into high school and I’ll tell you, I’m just of average intelligence.”26 Jean Rolfe, on the other hand, was in his twenties when he started high school. A rural Wisconsinite, Rolfe worked at sawmills and taught four years in one-room schools before he became a high school student himself. Rolfe was the first in his family to receive a high school diploma, and figured he was twenty-three or twenty-four by the time he graduated.27 Throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, many of the students attending high school were the first in their family—or even neighborhood—to advance beyond the common grades. In the Midwest, this was especially true for rural students. For example, early in the twentieth century Viroqua, Wisconsin was the only town with a four-year high school in the entire western half of its more than 800-squaremile county. As a result, the school’s student body did not come from Viroqua alone, but was made up of youth that commuted or moved away from home to attend school. Some had graduated from rural one-room schoolhouses, while others came from neighboring villages whose own communities may have contained numerous shops, a post office, hotel, and creamery, but had no high school. Beginning in 1901, Wisconsin law required non-high school districts to pay the out-of-district tuition costs of students who wanted a secondary education. Room, board, and traveling expenses would be the tuition student’s or the family’s responsibility. Thus, when Roy Bangsberg left his farm to attend school in Viroqua, his parents paid his boarding fees and his brothers took over his fieldwork, milking, churning, and wood hauling. For families the experience came with challenges, both financial and otherwise. Indeed, one neighbor

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

177

called Bangsberg’s high school days his “white loaf of bread,” a notso-subtle message about perceived wastefulness and the value of higher education.28 Being from the country had cultural and social class implications as well. By the 1910s, the gap between country and city life had grown in the popular imagination. Farming, once considered an important touchstone in the nation’s identity and character, began to be reinterpreted, and in the process the revered yeoman farmer became, to some, a yokel, backward, and, as historian of the Midwest James Shortridge summarized, out of sync with the twentieth century.29 In small communities, in-town students set the standard that country youth followed, and, sitting in their assemblies, students were attuned to markers of class and status.30 Tuition students many times lived between worlds, and as a result, were sensitive to their situation. As members of the high school they were a part of progressive small-town life, but they were always alert to differences in manner and dress that, as one country youth put it, managed to keep them with “one foot in the furrow.”31 State laws in the Middle West allowed children of all races to attend the public schools, yet most small-town and city high school assemblies in the region were all white. In some cases, the lack of diversity reflected an area’s racial makeup. The number of black students, for example, never accounted for any more than a small percentage of Middle Border population totals. Even after Southern crop failures and the Great Migration of the 1920s, black students still accounted for less than one percent of the people living in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Settlement patterns also played a role because, as African Americans migrated North, they generally settled in large urban and industrial centers that held the promise of employment. Even in Iowa, where the majority of the state’s population lived in rural settings, 87.4% of blacks lived in urban areas. Frequently, rural counties had only one or two African-American families with no high school-aged members at all.32 Southwestern Wisconsin’s Vernon County was an exception. Around the time of the Civil War, a number of African American families settled in the county’s rugged northeast corner, known as the Kickapoo Valley. By 1920, 54 African Americans lived within those hills, and ten years later their numbers had more than doubled to 123. That was the area where Jean Rolfe grew up, and although white, he knew many of the original black settlers. The three Bass boys, for example, had all sawed wood for the Rolfes at one time or another. He knew the Shivers family

178

P. STOVEY

and Belle Allen, regulars at “picnics and Sunday school doings.” Meanwhile war veteran Henry Revels’ son, June, was known throughout the region as a skilled athlete capable of having “played baseball with any man’s team if he had lived at the right time.”33 During an interview at the age of eighty-six, Rolfe remembered the area’s African American population being treated as equals throughout the Kickapoo Valley. Census data and school records belie his recollection, however, because even though Forest Township’s 1900 census listed twelve teenaged black youth as “at school,” none appear on any of the area public high school alumni lists. For Rolfe, black neighbors may have been worthy of note, but an all-white high school was not.34 Although “officially” integrated, most Middle Western schools practiced racism and employed de facto segregation, thus creating abhorrent situations that black youth had to endure if they wanted to graduate. In the 1910s, Illinois high school student May Carr McNeil shared a desk with an African American classmate. “There was just... one seat left and it was myself and a black girl,” McNeil recalled, so the teacher asked for volunteers willing to “sit with a colored girl.”35 (Clearly, no one asked the nameless “colored girl” for her opinion.) Southern Illinois’ integrated Marion Township High School had segregated seating charts. Lodge Grant, a white farm boy from nearby Marion, recalled that in study hall all the white students sat alphabetically, and the Black students sat “just inside the entrance door... clumped there in one small group.” They were made the brunt of jokes, he recalled, “by everyone, including, if I must say it, the teachers.”36 Hubert Nelson never mentioned African Americans in his high school, although Petersburg had many black families. Bertha Craig was born just one year—nearly to the day—after Hubert, and, had she been white and interested in high school, might have spent three years sitting just a few seats away from him in Minerva Hall. Craig, however, was black and poor and recognized early on that a high school education was not only unlikely, but also unable to open doors of opportunity for her. Jobs for African Americans in Petersburg were largely limited to unskilled work as day laborers, housekeepers, and servants. Craig’s mother did housework and that was the future Craig saw for herself, so she dropped out of school just before completing the eighth grade. Thinking back to her youth, Craig commented that “it was very common for poor girls [to quit school].”37

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

179

Clearly, small-town schools and their assemblies were not oases, places where the prejudice and bigotry of a region melted away. Yet, for those who managed to avoid target or detection—most often white and with a sufficient level of financial security—their memories are often different. White high school student Helen Shannon had fond memories of ninth grade and beyond. “We sat in assembly and you knew everybody... it was a much closer knit school than they can possibly have now.” Mansfield graduate Viola McCall pictured a specific classmate. “I recall [Asa Young] never wore socks that matched... He had 1 blue and 1 brown, or 1 green and 1 black... [and he] always sat near the front with his feet out in the aisle and usually crossed.” For another Mansfield alumnus a musical performance gone awry still rang in her ears more than fifty years after the closing notes. “I remember.. . Lysta carried her tune in a big black laundry basket and sang So Low, and [unreadable] So High.”38 The pulse of small-town high schools came from their assemblies. They were the place everyone gathered, spent a good portion of their day, and, as a result, retained strong memories of time spent with peers.

The Assembly: Student Behavior Although teachers closely monitored student behavior in the assembly, antics were never out of the question. Because school leaders often demanded silence, talking was a perennial problem. In 1913, Viroqua High School’s yearbook listed it as one of the “seven cardinal sins” a student could commit. There must have been many transgressors because teacher tag lines from that same year included: “You have got to get down to work; Now girls, you must not do that;” and “Please don’t make so much noise.”39 When talking was not possible, notes were passed instead. Covert messages were central to the storyline in author Pauline Lester’s 1917 fictional account of small-city high school student Marjorie Dean. Throughout Lester’s four-part series, Marjorie regularly received notes with school gossip and even threats. In the novels, school notes were used to advance the storyline, but they were a real part of the high school too.40 Hubert’s first offer to escort a girl home came through a note. He chose Dorothy Dawson, a fellow senior and new inductee into the Order of the Fish. He wrote the message in assembly while his best friend Eddie studied in front of him. Hubert picked his words carefully and then passed along the note. She read it “without either loathing or celebrating,” Hubert recorded, “handed me back an answer and the trick was

180

P. STOVEY

done.”41 Eating was another clandestine activity. Candy was common, though in 1919 two Mansfield coeds went with a healthier snack. “Do you think I can soon forget the rosy apple you divided with me [in Caesar class], Marguerite wrote to her friend Lysta, “and the bad luck that fell your lot?”42 Eating may have been outside of the rules, but in Viroqua, at least, it was not among one of the seven cardinal sins. Indeed, the reminder that “peanuts always taste best when devoured in German class” was printed into the 1913 yearbook for everyone to see.43 In many ways, the high school with its myriad of rules, was a readymade place for students to test their limits. Allegra Schueler graduated from a three-year high school in Iowa in 1922. Bored with school one afternoon, she and three friends decided to leave early. They signed out of assembly one at a time as if leaving for the bathroom, but, met outside instead of returning. Having made their break the four had no plan as to what to do next. “I knew better than to go home,” Schueler recalled, so they went to another girl’s house where they made fudge and popcorn. They thought they had gotten off scot-free, but the next day the superintendent questioned them about their whereabouts, and, in the end, the girls paid back double the time sandpapering ink spots off the assembly room floor. Schueler and her friends did not care. “It was a good time,” she summed up, a “very, very good time.”44 In 1918, Mansfield High School junior Frank Bower decided to put his assembly study time to another purpose as well. Spreading newspaper across his desktop, Bower began dissembling an old clock. “He nonchalantly worked away on it,” one of his classmates recalled, “paying no attention to [the teacher’s] stern looks.” Finally, Bower was told to put the clock away and “get busy,” but “just as nonchalantly and without looking up” Frank responded, “‘that’s what I’ve been trying to do for two hours and I have too many pieces.’” Bower’s temerity was recalled fifty years later, but so was the fact that he put the clock away.45 Frequently there was a playful air to student misconduct. Pranks were common in small-town schools, and the targets could be anyone or anything. During his freshman year, one of Hubert’s classmates pinned a blotter on his back. It was a stunt, Hubert noted, that even the upper class men on the far side of the room noticed. Years later, as a senior, Hubert devised a plan to curb Scott Dawson’s habit of yawning and stretching back across his desktop. Out of his school supplies, Hubert built a vertical stand for his pens so that when Scott “trespassed” he would get a “severe pricking.” The trick worked but after repeated pokes Scott

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

181

sought revenge. While Hubert was away in class, Scott took everything out of Hubert’s desk and dispersed it throughout the room. “I certainly was surprised upon sticking my hand in my desk and finding the shelf entirely vacant,” Hubert recorded. Classmates returned what they found and eventually everything—except the vertical stand and a number of pens and pencils—was recovered.46 School antics oftentimes spilled outside the assembly walls. In the spring of 1916, Viroqua High School held an inter-class track meet at the county fairgrounds just north of town. The classes were competing for a pennant, which would be awarded based on points earned at the meet and during the parade scheduled to go from the school to the grounds. The rivalry was strongest between the juniors and seniors, but when the juniors elevated the competition by borrowing a goat to use as a class mascot, the seniors responded with a prank. Instead of procuring another animal to represent their class—there was no shortage in or around town, after all—the seniors stole the goat instead, and on the day of the competition the animal’s whereabouts was still unknown. Then, as the yearbook recorded, “just as the class relay race was about to begin: It was discovered that the seniors had the goat on the grounds in a car. Immediately upon this discovery all the juniors, including the girls, rushed for the goat. The seniors tried to escape in the car but they were too late, for their car was covered with juniors … Since they could not escape, the seniors gave all their attention to protecting their stolen property. . . Finally the seniors were worsted and the poor goat was hurried away from the scene of the conflict . . . The goat was taken home that evening and, in the opinion of the delegation which returned it, never was there an animal so pleased to get home.”47

Despite their pilfering of the goat, the seniors won the meet. Like the competition, the class prank was homespun fun: a playful break in the routine of the day. School leaders and adults in small communities accepted a level of tomfoolery as an aspect of life to be both enjoyed and endured. On Halloween mischief was simply expected. Outhouses were a popular target, but anything was fair game. One year, Roy Bangsberg helped hoist a buggy atop Viroqua’s heating plant, where he and his co-conspirators “securely fasten[ed] it with a rope around the chimney.”48 Teachers, the principal, and the school were rarely missed targets. In nearby La Farge, in

182

P. STOVEY

1906, teacher “Professor Bray” was locked in his house and forced to exit via a window. In response, he penned an article in the local paper not to berate such foolishness, but to publicly thank “the boys” for the kindling he also found on his roof. I am hoping, he wrote, “that next year they will increase the supply as the price of wood is liable to advance by that time.”49 On Halloween in 1921, someone piled debris and an old buggy in front of the entrance of Harris High School.50 Two years later, two of Hubert’s classmates sneaked into the school through an open window. They entered the assembly and, while Minerva watched quietly from her corner, the boys set the clocks ahead an hour, rearranged pictures, locked the Victrola, hid the key, and silenced all the bells. In school the prank was never given “official recognition,” but as Hubert recorded, “throughout the day Miss Wood and [Superintendent] Test looked pretty sore.”51 The faculty may have been irked, but it is also possible that knowing shenanigans of some sort were surely in the making, they simply played the role Hubert and his classmates expected, all the while secretly counting their blessings. Not all youthful misdeeds were created equal. While school staff may have put up with talking, note passing, and Halloween pranks, other behaviors were not tolerated. In Viroqua, tobacco chewing was frowned upon, but, as Roy Bangsberg recalled, even in assembly Logan Miller was known to keep a cud. He “used the stationary ink well for a cuspidor.”52 Cigarettes, however, were strictly forbidden, ranked as a “sin” and breach against society. Students who smoked, therefore, had to be much more covert. Bangsberg began smoking in a shed behind the house where he boarded, but gradually became braver and moved out into public. On the street one day, he and two others were caught by a teacher and suspended for three days. Before being reinstated, however, Bangsberg had to apologize before the assembly, an “ordeal” he recalled with clarity even decades later. “It settled upon me a case of stage fright from which I have yet hardly recovered.”53 In Illinois, Robert Truman Dinsmore was expelled after witnessing a friend reaching up between the treads of the school’s stairwell to touch girls’ legs. The guilty party disappeared when the principal arrived, but Dinsmore and a friend were caught. “I don’t know where he went,” Dinsmore laughed, but “we refused to tell [the principal] who was doing all the damage, and by God we was [sic] thrown out of school!” Dinsmore had to finish out the semester in a nearby district.54 Teachers throughout the Middle West endured differing levels of childishness. They tried to quell talking with stern looks, but when that

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

183

failed other measures had to be taken. After months of jokes and illegitimate chatter from Minerva Hall’s senior corner, Miss Wood decided it was time to “get the old neighborhood broken up.” Allowing the seniors to keep their side of the room, she demanded they rearrange their desks so that the talking would stop. She set her parameters and walked away, leaving the seniors to solve the matter themselves.55 Their new seating did suppress voices, though not their antics. Third period— when Miss Masters was in charge but occupied—remained prime time for the seniors’ less-than clandestine note passing and eating. “Banquets” usually consisted of “Oh Henry” bars cut into thirds and dispersed among the membership.56 The Fish, like all small-town scholars, knew how to make their own fun, a recipe that combined school solidarity and class competition with teen maturity.

Semi-formal Organizations: From Literary Societies to Basketball In October of 1920 Hubert Nelson became a member of Harris High School’s Shield Literary Society. The school had two societies, the Shields and the Lincolnians, whose membership was divided evenly among the student body. Hubert’s affiliation had not been voluntary. After school on a Friday, Miss Wood gathered the freshmen in a room for the selection process in which two upper-class representatives pulled “capsules” from a bowl. Each capsule contained the name of a freshman, who, depending upon fate, became either a Lincolnian or Shield. Advisor names were picked in the same manner, along with the dates for upcoming literary contests. Junior Mary Lee Elmore, a Shield, chose the capsule containing Hubert’s name, and so the decision was made. The first program would be on October 29.57 Hubert’s forced membership in the Shields did not bother him. Twentieth-century townsfolk participated in numerous clubs and organizations, so the tendency was nothing new. Indeed, in the 1830s, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville had noted that Americans “of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions” organized into associations. The range of groups surprised him. “Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books... If it be proposed to inculcate some truth, or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society.”58 By the 1900s, Americans’ zeal for organizing had

184

P. STOVEY

not waned, yet the purposes of associations had changed. Wanderlust, immigration, and rural exodus had increased the number of Americans living away from home, so twentieth-century clubs grew out of people’s increased feelings of disconnect and isolation, providing them a sense of belonging through similarities in work, background, or interest. Modern club organization began in larger cities, but, as community boundaries and increased mobility expanded, smaller places also formed associations based on like-minded groups. As historian Lewis Atherton stated, “the twentieth-century cult of joining owes much to man’s increasing inability to identify himself with the community at large.”59 By virtue of their attendance, small-town high school students were already members in a discrete organization. Literary societies, therefore, were simply another way Middle Border schools heightened the camaraderie. By 1920, Viroqua had four whose stated purpose was to provide “a medium for giving school parties and promoting that education which can only be gained by taking an active part in an organization.”60 In Petersburg, society participation was figured into each student’s English grade, so was not just a diversion from the curriculum.61 Educators emphasized that preparation for modern life could not come from academics alone, but held the “conviction,” historian Edward A. Krug wrote, “that activities were important to the process of socialization, to the growth of students toward adult responsibilities... and to the fostering of social efficiency.” By 1910, clubs were no longer mere “adjuncts to the academic program” but a part of schools’ overall goals.62 Later, by 1918, the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education would further place socialization training as central within the high school. Adult guidance, therefore, was vital because club control could not be left to the caprice of youth. In Harris High School’s literary societies, the students were supposed to be “more or less” in control. Beginning with the selection process, however, forces behind the scenes had predetermined almost everything. Still, Hubert remembered the evening as “great fun.” His friends Eddie and Scott were in his same group, and the “yells” done at the close of the meeting had been motivating.63 At that time nothing else really mattered to him. Hubert immersed himself in society activities, which were wideranging. Meetings consisted of musical performances, readings, one-act plays, or demonstrations. They took place during and after school hours, in and out of the school building.64 While sophomores, Hubert and Scott Dawson did a science experiment where they turned water into

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

185

red “blood,” back to water, and then to ink. The demonstration hit a few snags resulting in rather anemic-looking blood. Later, when Scott had to explain to his classmates the chemical process, he stumbled on his words sending the entire assembly—“not excluding Scott”—into “hysterics.”65 Intramural basketball contests were also common. In January of 1921, the Lincolnians challenged the Shields on and off the court, competing in both the game and ticket sales. Hubert’s side won the game, while the Lincolnians sold the most tickets.66 Emulation was always important, as it had been in schools for many decades, and so music and reading performances were often judged. In April of 1921, societies from throughout Menard County gathered together for a competition held at the courthouse in Petersburg. Harris High School won the declamation and piano portions of the contest and came in second in vocal solo.67 Hubert frequently ushered during evening and other large events, where he typically noted “standing room only.”68 While students maintained some autonomy, their teachers carefully orchestrated the activities of society members. Four days after Hubert became a Shield, the group “was chosen” to prepare Minerva Hall for an upcoming teacher’s institute, so club members stayed after school until 5:30 p.m. oiling the piano, washing statues, cleaning windows, and decorating the hall.69 Later that month Hubert had his “fate pronounced” for the end-of-the-month program. It would include a dramatization of “Perseus and the Medusa’s Head,” in which Hubert played a fisherman. Miss Masters, one of the Shield advisors, informed him of his role during school, giving him just ten days to learn his part. During his sophomore year Hubert was assigned the affirmative in a “fixt debate” on the role of Santa Claus in the schools. A six-year-old would be invited as judge, and despite his preference, Hubert had to argue in favor of the jolly elf. “I don’t see much to the thing myself, but Miss Wood seem[s] to think it could be workt [sic] out beautifully,” Hubert wrote.70 He did as he was told. Hubert stayed interested in Shield activities throughout his senior year, although he became far less compliant. In early November he and some of the other Shields floated the idea of beginning a Society paper, the Shield Spectator, to be read at the meetings. For a long time Hubert had wanted a newspaper, but only as a senior did he feel “in a position to... properly make suggestions.” Consent was tepid but the Shields went ahead anyway, picking a “Board of Control” and a night for their first meeting. Hubert became the editor, and all the paper’s departments—personals, humor,

186

P. STOVEY

music, athletics, and “Neighborhood Notes,”—submitted their work to him. He typed it up and pronounced it a success. “It ought to be a good paper,” Hubert wrote.71 Miss Wood, however, disagreed. She objected, in particular, to the jokes, which she labeled “jazz humor,” and “cheapening” to the high school. She vetoed the “Enquiring Reporter,” a fictional correspondent who asked serious questions of the students and staff but received only absurd answers in return. For example, when asked about changing the lunchtime study period into a social hour, the “Enquiring Reporter” found that all the teachers were in favor. “Ripping,” was Miss Wood’s response. “Best plan that’s come down the pike since heck was a pup. The tiger’s tonsils. Sure I’m for it. I shall put up a sign saying ‘Positively no studying in the Assembly Hall at noon.’” Only one person, student Carl Custer—“a notorious non-studier”—disagreed, because, as the paper recorded, he said “it would prevent him [from] getting in his usual deep study.” Miss Wood severely edited the Shield’s work, cutting everything that in Hubert’s estimation “us students had worked so hard for and desired” the most. His anger spilled out onto the pages of his journal, filling a noteworthy four 8 ½ by 11 single-spaced typed pages. He had angry words for most of the staff, but in particular Hubert directed his wrath at Miss Wood, who he said spoke as though she respected the students, when, in reality, she did not. “Miss Wood is an excellent English teacher and in the classroom is an asset to the school, [but] anywhere else she is a tyrant and a narrow-minded impediment to progress,” he raged. “She acts as if we were all orthodox saints and by preventing the slightest recognition, even in the most unobjectionable way, of anything without a deep moral embedded within it they are making a model high school.” “Fun is O.K.,” he summed up, “only if it’s caused by [teachers’] sarcasm or their weak attempts at saying something cute.” In the end the Shield Spectator was a one-edition paper. Hubert did read it before the assembly as originally planned, but he made his voice lack all enthusiasm. While reading the humor section, he edited even further, picking out only the most “common, mediocre, and lifeless jokes.” The assembly had listened with anticipation, but Hubert left them in silence. “I felt a great contempt for that paper,” he concluded.72 Basketball was another extra-curricular activity common in small-town high schools. It began in 1891, when James Naismith, a physician living in Massachusetts, designed a competitive yet non-physical game for indoor

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

187

play whose popularity rose in concert with the American high school. In contrast to football—already common at the college level—basketball moved its attention away from the player, and instead, on the ball and its movement. Play proceeded without contact, and athletes could not run or dribble the ball (dribbling was made permissible in 1896). All forward progress came through passing.73 Basketball caught the attention of high school communities nationwide because, according to historian Pamela Grundy, people could glean from it what they needed. It fostered teamwork and cooperation as well as displays of personal courage and rousing competition. In a world whose social order seemed to be in flux, basketball was a reassuring reminder that individual strength could still produce moral results.74 The game’s spiritual elevation made it more than a mere pastime, but a key component in educators’ efforts to make a more just and efficient society. From the perspective of school leaders with limited resources, basketball was also practical. It was entertaining, both genders could participate, and other than a ball it required very little specialized equipment. To Middle Westerners used to “making do” with whatever they had around them, it was the perfect sport. In 1902, Petersburg lacked any space for games, so the teams, both boys and girls, played outdoors. Heedless of the weather, the games continued. A December article in the weekly Observer noted that as a fundraising effort the boys intended to play all winter.75 In 1923, school leaders in La Farge used the Enterprise to publicly thank the citizens for their “excellent support.” The school had no gym, but community contributions made it possible for the high school athletic association to buy the boys new “suits,” the girls new socks, and both teams a “dandy basket ball.” We “pa[id] all our debts and still put money in the bank,” they announced.76 What more could a district want? From the perspective of students, the game was simply fun. Alice Fortney, a 1929 graduate of Viroqua High School, never played basketball, but she kept close tabs on the boys’ team’s every game, its location, and score. “On January 21, 1927 we played Westby again here and won 5–8. Westby outplayed [us] until at the close of the game.”77 Like Fortney, Ada Stoda was a spectator, but that did not stop her from participating in the festivities. A 1924 Viroqua graduate, Stoda traveled to out-of-town games when she could. Once going by truck, or “gypsy wagon,” she commented that despite being crammed into the “hot, stuffy” canvas-covered back, she and her friends studied English in route. Around Viroqua, train travel was the quickest and surest mode of travel

188

P. STOVEY

for teams and their fans. Railroads regularly ran “excursion” trains for special events, of which basketball certainly counted. On one excursion to neighboring arch-rival Westby, the cars were packed to standing room only. Stoda and her friend Edith had the “good luck” of being in the aisle so that upon arrival at the depot they were able to keep ahead of the pack and make a clean break for the gym.78 In her “Commencement Days” journal, Stoda recorded how students regularly gathered at the train depot to meet arriving players and fans. “We surprised our opposing teams by our pep and everyone else too for that matter,” she wrote. Roy Bangsberg did play ball, and judging from his memoirs, the sport was central to his Viroqua High School experience. Practices, he recalled, began early in the fall and continued into spring. He and his teammates worked tirelessly perfecting their plays by using hand signals designed to indicate their next move. The plays rarely went off as intended, Bangsberg wrote, “but we thought they were good.” The team consisted of no more than a dozen players of whom five were starters. Only the starters needed to wear the official orange and black of Viroqua High, and so the school owned just five “suits.” When substitutes came into the game, outgoing players had to strip off their jersey and hand it over to the ingoing sub. The switch “ke[pt] the color scheme of uniforms in tact,” and “probably [gave] the substitute new courage for the fray,” Bangsberg wrote.79 It also allowed the district to avoid buying seven additional jerseys. Small towns in the Middle West regularly fielded girls’ and boys’ basketball teams, and in Iowa, girls’ games often stole the spotlight. By the 1920s, battles over gym space and the possible deleterious effects of competition on females led many larger city schools to replace girls’ interscholastic play with intramural and interclass games, but in small towns around the Hawkeye State girls’ basketball remained popular and competitive. Iowa lacked a singular and powerful voice opposing girls’ basketball, so influential educators encouraged competitive play, which the Des Moines Register covered and then dispersed to a region-wide audience. Girls’ games also reflected a longstanding tendency on the part of farmers and townsfolk to maintain tight control over their schools. Iowans knew their women to be capable, and, as author Janice Beran noted, “did not think that female attractiveness was jeopardized by participation in athletics.”80 Still, journalist Max McElwain may have identified the reason for the game’s supremacy best when he entitled his book on the history of girls’ basketball The Only Dance in Iowa.

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

189

By rule, girls’ play was different than boys. The court was divided into three sections and no player could trespass outside her zone. There were six players per side: two guards, two forwards, and a jumping and running center. Only the forwards could shoot, and after each basket the ball returned to center court for a jump ball.81 The play was much slower and the scores lower than today’s game, but it was competitive nonetheless. Allegra Schueler, who played forward, was a 1922 graduate of Van Horne High School. During a game at Marion she broke her arm in two places, and, in Keystone, Schueler got into a fight with one of the opposing players. The guard had tripped her (or perhaps she fell), but, as Schueler recalled, both girls were down on the court, the Keystone player “going with two hands in my hair, just mussing me up as much as she could.” In the background Schueler could hear her attacker’s mother yelling from the stands, “Get off of her, Get off of her,” but it was the referee who ultimately intervened and ejected both girls from the game.82 High school educators certainly did not want fighting, but they did encourage student interest in athletics. On a Friday in January of his freshman year, Hubert and the rest of Harris High School cut their lessons short to march down to the depot to welcome home their victorious boys’ basketball team. An “unprecedented thing,” Hubert called it, the entire school, both students and staff, went double file through town to the station. They “captured” the team, and “bore them in triumph between the two columns, and marched back to school.” The students shouted and waved the school colors the entire route. “You bet we want Petersburg to know we’re behind the team,” Hubert wrote, “and do win some games.” Upon their return the seventh and eighth-grade students joined the celebration. “We sang and yelled... and had what Miss Wood terms a ‘pep’ meeting.”83 Soon after, the district canceled classes for two days so students could attend a tournament in nearby Athens. Everyone went by train, so again the students gathered at the depot, although this time without the teachers or their double-line precision. The students stayed together throughout the day, eating their packed lunches on the platform, and rooting until their throats were sore. Petersburg lost in the first round but everyone enjoyed the games, and on the ride home they “yelled most of the way... including,” Hubert recorded, “some rah, rah, rahs for Corrigan the conductor.”84 Basketball became an integral part of high schools because of its ability to meet area needs, whatever they might be. In Iowa, basketball became the core of small-town high school athletics. For girls, it

190

P. STOVEY

was often the only option, and so they flocked to it, creating a culture of female athleticism unequaled elsewhere. Increasingly throughout the early 1900s, extracurricular clubs became a mainstay of high school life. Students remembered them as fun, but to interested adults, the clubs had far loftier goals. At Petersburg, the official purpose of its literary societies was to “improve [student] tastes for good literature, to develop self-confidence, and become skillful in debate.”85 Clubs also offered ways to involve students, where within supervised peer groups, they dusted pianos, performed sonatas, cheered from the sideline, or passed from mid court. Sometimes they challenged authority as well. Hubert’s blow up over the Shield Spectator was largely expressed within the pages of his journal, but he also made a stand, although subtle, in front of his peers. Indeed, on the day of the paper’s reading Hubert confessed that he was unsure as to whether the teachers had caught it at all. His classmates, however, did, because while returning to his seat, wrote Hubert, “Scott shook my hand in congratulation [and] Tilden smiled.”86

Informal Organizations: Order of the Fish Small-town high schools had more clubs than just those sanctioned by school authorities. In his freshman year Hubert’s best friend, Edward Laning, was a member of the Fast Young Set (F.Y.S.), a group of high school students whose interests centered around pool, parties, girls, cars, and dancing. Hubert was not a member, but, through Eddie, he knew about its activities and sometimes witnessed the repercussions. For example, late one Saturday morning Hubert and a friend headed up to Eddie’s house only to discover that he was still in bed. He had been out late dancing, “soaking up chili until about 12:30 midnight, and stagger[ing] home about 1:30 a.m.” The club’s purpose, based on Hubert’s best interpretation, was to go to parties, “flip the light fantastic,” and fraternize with girls.87 Eddie’s grades suffered because of his involvement, as exemplified by an April day when he and some other F.Y.S. members skipped school to make preparations for an evening party at a nearby lake. Eventually, Eddie’s father got involved, cutting off afterschool billiards and threatening to sell the Ford. When making good on those threats proved unsuccessful, he pulled his son out of school for the following September, forcing Eddie to begin his sophomore year in Oklahoma, where the family owned land.88

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

191

Whether or not the F.Y.S. continued without Eddie is unknown, but in general the lifespan of student-organized clubs was short. In April of his junior year Hubert formed the Brush Ape Bachelors (B.A.B.), a group of four boys intent on avoiding all contact with girls. Hubert typed up a club prologue, which named officers and spelled out the club’s purpose. “The Brush-ape Bachelor Club is not conducting a crusade against popular music, so called, or jazz, nor does it condemn the well-dressed man... Its arch enemy... is that profligate waste of time and money, that frivolity so inevitably accompanying any except the most stern and irrevocable relation to the female.” Members who unnecessarily associated with a girl, the rules stipulated, owed the others an ice cream soda. Eddie, who had returned three months after his departure, committed an early violation, and only ten days after its conception the club disbanded.89 The B.A.B. was immediately replaced with another organization, The Society for the Advancement of Emotional Experience (S.A.E.E.). The new club swung in the opposite direction, requiring the former B.A.B’s to interact with at least five different girls throughout the school day or, once again, owe payment of an ice cream soda. Hubert, who had had no problem with the earlier rules, found the S.A.E.E. more of a challenge. Thanks to Miss Wood’s late arrival in English on the club’s very first day, however, he met his quota. The S.A.E.E. was never intended to be a long-lived organization—the boys had set a two-week minimum—but the unexpected death of Eddie’s mother stopped their frivolity.90 The activities of the B.A.B. and S.A.E.E. spawned several other student clubs in Harris High School. A group of girls began an Old Maids Club, while five other boys formed an organization whose members had to date three times each week.91 Overall, informal student-organized clubs were harmless and often led by a spirit of playfulness. The name—and in the case of B.A.B., its prologue—seemed to be where the majority of the students’ energy was focused. In 1922, for example, Mansfield High School had four student-created clubs. If the Royal Order of Do Nothing and the United Brotherhood of Loafers lived up to their names, their activities were limited, but Mansfield was also home to the Knockers Club and the Happy Hustlers, two groups with titles that portended at least some action.92 Ina Kopp, a 1910s Athens graduate, was a member of the I Go-You Go, a club that was long lived and active. As Kopp recalled, the group grew out of the fact that the high school offered very few activities, which I Go-You Go remedied by sponsoring monthly parties. Ten boys and ten girls made up the organization, and, as Kopp stated,

192

P. STOVEY

it was active throughout her high school years. The girls hosted most of their gatherings, usually held in homes, while the boys managed one “grand affair” in the hall above the town’s bank.93 I Go-You Go was not a secret, and in general, small-town student clubs were not as covert as they were selective. Nor were they the threat to the social order that professional educators and legislators regularly made them out to be. Still, by the 1910s, thirteen states had ruled against high school fraternities or secret societies and required some form of punishment: suspension, expulsion, or exclusion from school-sponsored athletics. Iowa and Minnesota law made it a misdemeanor for anyone to solicit fraternity members, while many large city districts, including Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, and Superior passed their own rules for punishment.94 During Hubert’s tenure, the Order of the Fish (O. of F.) came the closest Harris High School had to a secret society. Late in the fall of his senior year, Hubert had hatched the idea while sitting bored in assembly. It was not altogether original, but came from a favorite Chicago Tribune cartoon, “Moon Mullins.” He passed a note suggesting the club’s formation and so it began. Early on the O. of F. consisted of four members who exchanged greetings and distress signals. (The two signals were actually the same. As if jumping in the water the member would pinch their nose closed with one hand, while holding the other up in the air. Clearly, context was important.) Members took on Fish names and began building a vocabulary, but ultimately it was the uproar over the Shield Spectator that caused the club to coalesce and grow.95 Miss Wood’s heavy editing had angered the core membership—all senior Shield boys—deeply, but the mood spread. Even some of the senior girls, who were not yet official members, raged. As Hubert wrote, “our senior sedition corner (Home of the O. of F.) presented a most thunder stormy appearance.” Immediately the Fish circulated the original edition of the Speculator—complete with Miss Wood’s marks—for all the students to see, and that next day in assembly they held a not-so-covert “banquet” of candied fruit drops as an act of defiance.96 Yet, even at the height of their anger, members of the O. of F. never had any nefarious intentions. Instead, the club simply reflected what the students—within the high school’s culture—had been taught. It began when as members of the high school, they read the same books, struggled through the same tests, sang, and cheered together. Then, thrown together as Shields, they performed for each other and competed together

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

193

against the Lincolnians. Finally, united in battle against a common foe— Miss Wood—the senior Shields established their own reason for unity. The O. of F. focused their attention on their common needs. For example, they convinced Mr. Robertson to postpone a physics exam by one day, circulated a petition asking Miss Wood’s permission for a high school dance, and “triumphed o’er all” when they got the okay for unsupervised study time in the lab. The club’s purpose, as Hubert summed it up, was “Senior Supremacy, Shield Supremacy, and Help for the Student.”97 As seniors and young adults, their behavior made perfect sense.98 The O. of F. was also never truly a secret. From its start teachers and students openly talked about the group. Miss Masters’ was their chosen advisor, and her room, the designated “aquarium,” was used for meetings. Like the official greeting, nothing about the club was subtle. Indeed, once the O. of F. came up with a seal, members drew it on the board as a meeting reminder and “show of powerful Fish superiority.” Soon, however, the seal elicited no more of a notice than a “make up music test,” Hubert remarked.99 Miss Wood eventually cut off the club’s school affiliation, not because it functioned in secret, but because, in her words, it “encouraged cliques and threatened the spirit of the school.” Regardless, the O. of F. stayed active largely through student interest and the blessings of parents. In January, for example, Hubert spoke with his mother about the O. of F. and its fallout. “Mama is rather pleased than otherwise,” Hubert stated. She offered their house as the location for regular Thursday gatherings, but the club never did meet weekly.100 Like most informal organizations, the O. of F. was small, drawing interest from the other grades, but always limited to Shield seniors—and only a few of them. (Eddie, for example, was never a Fish.) At its height, the club consisted of only nine of Harris High School’s 26 seniors, whose in-school disruptions Miss Wood was able to curb by merely reorganizing the seating chart. Also, O. of F. events never trumped school-sponsored curricular or extra-curricular activities. For instance, in late February a Fish frolic had to be postponed because of play practice, and once after a late-night party Hubert made sure he finished studying his English and history before going to bed.101 Hubert devoted pages of his journal to “O. of F. news,” although he did remain realistic about its limitations and pitfalls. Primarily, Hubert feared the negative impact the Fish could have on his grades. For example, throughout his junior year Hubert had kept a rigorous reading schedule, which stopped once he became involved

194

P. STOVEY

with the Fish. And in assembly he had noticed his teachers looking disappointed by his recent change of behavior. But Hubert considered the club only a diversion and vowed to remain dedicated to academics. “Fear not little report card,” he wrote, “I have a most unselfish interest in you and will not see you degraded.”102 Despite its occasional controversy, the O. of F. functioned much like Petersburg’s version of the I Go-You Go, grouping like with like and fulfilling unmet needs. Once banned from the school, senior supremacy and help for the student gave way to parties. The frolic at Hubert’s house initiated one new member, but it otherwise consisted largely of eating, drinking soda, and searching for good radio reception (Hubert was an early adopter of the radio). The second frolic, Hubert summed up as “talking, card playing, and abominable noise making with the sax, clarinet, and piano.”103 And so it went, until the end of the school year when all the Fish gathered at Jackson’s photo studio for a group portrait. They held a banner displaying their logo and the words “Senior Supremacy 1924.” Hubert stood in the photo, but ultimately determined the club a failure. “No initiative, no interest, no reciprocity,” he wrote.104 Whether or not the other Fish would have agreed is unknown. Time for the Fish distress call: jump in water, pinch nose, hand above head.

Conclusion In small-town high schools, early twentieth-century youth culture took root and thrived. Much of it centered on the assembly, where, although designed for study, a lot of misbehavior took place. Talking was a constant problem, but misconduct ranged far and wide as students found ways to fill their time. In spring of his freshman year Hubert and his friend Scott Dawson spent most of one second-hour study period playing gin rummy. Scott had made the cards out of drawing paper and used an open notebook as a table so that if detection by a teacher was imminent, the notebook could get slammed shut.105 To provide teens guidance in the use of their time, educators at the state and local level encouraged student clubs and extra-curricular sports. By 1918, proper use of leisure had become a nationalized goal, endorsed by the prestigious Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education report. Regardless, most small-town districts managed to offer only a few after-school activities, generally a basketball team and competing literary societies. Basketball fit into the culture of the Middle West because it

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

195

could be played almost anywhere and required only a ball and basket. Nothing really had to be standard.106 Membership in a literary society was required for most small-town students. At Harris High School the Shields competed against the Lincolnians in oratorical as well as athletic meets. Teachers were supposed to maintain a light hand in club activities, but, in reality, they closely controlled all the students’ activities and assigned duties in ways similar to homework. As an underclassman, Hubert unquestioningly immersed himself in the literary society, but once a senior his attitude changed.107 A fracas over control of the Shield Spectator helped bring rise to the Order of the Fish, a student organized club void of adult control. To some adult onlookers, the O. of F. was a problem because its members could, in theory, be unpredictable and unruly. Its existence, however, it was far from unusual. Student-organized clubs existed in all small high schools, standing as an imitation of adult behavior and a reflection of the culture of joining. Most were fleeting—no more than a name in some cases—and often centered on providing their members with a source of entertainment. Once cast out of the school, the O. of F. became a short-lived social organization whose members simply focused on being together. Though understudied, Midwestern small-town high schools provide valuable insight into the rise of America’s youth culture. Places like Petersburg are where many American youth first attended school, and, as a result, first became immersed in a common youth culture. Their experiences reflect what most early twentieth-century students knew, including the central role of peers in their day-to-day experience. Statistically, most of Middle Western secondary students were white and middle class, a reflection of both demographics and systemic racism. They attracted attention because many adults, then as today, observed the behavior of young people with alarm. Outside influences, from technology and popular culture had changed the pace of life beyond most adults’ ability to keep up. Teens, on the other hand, proved far more able. They adopted modern music and dress, used slang, danced, and wore new hairstyles. Hubert listened to popular music, and in the spring of his senior year confessed to having “fallen hard” for a new song, “Blue Lagoon.” Meanwhile, 1919 graduate Lysta Garver was noted for being one of the first girls in Mansfield High School to “bob” her hair.108 Not everything was innocence, however. During his freshman year Hubert’s best friend Eddie’s involvement with the Fast Young Set nearly caused him to fail.109 His was the image popular culture pushed before adults. Ultimately,

196

P. STOVEY

adults’ fears and efforts to clamp down on youth culture, while simultaneously expanding the very institution that encouraged its rise, proved counterproductive. Students flocked to the schools attuned to change and willing to embrace whatever higher education had to offer. They came to learn, not only at the feet of their teachers, but from each other as well.

Notes 1. Hubert Nelson, 2 September, 22 December 1920, “G. E. [Gustaf Edward] and Hubert E. Nelson Papers,” Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois; Clara Siepert, “Oral History Interview with Clara Siepert,” Interviewed by Howard Fredricks, sound cassette, 30– 31 July 1980, Special Collections, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, tape 1, side 1; Helen Shannon, Interviewed by Elizabeth Canterbury, transcript, 12 March 1982, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 20. 2. Nelson Diary, 8 January 1924. 3. Nelson Diary, 8 January 1924; Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 129. 4. Fass, 129. 5. Fass, 124. 6. State of Iowa Legislative Documents Submitted to the Thirty-sixth General Assembly, 1915, vol. III (Des Moines: State Printer, 1915), 73, 118– 125; Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Biennial Survey of Education 1916–18, vol. IV, bulletin no. 91 (1919) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921), 125, 203. 7. Fass, 129. 8. Alan B. Cobban, English University Life in the Middle Ages (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), 43, 52. 9. William J. Reese, The Origins of the American High School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 190–198. 10. Fass, chapter 3, 126. 11. Edward A. Krug, The Shaping of the American High School Volume 2, 1920–1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), 137–41; S. M. Thomas, ed., Education in Wisconsin: Biennial Report 1926–1928 (Madison: State Department of Public Instruction, 1928), 39–40. 12. Fass, chapter 3, 132–133. 13. John Dewey, “The American Intellectual Frontier,” The New Republic, 30 (May 10, 1922), 303. States considered a part of the Midwest, and the terms used to describe the region have changed over time. This work will use Midwest, Middle West, and Middle Border interchangeably.

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

197

14. In 1910, Illinois was the third most populated state in the nation with 132 cities. Out of that number, however, only twelve had populations exceeding 25,000. In 1910, Minnesota had only three cities whose populations exceeded 25,000 people: Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. Wisconsin and Iowa each had eight larger urban centers. See Census Population 1910, vol II, prepared under the supervision of William C. Hunt, chief statistician for population (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O, 1913), 959–60, 575, 580; Census, Population, 1910, vol. III, prepared under the supervision of William C. Hunt, chief statistician for population (Washington D.C.: G.P.O., 1913), 1049. 15. Although the U.S. Census officially recognized communities of 2,500 or more as urban, the U.S. Bureau of Education set the definition of a city at communities with populations exceeding 5,000 because the tax base from municipalities with population from 2,500 to 4,999 came from the surrounding countryside. See Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Biennial Survey of Education 1916–1918, vol. IV, bulletin No. 91, 125, 224–26. 16. Reese, 80–83. See Chapter 5 for drawings of the elaborate architecture seen in many large city high schools. 17. Nelson Diary, 27 May 1921. 18. Nelson Diary, 22 December 1920. Frequently if a teacher was absent additional time would be tacked on. In December of his freshman year Hubert gained two additional study periods when his Latin and physiography teacher, Miss Kennedy, fell ill. “Only recite once each day,” Hubert wrote. “Study two hours in the morning & 2 in the afternoon.” See Nelson Diary, 13 February 1923. 19. Nelson Diary, 7 January 1921. The rankings would be printed in the newspaper as well. See “School Honors for December,” Petersburg Observer, 1 January 1921, 1. 20. Helen Shannon, Interviewed by Elizabeth Canterbury, transcript, 12 March 1982, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 20. 21. Lysta Garver Eppele, Mansfield School’s Golden Era 1890–1922 (Abraham Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois, 1972, mimeographed), 23. 22. Nelson Diary, 11 April, 4 September 1922. Previous to 1922, songs and music had been a part of the opening exercises, not an official class. 23. Roy Bangsberg, Seven Miles to Viroqua (n.p., 1942), 66–67. 24. Nelson Diary, 21 December 1923. Hubert drew the “plat” on 27 May 1921, and each year throughout his high school tenure he made a student list which referred back to the drawing. He would use the desk numbers in the original plat to match every student to their place in assembly.

198

P. STOVEY

25. Eppele, Mansfield School’s Golden Era, 57. 26. Barbara Gantenbein, “Oral History Interview with Mrs. Chas Glynn and daughter Barbara Gantenbein,” interviewed by Howard Fredricks, transcript, 31 March 1977, Special Collections, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, 33–34. 27. Jean Rolfe, “Howard Fredricks Oral History Project,” Interviewed by Howard Fredricks, transcript, 7, 14, 20 September 1971, Special Collections, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, 61–63, 73, 83–84. In 1906, eight out of Viroqua High School’s 131 students were above the age of twenty. See Twelfth Biennial Report of the Department of Public Instruction of the State of Wisconsin, July 1, 1904–June 30, 1906 (Madison: Democrat Printing Company, State Printer, 1906), 154–85. 28. Bangsberg, 38–40, 63. 29. James R. Shortridge, The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), 34–49. 30. In Robert and Helen Lynd’s “Middletown” study the trend was the same but with class as the dividing line. The 1920s study noted that clothing differences fell along class lines with working-class students taking cues from the more wealthy business class youth. Robert Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in American Culture (1929; reprint, New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1945), 162– 163; In 1924 Ruth Suchow wrote a fictional account of a retired 1920s Iowa farm family who move into town. The youngest girl in the family attends school “act[ing] as if she had never lived in the country.” Suchow made her particularly demanding about her clothes. “She wouldn’t buy shoes at one of the general stores in Richland, but made her father take her to ‘Wapsie,’ or went to Dubuque with one of the boys when they were going.” Clothes sewn at home were made “under minute and fretful and exacting directions.” See Ruth Suckow, Country People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924), 151–159. 31. Bangsberg, 63. 32. U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States 1920–32, prepared under the supervision of Z. R. Pettet, chief statistician for agriculture(Washington, DC: G.P.O, 1935), 58–60, 66, 723, 752–55, 843. 33. Rolfe Interview, 10–12; Vernon County Historical Society, Vernon County Heritage (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1994), 11, 40–41; Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States 1920–32, 843. 34. The Purple and Gold, Ontario (Wisconsin) High School, 1924, 18–20; Memories, La Farge (Wisconsin) High School, 1946, “Alumni Roll,” n.p.; Board of Education, “Catalog of the Hillsboro Public Schools, Hillsboro, Wisconsin” (Hillsboro: Sentry-Enterprise Print, 1919), 31– 35; Amy Lund, “Cheyenne Valley” (Unpublished paper), University of

8

35.

36.

37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

199

Wisconsin-Eau Claire, available at http://www.lafarge.k12.wi.us/lund/ mysite/CV_Home.htm. Lund researched the Black population in Forest Township (considered the heart of Vernon County’s African American population) from 1880 to 1920. None of the youth from Lund’s findings appear in area four-year high schools. The exact cause of Black teens’ absence is unclear, however evidence of African Americans attending integrated one-room schools is plentiful. By 1908 an area crossroads town, Valley, did have a state graded school that went through to the tenth grade. (I found no records from Valley’s school, although in the 1920s their “high school” department did compete against Ontario in athletics.) It is possible that Cheyenne Valley Black youth attended Valley’s school, or, like many of their white peers, may have dropped out prior to graduation. Rolfe’s memories give no indication. See The Purple and Gold, 32; Zachary Cooper, Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin (Madison: State Historical Society Wisconsin, 1977), 8–18, 26. May Carr McNeil, interviewed by George Ingle, transcript, 10 October 1987, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 45. Lodge Grant, interviewed by Marilyn Anderson, transcript, 17 January 1980, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 15–16, 46–48. Bertha Craig, interviewed by Judith Haynes, transcript, September 1981. Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 6, 11–18. Eppele, Mansfield School’s Golden Era, 57–58. Pipe of Peace 1913, Viroqua (Wisconsin) High School, 85, 88. Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean High School Freshman (New York: A. L. Burt Company, 1917). The other titles in the series are the same, only the year in school changes. Nelson Diary, 10 January 1924. Lysta Garver Eppele, Mansfield Schools’ Golden Era, 1890–1922, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois, 1972, mimeographed, 39. Pipe of Peace 1913, 94. Allegra Schueler, “Her Own Story,” interviewed by Loretta Rice, transcript, 1984, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa-Iowa City, 18–19. Eppele, Mansfield School’s Golden Era, 47. Nelson Diary, 2 February 1921, 23 October, 1923.

200

P. STOVEY

47. Pipe of Peace 1917 , 54. The story of the 1916 inter-class track meet came too late for the 1916 yearbook, so it was included in the following year. 48. Bangsberg, 68–70. 49. “High School Notes,” La Farge Enterprise, 9 November 1906, 1. 50. “Hallow’en Passed Quietly,” Petersburg Observer, 4 November 1921, 1. 51. Nelson Diary, 1 November 1923. Scott Dawson and Carl Custer did the Halloween prank. See Nelson Diary, 8 November 1923. 52. Bangsberg, 68. 53. Bangsberg, 77–80. 54. Robert Truman Dinsmore, interviewed by Michael Boren, autumn 1979, transcript, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 7. 55. Nelson Diary, 28 January 1924. 56. Nelson Diary, 15, 20 February 1924. The Fish waited for Miss Masters to be busy elsewhere to feast because they did not want to “embarrass” her. See Nelson Diary, 19 February 1924. 57. Nelson Diary, 1 October 1920. The following year an article in the Observer reiterated the selection process Hubert had described in his diary, including the use of the “tiny capsules.” In the neighboring town of Athens, Helen Shannon recalled that membership in one of their two school literary societies was decided when each freshman drew a slip from a bowl identifying their affiliation. “H.S. Societies Organize,” See Observer, 30 September 1920, 1; Helen Jensen Shannon, interviewed by Elizabeth Canterbury, 12 March 1982, transcript, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www. idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 19. 58. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Richard D. Heffner (1835: reprint, New York: Putnam, 1984), 198. 59. Lewis Atherton, Main Street on the Middle Border (1954: reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 245–249, 290–293. In Middletown Robert and Helen Lynd agreed that clubs grouped like with like. The Lynds, however, considered popular culture more powerful when it came to social segregation. In their estimation, movies isolated people into theatres, while the radio closed them into their homes. See Middletown, 484–485. 60. Pipe of Peace 1920, 49. 61. “Harris High School Notes,” Observer, 24 October 1919, 1; “An Excellent Program,” Observer, 5 November 1920, 1. 62. Krug, 137. See also Thomas W. Gutowski, “Student Initiative and the Origins of the High School Extracurriculum: Chicago, 1880–1915,”

8

63. 64.

65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

201

History of Education Quarterly, 28 (Spring, 1988), 49–72; Laurie Moses Hines, “Community and Control in the Development of the Extracurriculum: Muncie Central High School, 1890–1930,” in Hoosier School Past and Present, ed. William J. Reese (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 99–120. Nelson Diary, 1 October 1920; “Petersburg High School,” Observer, 26 August 1921, 1. Fellow Illinoisan Lodge Grant remembered all his school literary activities taking place within the school day. “Every two or three weeks or a month we would take the last couple of periods in the day and have a, I guess you would call it, a literary group. We would have declamations and songs by individuals, things of that sort.” See Lodge Grant, interviewed by Marilyn Anderson, transcript, 17 January 1980, transcript, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield,” 17. Nelson Diary, 20 October 1922. Nelson Diary, 19, 21, January 1921. Nelson Diary, 29 April 1921. Hubert enclosed the literary contest program in his diary where he had marked the final standings; While by the 1920s emulation may have been the norm in educational settings, its place in late eighteenth-century academy life was more controversial. Some scholars and community members argued that it easily devolved into envy and threatened social cohesion because it trained students to seek “distinction among their peers” not within their family. J.M. Opal, “Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the rural North, 1780s–1820s,” introduces emulation’s role in the academy and its controversy The Journal of American History, 91 (September, 2004), 447, 458. Nelson Diary, 28 October 1921, 6 January 1922. Nelson Diary, 5 October 1920. Nelson Diary, 14 December 1921. In the Observer the title of the dramatization was listed as “Perseus and the Magic Shield.” All of the performances were related to the theme of shields, a point Hubert either missed or did not care to record in his diary. See “An Excellent Program,” Observer, 5 November 1920, 1. Nelson Diary, 8, 12, 20, 26 November 1923. Nelson Diary, 28 November 1923. Pamela Grundy, Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 40, 65. Grundy, 65–75. “Basket Ball,” Observer, 13 December 1902, 1.

202

P. STOVEY

76. “School Notes,” La Farge Enterprise, 8 February 1923, 8. 77. Alice Fortney “School Friendship Book” (1925–1929) Vernon County History Museum, Viroqua, Wisconsin. 78. Ada Stoda, “Commencement Days” (1920–1924), Vernon County History Museum, Viroqua, Wisconsin. 79. Bangsberg, 87–93. 80. Janice A. Beran, From Six-on-Six to Full Court Press: A Century of Iowa Girls’ Basketball (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1993), xiii, xv; Max McElwain, The Only Dance in Iowa: A History of Six-Player Girls’ Basketball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 46–49, 101,192. See also David G. Martin, “Gymnasium or Coliseum? Basketball, Education, and Community Impulse in Indiana in the Early Twentieth Century, in Hoosier Schools Past and Present, ed. William J. Reese (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 121–44. 81. In 1934 girls’ play changed to half court and in 1993 six-player basketball ended altogether. See Beran, 46; McElwain, 135. 82. Schueler interview, 16–17. 83. Nelson Diary, 20 January 1922. 84. Nelson Diary, 2 February 1922. To make up some of the lost time, school began one hour early the two days prior to dismissal. See Nelson Diary, 1 February 1922. 85. “Petersburg High School,” Observer, 26 August 1921, 1. 86. Nelson Diary, 28 November 1923. 87. Nelson Diary, 22 January 1921. 88. Nelson Diary, 1, 4, 13 April 1921, 6 May 1921, 16 September 1921. 89. Nelson Diary, “The Brush-Ape Bachelor Club Prologue” (n.d. 1923), 17, 20, 23 April 1923. 90. Nelson Diary, 23–24 April 1923, 1 May 1923. 91. Nelson Diary, 24 April 1923. 92. Eppele, Mansfield School’s Golden Era, 53. 93. Ina Kopp, interviewed by Mrs. Elizabeth Canterbury, transcript, November 1973, Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield, available at http://www.idaillinois.org. “The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield, 23. The actual spelling of Kopp’s club is unclear. The spelling used in the text is the same as the transcribed interview, but in 1904, Petersburg had a city “Ugo-Igo” club. It is likely that the high school group followed the same, or a similar, unconventional spelling. See “Ugo-Igo Club Entertained,” Observer [date unreadable], January 1904, 1. 94. “Opposition to Frats in High Schools,” Observer, 3 May 1912, 3; William Graebner, “Outlawing Teenage Populism: The Campaign against Secret Societies in the American High School, 1900–1960,” Journal of American History, 74 (September 1987), 412–21.

8

BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND ORDER OF THE FISH …

203

95. Hubert Nelson, 15, 21 November 1923. 96. Nelson Diary, 28 November 1923. Hubert’s diatribe over the Spectator took him two days to type, so the events of 27 November are recorded one day later. 97. Nelson Diary, 28 November, 11 December 1923. The request for a dance was turned down, however Miss Wood was open to a “supervised play” day. See Nelson Diary, 13 December 1923. 98. Lynd, 481; Atherton, 245–49. 99. Nelson Diary, 9, 12, 13 December 1923. 100. Nelson Diary, 9 January, 12 March 1924. 101. Nelson Diary, 17 January, 27 February 1924. 102. Nelson Diary, 11 January 1924. In March Hubert wrote: “The O. of F. etc. restlessness has tightened a relentless grip more and more upon me. The reading schedule hasn’t been a success this year (1924 so far) and I’ve quit it; nothing but radio, loafing & thinking.” See Nelson Diary, 8 March 1924. 103. Nelson Diary, 17 January, 12 March 1924. 104. Nelson Diary, 29 May 1924. 105. Nelson Diary, 22 March 1921. 106. Beran, 6. 107. Hubert eventually came to believe that the Shields and Lincolnians, were “not free expression[s] of the student himself,” but “merely tools of the faculty.” Nelson Diary, 13 December 1923. 108. Dorothy Hornby, “My Graduation Journal, Viroqua High School, 1924–1926,” Vernon County History Museum, Viroqua, Wisconsin; Eppele, Mansfield School’s Golden Era, 1890–1922, 38; Nelson Diary, 12 April 1924. 109. Nelson Diary, 6 May 1921. Throughout his diary Hubert kept track of he and Eddie’s grades. Where once Eddie’s marks—except algebra— had been 90% or above, by April his scores–except English–were 70% or lower. After posting the scores Hubert wrote, “F.Y.S. Did It I Think.” See Nelson Diary, 6 May 1921.

CHAPTER 9

“Fight for Your Land”: Southern High School Activism and the Struggle for Youth Autonomy During and After the Second World War Jon Hale

John Wrighten, a military veteran of the Second World War, enrolled at the Avery Normal Institute—a historically Black academy that offered elementary through secondary education grounded in a classical, college preparatory curriculum since 1865—in Charleston, South Carolina, in his early twenties. Like many returning veterans, he wanted to complete high school after his discharge in order to pursue a higher education. Wrighten enrolled in a course offered by Ms. Julia Brogden, titled “Problems in Democracy,” where she guided her class in examining segregation policies in a local context. After graduating from Avery, Wrighten led a local

J. Hale (B) University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_9

205

206

J. HALE

chapter of the NAACP Youth Council and, in 1944, encouraged students at the historic school who were interested in pursuing advanced degrees to apply to all-white colleges.1 Enrolling in high school courses as an adult, Wrighten was not the average student at Avery or any other historically Black high school. Yet his activism and the foundations established at Avery and other southern Black high schools illustrate how these institutions were sites of critical engagement and education for social and political change. The history of southern Black high schools and the student activism that developed there illuminate a history of high schools in the South, which engendered active notions of citizenship and community engagement and demands for equitable policy changes. As a southern freedom movement took hold, Black high schools in the South in many cases originated, or more commonly sustained, local mobilization, a fact often overlooked in the literature. In addition to expanding the category of activists to those not yet in college, this history provides regional nuance that complicates any unilateral or generalized history of the American high school. Wrighten, along with his fellow Avery graduates, specifically wanted to attend the local and all-white College of Charleston as opposed to the all-Black South Carolina State College, which was in Orangeburg, over seventy miles away. They argued that as a publicly supported institution, the College of Charleston should be open to all students. The state offered scholarships to attend South Carolina State College in an act of appeasement, but they refused to desegregate the College of Charleston. In response, Wrighten, who maintained connections with the NAACP Youth Council chapter to keep pressure on school officials, sought to desegregate colleges and universities in the Palmetto State. Three years later, he sued the state of South Carolina for admission to its all-white law school at the University of South Carolina. Though the state ultimately rejected his application, Wrighten paved the way for a new law school for African Americans at South Carolina State College and established the groundwork for litigation that dismantled legal barriers to education across the state.2 Having risked their lives to end fascism abroad, Wrighten and other Black soldiers returned to find whites who refused to extend the hardfought freedom they had earned. The NAACP and some policymakers embraced tenets of fighting fascism abroad and racism at home in the “Double Victory” campaign waged domestically, scoring some supportive federal action, including President Truman’s Commission on Civil Rights

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

207

in 1946 and Executive Order 9981 (1948) that led to the desegregation of the military. And like many Black veterans, Wrighten committed himself to the freedom struggle.3 They demanded to be treated with equality after sacrificing their lives to defeat fascism and inspired local action. Unlike many other solider activists, however, Wrighten also demonstrated how the Black high school could be used as a central site in a burgeoning freedom movement, as it was an institution strategically positioned to address the supremacist malevolence that underpinned segregation and the unprotected status of Black youth it illuminated. With a raised consciousness of the glaring contradictions that defined life in Dixie, the Black high school was in many ways a powder keg, owing in particular to gross racial disparities and growing demands for school access compared to the previous generations. This chapter examines the politics of southern high school student activism and the historically Black high schools that served as critical sites of the freedom struggle. As an institution designed to protect and prepare youth, the Black high school was the most important state institution in the lives of youth, regardless of race, during and after the Second World War. Given the political and social construction of the concept of youth since the turn of the twentieth century, high school youth were understood across the field of education to be “adolescents,” but the category was unevenly constructed. Society afforded White children more privileges, protection, and resources than Black children and children of color. Disparate renderings of “youth” inspired the potential for widespread political organizing as millions of parents demanded greater access to school and the protections and benefits it afforded. By 1940, 50.8% of the country’s seventeen-year-olds were high school graduates, marking the first time in American history that half of the school age population completed secondary education.4 As a southern institution, historically Black high schools were shaped by racist policies and an uneven appropriation of educational funding and support provided by the state. Black high schools were drastically underresourced when compared to white high schools. By 1940, just over 20% of African Americans between the ages of fourteen and seventeen enrolled in high school. In fact, in Mississippi, still only five percent of Black children attended high school by 1940.5 Yet a growing wartime demand and rising attendance rates across the South led to overcrowded conditions that laid bare the unseemly provisions for secondary education. The Black high school student population rose by 124% in Alabama, 123%

208

J. HALE

in Mississippi, 113% in Georgia, sixty-nine percent in South Carolina, and fifty-eight percent in Virginia from the 1940s to the early 1950s.6 This put a growing number of Black families in direct conflict with white powerbrokers at a time when the nation was fully invested in notions of democracy and eradicating tyranny. With greater demand to enroll in high school being expressed against a backdrop of wartime rhetoric, Black high schools was poised to be a dynamic site during and after the Second World War. They became sites of political contestation as well. In notable instances, political consciousness inspired by Black veterans, critical teachers, and wartime rhetoric dramatically transformed the high schools veterans attended into active sites of resistance. A new era in the long freedom struggle took hold. The unprecedented demands of the 1940s prompted many parents, education advocates, civic leaders, and students to act. Yet southern Black high schools provided a space for student activists and civil rights leaders to build, grow, and sustain movements for political and social change. Black high schools were institutional pillars of a growing youth movement with a real potential to address systemic inequality during the Second World War. In the violent contradiction of living while Black in the American South, teachers, civic leaders, and civil rights organizations increased their efforts to use institutions of secondary education in the early civil rights movement of the 1940s. They saw Black high schools across the South as a critical foundation for an assault on segregation. The school Wrighten attended, the Avery Normal Institute, was a logical site to contest the existing order. Founded by local Black Charlestonians in 1865 with support from the American Missionary Association, Avery was a respected institution that instilled a critical liberal arts curriculum in its pupils, preparing them for college and professional employment. Before Wrighten, it graduated distinguished and influential civil rights organizers, including Septima P. Clark.7 Because schools like Avery had existed across the South since Reconstruction, the potential for student and educational activism was not limited to southern cities with a historically Black college. Veterans who enrolled in high school after the war were catalysts for demonstrating the latent potential of high school activism. Coming directly from the frontlines of a war carried out to annihilate fascism, war veterans like Wrighten in Charleston and Elport Chess in Jackson, Mississippi challenged Jim Crow and they did so while enrolled in high school and by inspiring local movements.8 At the same time, teachers and Black

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

209

professional teacher associations across the South risked their careers and demanded higher wages, suing local and state districts for providing unequal salaries in the segregated era of “separate but equal.”9 Additionally, community leaders invested in secondary education continued to see the high school as a way to improve the teaching profession. These community leaders sought to protect youth through the expansion of educational opportunity at the high school level by providing more space and better schools. This chapter also explores how the NAACP and the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) built upon the foundations of a youth movement they helped cultivate for a generation before the war. Teachers, war veterans, and community elders were not the only actors involved in politically engaging high schools and Black high school students. The Second World War reinvigorated NAACP and SNYC interest in youth organization. Having erected the infrastructure for youth organization during the 1920s and 1930s, wartime efforts refocused their organization as part of larger campaigns to challenge the system of white supremacy that exposed the inherent contraction of fighting a global war against fascism while emboldening domestic terrorism.10 The NAACP and SNYC organized youth conferences, guided young people into the traditional political process, designed and implemented citizenship education for local communities, and supported youth as they engaged their local communities. These organizations effectively created networks that connected youth across the region, which proved to be an effective means to engage large audiences and advance a political agenda not found in schools. These organizations also worked with youth and guided them in working with other local organizations, effectively introducing the movement to new sites and introducing the networks of resistance to youth as part of their informal political education. Because the bulk of youth work during the war focused on education, their work was less visible than direct action demonstrations. But it still established an important foundation of both the youth and civil rights movement. Paternalism undergirded their work with youth, however. While the NAACP and SNYC more actively pursued the organization of youth during the war, they shared with educators an interest in fostering deep understandings of the struggle for equality, but only under the leadership of adults. Civil rights organizations during the 1940s ultimately operated with the presumption that youth held the potential to be future foot soldiers and consequently fell short of supporting young people as

210

J. HALE

autonomous change agents in the present moment. Increasing organizational capacity and rising tensions over youth autonomy institutionalized a tension between youth autonomy and adult oversight that defined the activism of the following decades. The youth movement of the 1940s illustrates the nexus between high schools, the NAACP, and SNYC during the early stages of the postwar freedom struggle. War veterans, Black educators, and civil rights organizations politicized the Black high school and youth. They applied wartime rhetoric to the improvement of Black high schools and viewed young people as allies in an expanding movement to eradicate the vestiges of white supremacy and fascism at home. This movement inculcated young people with the critical consciousness and the educative tools to lead a movement. In turn, this created a foundation for an activist youth movement, one that generated an infrastructure, was defined by its own terms, and unearthed tensions that continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Politicizing the Southern Black High School Through Protest and the Courts The high school emerged as an integral incubator of activism during and immediately after the Second World War. The conflict furnished veterans who experienced firsthand the paradox of fighting fascism abroad while their hometowns remained violently segregated. The war was a catalyst for action as returning veterans galvanized local movements that constituted the early phases of the classic Civil Rights Movement, which originated with Black veterans and the NAACP who inspired some federal intervention such as President Truman’s Commission on Civil Rights in 1946 and Executive Order 9981 (1948). On the ground in Dixie, war veterans reinvigorated chapters of the NAACP, bolstered the ranks of registered voters, and compelled their neighbors to challenge Jim Crow.11 Black high schools became sites of political contestation as well, though less well known. In notable instances, political consciousness inspired by the war dramatically transformed the high schools veterans attended into active sites of resistance. Local actors, not the limited actions of the federal government, provided the backbone and soul of the Civil Rights Movement. Two years after John Wrighten’s protest in Charleston, another returning war veteran, Elport Chess, enrolled at Lanier High School in Jackson, Mississippi, to complete his education. On his way to school in

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

211

November 1946, Chess refused to give up his seat to a white passenger when prompted by the driver. Jackson police officers physically assaulted Chess, removed him from the bus, and arrested him. Two other war veterans, Hargo Barbour and Leonard Lucas, who were also completing high school at Lanier, decided to take action. They and other students consulted Mr. M.J. Lyells, a social studies teacher at Lanier and NAACP member, who counseled and advised the students. Under the clandestine guidance of Lyells and in solidarity with Chess, Barbour and Lucas organized a boycott of the bus that took students to Lanier and other city bus routes. They garnered the support of local Black churches and the Dotty and Deluxe Cab Companies, who offered the use of their cars for the same price as bus fare. News of the boycott, spread by word of mouth, galvanized support. The boycott lasted for several weeks until protesters were assured the offending driver would be dismissed and the bus route remained designated for Black patrons.12 Veterans like John Wrighten, Elport Chess, Hargo Barbour, and Leonard Lucas activated the high school in unprecedented ways. By engaging in direct-action nonviolent protests, war veterans catapulted these institutions into the frontlines of a nascent civil rights movement. Such instances were exceptional since these veterans were well beyond the age of adolescence. But the local movements they inspired never secured a place for Black high schools in movement historiography, which is an oversight. The high school was a site of resistance that complemented the integral work of Black churches in community organization. These moments of direct-action protest led by war veterans in high school illuminate the foundation of protest at the secondary level. The role of high school teachers was critical in both instances. Ms. Julia Bogden instilled a political consciousness among her students at the Avery Normal Institute in Charleston that reflected the critical education many Black educators received as postsecondary graduates. Mr. M.J. Lyells similarly reflected a critical influence that teachers exerted over their students. Mr. Lyells also demonstrates the affiliation some teachers maintained with the NAACP.13 Both of the secondary institutions, the Avery Normal Institute and Lanier High School, were highly regarded institutions and commanded the respect—and political support—of the Black community. Moreover, the NAACP was affiliated through either Youth Councils or supporting protests that emerged from these high schools. The war demonstrated that no more than a spark was needed to launch a movement from a Black high school to directly challenge Jim Crow.

212

J. HALE

A select cadre of teachers and NAACP organizers further politicized the Black high school. Taking up the issue of equal pay for equal work, regardless of race, Black educators were the frontrunners of the movement during the 1940s.14 Primed by the principles of Progressive education of the previous decades—an approach to schooling that conceptualized schools as sites of democratic education and embraced student-centered pedagogy—Black teachers foray into politics contextualized the ephemeral direct-action protests of war veterans. Organized into vast, statewide professional associations since the turn of the century, Black southern teachers were positioned to organize for equality, albeit in a less confrontational manner than war veterans. Their work intersected with the NAACP equalization campaign, which provided an opportunity to directly challenge educational inequality. Demanding salary equalization within a southern Black context became a platform of a burgeoning Civil Rights Movement as it pressured southern states to live up to and thereby challenge the premise of Plessy v. Fergusson’s (1896) “separate but equal” doctrine. As credentialed professionals and recognized community leaders acting within the larger context of teacher organization and progressive pedagogy, Black educators fueled the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement by visibly and directly confronting economic discrimination. As a result, teachers became important actors of the Civil Rights Movement throughout the Second World War until the politics surrounding the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision stymied their organizational through the termination of tens of thousands of teachers.15 Local community leaders took up the task of pressing white school boards to address rising enrollment during and after the war. While teachers participated in a legal campaign for equal salaries, education advocates in the local community pushed school districts to support the growing student body through new facilities. The case in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is illustrative of how community members demanded greater facilities for their children. Rev. Vernon Johns, a pastor and fiery civil rights advocate who utilized confrontational strategies to advocate for full equality, led local delegations to advocate for change. In 1944, Johns complained to the school board about “discarded buses” and the overcrowding of them. He and the delegation requested the superintendent investigate the situation. The board approved another bus to transport Black students at the next meeting.16

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

213

After Rev. Johns left to pastor the congregation at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, just prior to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a delegation led by Dr. Miller, Willie Redd, and Fred Reid became a regular fixture of school board meetings to hold the board accountable and pressure the district to act and meet the needs of their children. They approached the board about addressing the overcrowded conditions at R. R. Moton High School, a historically Black high school in Farmville, Virginia, during the war. They asked for updates, suggested plots of land to survey, and shared insights into the type of school they desired. The school board publicly committed to providing vocational training and the necessary facilities in 1945, stating the school should meet the “needs for the colored people, and be guided by it.”17 The delegation intensified its pressure to build the new facilities. But the board in Prince Edward County only committed $50,000 when the cost of a new school would be $400,000. This forced the community to raise the money. The move was supported by historical precedent. Southern districts like Prince Edward County long applied for and received funding for vocational education from white philanthropists like Rosenwald, Peabody, and the General Education Board. It was funding they often received and white school boards often incorporated this into funding allocations and projections. The board stalled in other ways for the next couple of years and delayed substantive action toward building a new school for four years. Instead of a new school, the board followed through on its resolution and built three additional buildings on the current Moton campus.18 It was a disappointing resolution for the delegation and the community Moton served. The all-white board and the district acted weakly, rendering their commitment ineffectual. They constructed the infamous “tar paper shacks” instead of building a new facility, to house the over 120 students who pushed R.R. Moton High School beyond its capacity. To add further insult to educational injury, the district built a new white high school, which they saw as an “immediate need” and approved the plan without debate at a cost of over $500,000.19 Rev. L.F. Griffin, a student of Rev. Vernon Johns, returned to pastor First Baptist Church in 1948. He maintained affiliation with the NAACP and local organizations including the Black Parent Teacher Association and took up the school improvement cause. The delegation continued to petition the board to build a new school. They also petitioned for a new school location, advocated for new plans for a school that equaled the newly erected white school, and authored applications for loans since

214

J. HALE

the board was unwilling to raise the money. The board stalled again, reminding Rev. Griffin’s delegation of the new additions. While they were considering new sites, the board was careful to note that it would take a considerable amount of time until “finances are arranged.” The board continued the same tactics of delay for over a year.20 Black delegations did not immediately yield the objectives they sought, and they were regularly burdened by the delaying tactics of recalcitrant white school boards. But teachers and civic leaders across the South tilled the soil of a youth movement. By litigating for equal salaries and petitioning boards for better facilities, Black teachers, civic leaders, and returning veterans transformed the Black high schools into legitimate political spaces. Moreover, the limitations of teacher and local leaders’ activism ultimately necessitated a space for high school activism. But before youth joined the frontlines of the movement, civil rights organizations reinvigorated their approach to youth organizing during and after the war.

Feigned Militancy: SNYC and NAACP Youth Organization During the War The role of civil rights organizations further facilitated the emergence of high school youth activism. Without the constraints of working for or with white school boards, civil rights organizations were free to facilitate youth activism directly, and the war provided a platform to build upon youth organization trends. As teachers and education advocates politicized the profession of teaching and the high school itself, SNYC and the NAACP focused directly on organizing students and youth. The Second World War invigorated their efforts and provided the NAACP and SNYC with a larger stage to reach their goals. They were emboldened by gains and recognition from the political establishment. As President Roosevelt penned to Esther Cooper Jackson and SNYC in 1942, African Americans participated in a conflict that protected “a universal freedom under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed. Their fight has been democracy’s fight. And democracy’s victory must be their victory—to cherish and extend as the men and women of tomorrow”.21 While civil rights organizers viewed youth as more active than their counterparts in the teaching profession, elders still treated young people as passive actors or as future change agents to be trained to support their

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

215

elders in the present movement. Only later and under the auspices of associations like the NAACP, adults reasoned, could youth—once they had attained adult status—lead the movement. This passive notion of youth activism undergirded conceptions of it while it engendered a dynamic movement that furthered national goals, facilitated transnational connections, launched ambitious educational campaigns, inspired pathbreaking conferences, and inculcated tens of thousands of students with the principles of democratic change. Inhibited while being provided the tools to lead a frontal assault in a domestic war on racial oppression, the paradoxes of the youth movement during the 1940s illustrate the contours and nuances of resistance that defined the movement for generations to come. Young people presented an unorthodox means to support the war effort since high school adolescents were too young to serve in the military. To youth organizers, students were potential allies and their desire to participate held potential in strengthening their movement. But working with youth required addressing an urgency that elders rarely discerned, namely that youth were restless and without the means to channel their energy in the war effort. Ruby Hurley, the new youth council director for the NAACP, communicated the predicament of youth and its solution in 1943. “A deep sense of frustration exists in those not yet old enough or otherwise prohibited from wearing a uniform or doing a war job,” Hurley noted in 1944. “They have a sense of not belonging, of being shunted aside as unimportant. They could do a job now if some direction were given.”22 Hurley and the NAACP aimed to provide this direction. At the age of 34, Ruth Hurley assumed the position of NAACP Youth Council secretary in 1943. She reiterated the goals of her successor Juanita Jackson in the wartime context. She oversaw that youth officers pledged a commitment to youth that aligned with the national organization’s goals: I shall work diligently to inform youth of the problems affecting the Negro; to promote the political, economic, educational and social betterment of colored people and their harmonious cooperation with other peoples; to stimulate an appreciation of the Negro’s contribution to civilization; to develop an intelligent, militant youth leadership through devising, working out and pursuing local programs and to cooperate with and support the national programs [of the NAACP].23

216

J. HALE

As Hurley outlined the aims of youth organization, she highlighted a contradiction that defined the NAACP’s relationship with youth. Hurley envisioned students as potentially militant allies, an evolution from seeing young people as passive actors during the 1930s. Yet in the same statement where she invoked the spirit of militancy, Hurley still stressed a subservient allegiance “to cooperate with and support the national programs.”24 Drawing upon middle-class professional notions of agency supported by an overarching politics of respectability, movement elders ultimately maintained oversight and discouraged militancy from developing in practice.25 It was a proscribed attempt to channel youth into predetermined paths grounded in the values of “reputable” organizations like the NAACP. Hurley and NAACP elders discerned these tensions, even as they perpetuated the paternalism that relegated students to the sidelines. Hurley brought attention to the burdens placed upon youth, in particular how society was often quick to point out the problems but slow to proffer meaningful solutions. “The adult community cries to high heaven about the ‘zoot-suiters,’ ‘public conduct,’ and ‘juvenile delinquency,’” Hurley explained. “But what remedies are applied to these sore points, these manifestations of frustration?” She elaborated by drawing attention to a bureaucratic delay in working with youth. “Committees are appointed to investigate, reports are made,” Hurley noted, “and too often no action is taken.”26 Hurley articulated the problems encumbering youth organizers, yet the tension remained unresolved during the war. It was a perennial tension that continued to underpin the next two decades of youth organization. Like Hurley, youth organizers hesitated to genuinely embrace youth militancy and with good reason. To start, by the Second World War it was clear that youth did not always express views consistent with those of their elders. Students presented competing visions of the war that did not so neatly align with the expectations of the war effort, for instance. In the buildup to war, youth endorsed peace and opposed going to war, criticizing Roosevelt and denouncing the use of military force as imperialistic. NAACP Youth Councils joined the World Youth Congress and supported declarations of peace. In 1940, and with the support of elder pacifist James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, the NAACP Youth Councils endorsed the “Peace Proclamation of Negro Youth,” a statement that called for “immediate preparation…to join in the fight for peace.”27 The SNYC annual conference held in New Orleans focused on the theme

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

217

“Keep America at Peace” and similarly denounced Roosevelt’s actions in the prelude to war as imperialistic.28 Beyond the South, SNYC chapters in New York created a coalition for peace, the Committee for Concerned Peace Efforts, which formed alliances with the YWCA, student council leaders at New York University, the City College of New York, Hunter College, the American Student Union, the Student Christian Association, and others to call for a National Security Week to “create nationwide interest in promoting international justice and economic cooperation and in building adequate peace machinery.”29 Youth proclamations prior to 1941 left room for full participation, but they illuminated a desire for pacifism and, with the support of James Farmer, formidable ideology that pushed the boundaries of youth and elders alike.30 The American South drew scorn and indignation as white southerners maintained what civil rights organizations saw as a fascist regime. SNYC called into question the contradiction inherent to enlisting African Americans to fight abroad while denying them the right to vote at home. SNYC organizers called upon youth to obey the law and register and serve when conscripted. “At the same time,” the organization noted, “our organization will continue its fight against involving our country in war, against discrimination in the armed forces and for a greater democracy at home.”31 SNYC leaders adamantly questioned the integrity of conscripting an estimated 36,000 Black youth into the armed forces. “The question of the participation of… Negro Youth in the armed forces,” the organization noted in the pages of S.N.Y.C. News, “is a major challenge to democracy.” They noted how high command generally dismissed the demands of Black organizers. Wartime leaders failed to address the social, political, and economic conditions that disenfranchised African Americans across the nation. Youth organizers ultimately sought to challenge “the right of Jim Crow election boards to register Negro youth for the armed forces when these same boards refuse to register qualified Negro citizens as voters.”32 SNYC reasoned that Roosevelt’s conscription of “our generation is fascism pure and simple” in light of legal disenfranchisement.33 The organization elaborated further in the SNYC Bulletin in 1943, arguing: “Our country’s total defenses are weakened because the people of the Southern are voteless and unable to rid our government of the reactionary friends of Hitler who have stolen high seats of power in Congress.” The abolition of the poll tax, they reasoned, “is an essential war measure to insure the safeguarding of democracy at home and to strengthen our democratic national unity for winning the war.”34

218

J. HALE

Fighting fascism in the South was the basis civil rights organizations used to call for victory at home in addition to victory in Europe and the Pacific. Youth in the NAACP and SNYC ultimately supported the war effort after the United States entered the conflict in 1941, participating in the Double V campaign in earnest. Indeed, the burgeoning youth movement dovetailed neatly with national discourse that supported the war. The NAACP drafted a wartime memo to all Youth Council branches, “Fight for Complete Democracy at Home,” which reflected the principles of victory abroad and at home that drove the popular “Double-V” campaign. For those too young to fight or join the wartime industry, the NAACP urged young people to commit to the struggle for “FREEDOM—NOW.”35 SNYC encouraged young people in the same way. At the SNYC fifth annual conference in Tuskegee and the sixth conference in Atlanta, organizers highlighted youth’s role in winning the war. The conference encouraged youth to support the war in order to establish a front in Europe “so that we can strike at the heart of the enemy and speed the day of victory which can assure universal peace, freedom, and social advancement to all the nations and peoples of the earth.” As such, they resolved to strengthen the “national unity and the foundations of our democracy.”36 Couched in terms that resonated with the American effort to win the war, the NAACP and SNYC reconciled their push for military victory with the larger goals of their associations as they equated victory in war as a victory for their causes. The unorthodox nature of training or working with youth for social and political change precipitated nuanced views of the youth movement. SNYC, for instance, developed an expanded notion of youth organizing during the war and the immediate postwar period that centered upon internationalism. Cooper Jackson, who began service as the SNYC executive secretary in 1942, was a graduate of Oberlin College who later earned a Master’s degree from Fisk University in Social Sciences under the tutelage of the famed sociologist and esteemed president of the institution, Dr. Charles S. Johnson. She maintained strong international connections. She helped organize a Hemisphere Youth Conference for Victory that was held in Mexico City in 1943. She was a delegate to the World Youth Conference in London in 1945 and served as the chair of the American subcommittee on Problems of Dependent Peoples in which over 60 nations were represented. The purpose of the conference was to “discuss the problems and desires of democratic young people from all parts of the world.”37 She also traveled throughout Europe as part

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

219

of the Soviet Youth Movement, which explored war-torn cities including Paris, Frankfort, Berlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Stalingrad, and Moscow. Her husband, James E. Jackson, Jr., who she met while interning with SNYC, led the organization since 1937, including organizing tobacco workers in Virginia. He served as SNYC vice president and as educational director. A war veteran, he also examined issues stemming from colonialism, much like his partner, in the postwar context.38 Under their leadership, SNYC during the Second World War and the postwar period defined conceptions of youth in universal terms that were not confined to the American South. It was a distinguishing aspect of their work. The war fostered a transnational perspective that influenced Black youth organizations such as SNYC and a larger notion of activism. The connections fostered across the globe through Esther Jackson established an international platform for coalition building, which SNYC has developed at the local level since their origination. Youth stated at the conclusion of the war that peace rested with the strengthening of the United Nations and the disarmament of all nations. They adamantly opposed any program of universal military training for young people, particularly for Black youth. Even though they heroically fought against fascism and imperialism, they were “constantly hampered by Jim Crow and discrimination.”39 By the spring of 1946, SNYC pledged organizational efforts to the struggle to maintain international peace based on “unity of peoples all over the world.”40 Through global connections, SNYC fostered an intellectual underpinning that served as a basis for transnational Black liberation ideology in latter decades. An international perspective provided a tool to fight domestic oppression in the 1940s, including the execution of George Stinney—the fourteen-year-old boy executed on a highly implausible conviction in South Carolina—which highlighted the perennial perils of Black youth in the South.41 SNYC used the Bulletin, for instance, to question publicly the execution of Stinney in the context of the war while drawing upon international parallels. “The Governor of South Carolina must have closed his eyes to the fact that Negro and white youth of his state are giving their lives on the continent of Europe and in the islands of the Pacific… to free the conquered people of the world from the German and Japanese tyrannies.”42 They compared Stinney’s execution to the perils of young children killed in Poland and Russia. “It is a blot against the state of South Carolina,” SNYC argued that the governor would “set his seal upon a court order directing the execution

220

J. HALE

of a 14 year old child.”43 SNYC utilized a transnational context to pressure the state to commute his sentence, illustrating how postwar politics of the cold war were seen as a viable means to enact change.44 Though student activism was not widespread, young people demonstrated agency in earnest before, during, and after the war. Civil rights associations created the means for youth to become active not only in the war effort, but in the burgeoning civil rights movement. Young people forged their own path as SNYC and the NAACP shaped the youth agenda, largely through education. Students had access to schools that educators, administrators, and organizers with SNYC and the NAACP did not. As students, they carried an intimate understanding of the pressing issues facing them and their schools. It was an intuition not shared by movement leaders. Much of youth work during the war, therefore, focused on education, both in the logistics of using the school as a political space and using the process of education as a means to reaching the larger aims of the movement. This rendered their work less visible, but it nonetheless established an important foundation of the youth movement. Youth added moral and political urgency to spaces in which their elders lacked access, namely Black high schools. Students at the historic A.H. Parker High School in Birmingham, Alabama, are indicative of the modes of resistance students inspired in schools during the war. Parker students presented a student program in the spring of 1944 entitled “The Peace Aims of the Citizen—A New Bill of Rights.” They spoke on the right to work, fair pay, health care, security, free enterprise and “the Right to Equality Before the Law” and “The Right to Education.”45 Modest compared to direct action protest, educational programs like those at Parker resonated throughout the South as a safe way to demand rights that addressed gross injustices. Presented to faculty and the wider community, students were ideal ambassadors to amplify the messages of the civil rights organizations for an audience that was not involved with the NAACP, such as parents, pastors, and the majority of teachers. While programs like this illustrated how students embraced the aims of their elders, young people also provided new direction, demanding new rights in fields such as education, health care, and the law at the local level, where civil rights organizations had often not organized. Though the Black high school was a critical site of political contestation during the 1940s, young people were more active outside the confines of their schools, a space regulated by elders engaged with the movement in different ways. Concerted voter registration drives constituted one of

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

221

the most significant youth activities of the 1940s, illustrating the scope and depth of youth activism during the period. As SNYC made clear to its members and the general public, “the battle of the ballot, of representative government, is the battle of the Negro people.”46 Led by the SNYC Executive Board in Birmingham, Alabama, youth helped launch a citizenship education campaign with the goal to attain full voting rights in 1940. Working with James Jackson, who directed the voter registration campaigns, youth experienced firsthand the political processes that developed outside the formal school. Jackson organized in the coalition style of SNYC, affiliating with the local chapters of the United Mine Workers, local steel workers, and other student, church, and social clubs. By 1944, SNYC cooperated with a handful of other groups including local and state chapters of civic leagues and the NAACP to register voters. Attempting to register as many as 5,000 voters, SNYC reported that they registered hundreds of previously unregistered Black voters. They also reported abuses to the CIO Political Action Committee, which offered their support to SNYC, vowing to register each of its Black union members.47 To register Black voters, SNYC invested a significant part of its organizational capacity in ambitious citizenship education programming. They established a Committee on Citizenship and the Franchise to work out a Citizenship Institutes and Clinics program, as well as campaigns to register “unprecedented numbers of youth in the South in the coming year.”48 After the conclusion of the war, SNYC redoubled its efforts around citizenship education, boldly noting that “We are determined to be the first full-fledged voting generation.”49 The Executive Board elaborated upon their rationale in 1947, stating that “Citizenship Education institutes, courses, and classes must be established and carried on in a continuous effort to provide opportunities for more and more people to know the obligations, duties, responsibilities, and privileges of citizens in a democratic social order.” Citizenship courses, they argued, should be premised on the notion that citizens demand their constitutional rights, the right to vote, and organize to run for office.50 Toward this end, SNYC in Birmingham published a substantive primer that was shared widely and used in citizenship courses entitled, “Know Your Government: A Manual of Citizenship Education.” The primer outlined the constitution and its history, the structure of the government, representatives, and congressmen.51 SNYC called for each state branch to hold clinics that educated community leaders in order to “enlighten their communities in

222

J. HALE

matters pertaining to registration and voting.” They also called for an educational program to be carried out by all branches that encouraged members to work with other progressive groups.52 Other education programming sought to cultivate indigenous Black leadership through Leadership Training Schools. The purpose of the program was to train young people for leadership positions in SNYC or other associations in which participants were involved. They acquainted students with the major problems facing Black youth in the South, including voting, jobs, peace, and freedom. They taught organizational techniques for building grassroots organizations. For a $25 tuition fee, young people could attend the third leadership school, which lasted two weeks. Organizers structured each day into classes, discussion sessions, and workshops. SNYC staffed the classes with faculty across the country on winning the ballot, civil rights, job programs for youth, world affairs and peace, education for democracy, and the history of African American politics. Workshops were held on movement music and songs, a key component of Southern organizing, as well as mimeographing and drafting press releases. They were introduced to parliamentary law and practiced public speaking.53 In contrast to the NAACP, SNYC embraced a form of coalition building that in many ways extended the organization behind the Popular Front, an alliance of sorts of left-leaning individuals and organizations, of previous decades. In the postwar era, SNYC resolved “no longer to be the victims of the old Nazi game of divide and rule.”54 SNYC sought to unite with any association that shared common efforts and this translated into wide collaborative fronts at the local level. Continuing their work of the 1930s, SNYC prioritized working with student organizations, veterans, young workers, women and other associations, including clergy and unionized workers and other associations organized in the same local contexts. Student activists in SNYC and the NAACP also formally presented various demands to their elected representatives around the issue of voting. SNYC drafted the “Eight Tasks of the Eightieth Congress.” Forming a “youth legislature,” SNYC members cited that over ten million citizens were denied the right to vote through poll tax laws. They encouraged voters to support candidates who supported passing a federal anti-poll tax law and stronger enforcement of the Smith v. Allwright (1944) decision that barred the all-white primary. They also adopted strategies specific to their needs and called for legislation to lower

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

223

the voting age to eighteen, questioning if “eighteen-year-old youth are eligible for the draft, so why not for the vote?” Legislative points also included the passage of an anti-lynch law, an anti-poll tax law, a law establishing a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, a sixty-five cents minimum wage law, a law restoring price controls, a law establishing National Health Insurance, a law establishing Social Security to workers in domestic, casual, and agricultural employment, and a law providing Federal Aid to Education. The demand for federal aid to education was unique to youth and the schools they attended. They connected their position as students to an institutional issue, arguing “that the whole level of education in the South might be raised to a higher level, and the same type of benefits that are our veterans are entitled to for educational purposes might be extended to the general public.”55 Additionally, SNYC called upon its members and southern youth to write to their Senators and representatives to petition their support to pass the legislation they proposed. Black youth also drafted cards and telegraphs to distribute among the community in efforts to include them in their petition to congress.56 The NAACP Youth Councils adopted a similar program in 1949, which they called “Operation Civil Rights.” Representatives from youth and college chapters visited the vice president, Senate and House majority leaders, and their representative senators, among other political leaders. Young people presented a legislative program that covered education, economic security, social welfare, and civil rights.57 Youth were fully engaged in the democratic process, which inculcated a skill set to make change through established venues and constitutional provisions. It presaged the direct assault on Jim Crow observed during the 1950s and 1960s by first providing the foundational knowledge of systemic oppression and the legal means to address it. It also provided a model that future youth organizers would embrace as they, too, perpetuated a passive view of student activists.

“Behold the Land”: Tilling the Soil of the Southern Youth Movement While civil rights organizations pressed for legislative change during and after the war with pressing urgency and inculcated youth with knowledge of the political process, SNYC and the NAACP continued the work of the 1930s through organizing annual and regional conferences. They staged conferences as a regional appeal to youth. They envisioned a

224

J. HALE

large platform to help enact the legislative reform they drafted and large conferences provided an urgency and a moral appeal to invigorate youth. Noted speakers of state, national, and international distinction expressed eloquent messages and sought to instill the principles, demonstrating a grand vision for the youth movement. Though passive in effect, conferences were an effective platform to actively reach large audiences and advance a political agenda not found in schools. SNYC’s seventh annual conference in 1946 in Columbia, South Carolina, was one of the most notable conferences of the period, illustrating the ideological underpinnings of the Black youth movement of the 1940s. Similar to previous meetings, SNYC organized the conference as a youth legislature, with a mix of high school and college attendees compromising a House of Representatives, Senate, Committees, a Presiding Officer, and a Cabinet in order to identify concrete legislative solutions. Organizers sought to use the youth legislature in South Carolina as a way “to secure for ourselves and our people all the rights and opportunities of a full and unfettered citizenship.”58 As Esther Cooper greeted the 700 delegates who gathered at the Township Auditorium in the capital city: We have come here to Columbia, in the heart of the deep South, to rearm ourselves with a deeper realization of our condition and our needs; we have come to give voice and strength and organization power to the burning and unsilenceable demand of our generation for the right to live and prosper.59

Cooper framed the conference in militant terms: to “rearm” youth to voice the “burning” demands of their rights. It struck a chord with the conference attendants, and each speaker elaborated upon the theme, electrifying their audiences. The SNYC conference in Columbia drew notable and influential speakers. One of the first was John McCray, founder of the Progressive Democrats and editor of the Lighthouse and Informer, a progressive Black state newspaper. He delivered a stirring address on police brutality, a theme SNYC had espoused since the 1930s. McCray recounted for the young people in attendance the instance of Isaac Woodward, who was blinded by police in South Carolina, as well as cases from Batesburg and Florence, South Carolina, where African Americans were unfairly charged, beaten, and assaulted by police. Expanding on the theme of oppression

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

225

by law enforcement, McCray also called young people to give more attention to “peonage, being held in involuntary servitude.”60 As an organizer of the Progressive Democrats, McCray called to enfranchise voters to send “full delegations…until the Democratic party itself makes its choice between 15 million honest loyal American citizens and a few southern reactionaries like [Mississippi Senator Theodore] Bilbo and [Mississippi Congressman John] Rankin.”61 Building a new society through political means resonated with other luminaries at the conference. Paul Robeson, who himself staged a rousing performance, also spoke of his travels to Russia, Norway, and on the need to oust Bilbo. He spoke of “a great responsibility upon all of us here. It is our great destiny to be the vanguard in this struggle.”62 New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. addressed southern youth: We have within our hands the strong new power to bring to pass almost in the twinkling of an eye all the material things we have dreamed about, yet, we are unable. This new world must wait for a race of new men…The new world depends upon you—the new south. American will never achieve greatness until the Black and white south has emancipated itself from Bilboism.63

Noted speakers instilled movement principles and the potential for change with passion, inspiration, and wisdom. It was an unparalleled appeal, aimed specifically at youth. Famed professor, author, and NAACP co-founder Dr. W.E.B Du Bois delivered a memorable keynote address, distinguished by its eloquence and impassioned, if not prophetic, charge to youth. He entitled his address “Behold the Land.” He opened by articulating the very nature of the youth movement, recognizing that “The future of the American Negro is in the South.”64 Du Bois called upon youth to reach out to the white working class, whom he saw as potential allies, reiterating a connection to labor that SNYC endorsed since its origination. Du Bois depicted with empathy white youth who were frustrated, if not tormented, by an apparently irresolvable contradiction located at the nexus of the search for truth and the realization of Black disenfranchisement. It was a contradiction that cut short any search for higher meaning or purpose. He deplored white politicians, whom he warned must “in the long run yield to the forward march of civilization or die.” In concluding his address, Du Bois spoke to the young people directly:

226

J. HALE

This is the great sacrifice; this is the thing that you are called up to do because it is the right thing to do. Because you are embarked upon a great and holy crusade, the emancipation of mankind Black and white; the upbuilding of democracy; the breaking down, particularly here in the South, of forces of evil represented by race prejudice in South Carolina; by lynching in Georgia; by disenfranchisement in Mississippi; by ignorance in Louisiana and by all these in the whole South… Here is the chance for young women and young men of devotion to lift again the banner of humanity and to walk toward a civilization which will be free and intelligent; which will be healthy and unafraid; and build in the world a culture led by Black fold and joined by peoples of all colors.65

Du Bois’s address was a direct challenge to young people in the Southland. His tone directly charged youth to engage in the frontlines of the movement. Its sentiment is indicative of the revolutionary rhetoric the SNYC sought to instill among young people across the American South. As part of the conference, SNYC organizers and attendees moved swiftly to action and drafted the “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth.” It was a critical framework for action that drew upon the ideas of Du Bois, McCray, and Powell. It also incorporated the insights of “great southern statesmen,” including Frederick Douglass and Hiram Revels.66 The statement established the premise for which they organized. Youth stood together “united in righteous indignation and protest” against mob violence, lynching, and brutality. They demanded jobs, an unrestricted right to vote, the right to own the land they worked, medical and health care, better education, and protection from policy brutality.67 SNYC representatives also spoke of how they understood their work: We have come to understand that discrimination against Negro youth, in all its forms is but a device used by economic royalists and plantations landlords to cheat the young white people and our entire generation of Southern youth of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a democratic South. We know that only when Negro youth achieve the full citizenship promised them in the Constitution, and earned by them in their patriotic devotion to the cause of democracy, only then can millions of young white people go forward and our Southland prosper.68

In short, they stood committed to fight for “opportunity, through unity, to build a free, prosperous, and happy South, as part of a democratic and peaceful world.”69

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

227

To enact the list of demands of their representatives, SNYC vowed to “bring pressure to bear” through written appeals to those elected to Congress. Though similar to action taken by the NAACP, SNYC positioned themselves more aggressively. They created a committee designed to “militantly marshal” the allegiances of potential Black voters to particular parties that were not in accordance with the progressive and liberal cadence adopted by SNYC. The youth legislature also called African Americans to run for office in earnest and to vigorously support those campaigns.70 SNYC’s organization in South Carolina after the Columbia conference is telling, illustrating the depth and work of the association after the call to action. Soon after, locals established a chapter in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and established two more chapters in Joys and Huger, with over twenty in each club. They hosted regular club meetings and discussed Black history. They held rallies, sponsored film screenings, and held small educational programs.71 The club in Moncks Corner also worked closely with the Progressive Club, a civic league that focused on voting, and other community improvement associations. They supplied the transportation for young people to travel to the leadership training at nearby Harbison. The Progressive Club in Moncks Corner, with the support of local SNYC chapters, supported a candidate for the Progressive Democratic Party who was running for the local school board. He did not win, but the campaign provided invaluable experience and connected youth to progressive community organizers. The two clubs also coordinated together and organized a school bus for local African American students, one of the only such arrangements in the state. SNYC organization after the conference in Columbia also inspired a Progressive Club in the local high school, Berkeley Training High School.72 The high school provided speakers and hosted a local institute. The high school newspaper, The Berkeley, wrote of the activities of the SNYC, which published poems with titles like “What the Negro is Entitled.”73 SNYC in South Carolina carried forth the educational platform of the association as well. In Moncks Corner, youth hosted a “Youth Institute” that involved the all-Black high school in Berkeley County. Due to the unique local conditions, the Progressive Club was also instrumental in developing the program. To mark the progressive moment of the institute, sessions began with music and the Negro National Anthem. Discussion focused on the areas of labor, health, agriculture, voting, and education. Young people at the institute also focused on enrolling other

228

J. HALE

students in school for economic and social reasons, calling upon the community to engage all young people in the process. “If you want to get ready for what’s ahead,” the organizers noted in the institute bulletin, “go to school.”74 SNYC organization in South Carolina also shows how the youth movement paralleled, complemented, and intersected with the work of senior organizers. Aligning with the Progressive Democrats brought youth into the fold of John McCray’s fledging political apparatus that sought to empower Black voters to elect Black representatives and remove white supremacists from office. Local SNYC branches worked with Modjeska Simkins and the statewide NAACP, filling out petitions to oust Theodore Bilbo.75 Connecting with Simkins introduced the youth organization to a wider network of activism. After the SNYC 1946 conference, for instance, Herbert Aptheker undertook a twelve-stop tour the South. As part of the tour, he collaborated with Simkins and forged plans for broadening networks built upon organized labor and thereby strengthening SNYC’s association with labor-based organization and politics.76 Through the Progressive Club in Moncks Corner, young people continued the work of Esau Jenkins, who organized a Progressive Club in nearby John’s Island. Along with Septima Clark, Jenkins organized at his club the first Citizenship School, an adult literacy program that expanded across the South to include nearly 900 schools and 1,600 volunteer teachers and registered over 50,000 voters within a decade. Jenkins also ran for the local school board, a move to elect Black leadership to local offices.77 By embracing this level of politics, SNYC expanded the work of veteran organizers and their elders in South Carolina, bringing the movement to new sites of organization and introducing the networks of resistance to youth. While not as visible as the protest of latter decades, youth were decidedly part of a youth movement that would continue to flourish. ∗ ∗ ∗ Top-down initiatives reinforced a passive conception of youth, where adults and movement veterans viewed youth as potential agents who could lead the movement in the future. In the meantime, their reasoning continued, youth were to be sidelined, following the directives of their elders. Yet registering voters, engaging elected officials, and actively participating in conferences through SNYC and the NAACP provided

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

229

a political education to young people that predated the work of the citizenship education programs and the freedom schools of later decades. The process itself, which included drafting mock legislation, disseminating integral information needed to vote, and contacting constituents and representatives helped widen the path of democracy. It was an educative process for youth that constituted its own form of activism, much like the pedagogical activism of teachers. This educative act was a means that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Council of Federation Organizations later employed in the 1960s. Civil rights organizers provided an education to youth, whom they saw as potential and future change agents. They continued the work of the 1930s and expanded it, setting the stage for direct action protest of latter decades.

Notes 1. Drago, Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations, 231–235; Lau, Democracy Rising, 176–177; James L. Felder, “The Law School at South Carolina: Wrighten v. USC Board of Trustees,” in Civil Rights in South Carolina: From Peaceful Protests to Groundbreaking Rulings (Charleston, SC, 2012), 34–38; see also: Mary Battle and Curtis Franks (co-curators), “Avery: The Spirit That Would Not Die, 1865–2015,” http://ldhi.lib rary.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/avery. 2. The lawsuit Wrighten v. Board of Trustees of University of South Carolina (1947) prompted the state to build a “separate but equal” law school at South Carolina State, Drago, Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations, 231–235; Lau, Democracy Rising, 176–177; James L. Felder, “The Law School at South Carolina: Wrighten v. USC Board of Trustees,” in Civil Rights in South Carolina: From Peaceful Protests to Groundbreaking Rulings (Charleston, SC, 2012), 34–38; see also: Mary Battle and Curtis Franks (co-curators), “Avery: The Spirit That Would Not Die, 1865–2015” http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/avery. 3. Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: The New Press, 2009), 60–72; Minnie Finch, The NAACP: Its Fight for Justice (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981); Thomas L. Bynum, NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013); Kenneth Robert Janken, White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (New York: The New Press, 2003); Richard Gergel, Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2019).

230

J. HALE

4. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1930, 108–115; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1940, 112–113; de Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World, 29–35, 228. Mitz, Huck’s Raft, 238–239; Kett, Rites of Passage, 245; John L. Rury and Shirley Hill, The African American Sturggle for Secondary Schooling 1940–1980: Closing the Graduation Gap (New York: Teachers College Press, 2012), 2–5. 5. United States Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1930 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1930), 108– 115; United States Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1940 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1941), 112–113; de Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World, 29–35, 228; Thompson, The History of the Mississippi Teachers Association, 17; Gael Graham, Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006); James D. Anderson, “The Black Public High School,” in Education of Blacks in the South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,1988), 236– 237; Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 301, 307–314; Mitz, Huck’s Raft, 238–239. 6. Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation, 89; Pierce, et. al., White and Negro Schools in the South, 104–105. 7. On the history of the Avery Normal Institute, see Edmund L. Drago, Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations: Charleston’s Avery Normal Institute (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990); Mary Battle and Curtis Franks (co-curators), “Avery: The Spirit That Would Not Die, 1865–2015,” http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/avery. 8. Drago, Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations, 231–235; Peter Lau, Democracy rising: South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality Since 1865 (Lexington, KY, 2006), 176–177; Daphne Chamberlain, “‘And a Child Shall Lead The Way’: Children’s Participation in the Jackson, Mississippi, Black Freedom Struggle,” Ph.D. diss, University of Mississippi, 2009. 9. Fairclough, A Class of Their Own, 309–310, 345–349; Katherine Mellen Charron, Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009), 154–156; Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation, 54–56; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 45–60; Jon N. Hale, “‘The Development of Power Is the Main Business of the School’: The Agency of Southern Black Teacher Associations from Jim Crow Through Desegregation,” Journal of Negro Education (forthcoming, 2019); for a history of the larger struggle for children’s rights during the war and postwar period, irrespective of race, see: Michael Grossberg, “Liberation and Caretaking: Fighting over Children’s Rights in Postwar America,” in Reinventing Childhood After WWII , eds. Paula Fass and Michael Grossberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

231

10. Sullivan, “In the Shadow of War: Battlefields for Freedom,” in Lift Every Voice, 237–286; de Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World, 180–186. 11. Taylor Branch, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2013); Richard Griswold del Castillo, World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008); Kevin Kruse and Stephen Tuck, Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); David Welky, Marching Across the Color Line: A Philip Randolph and Civil Rights in the World War II Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Patricia Sullivan, “In the Shadow of War: Battlefields for Freedom,” in Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: The New Press, 2009); John Dittmer, “We Return Fighting,” in Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 1–18; Michael Vinson Williams, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2011), 22–36; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, No. 4 (March 2005): 1234–1235; Hall also cites Bayard Rustin as someone who puts forth a “classical” phase of the civil rights movement from Brown through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has since become entrenched in our understandings of the movement, see Bayard Rustin, Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 111–122. 12. Daphne Chamberlain, “‘You Gotta Move On’: The Jackson Bus Boycott of 1946,” in “‘And a Child Shall Lead The Way’: Children’s Participation in the Jackson, Mississippi, Black Freedom Struggle, 1946–1970,” Ph.D. diss, University of Mississippi, 2009), 47–56; “Mayor Leland Speed Says Best Relations Between White and Negro Citizens Will Be Maintained in Jackson,” Jackson Advocate, November 30, 1946, 1. 13. Jon Hale, “‘The Fight Was Instilled In Us’: High School Activism and the Civil Rights Movement in Charleston,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 114, No. 1 (January 2013): 15–21. Baker, “Pedagogies of Protest: African American Teachers and the History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1940–1963,” Teachers College Record 113, No.12 (December 2011), 2777–2803. 14. Ibid.; Kridel, Progressive Education in Black High Schools, 2–22; 15. See: “The Campaign in the 1940s: Contingencies, Adaptations, and the Problem of Staff,” in Mark V. Tushnet, The NAACP’s Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925–1950 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 82–104; Fairclough, Teaching Equality; Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 2004).

232

J. HALE

16. Prince Edward County School Board minutes, August 3, 1944 and October 5, 1944, Januaray 4, 1945 Prince Edward County School Board District, Farmville, VA. 17. Prince Edward County School Board minutes, August 3, 1944, Prince Edward County School Board District, Farmville, VA. 18. Prince Edward County School Board minutes, June 28, 1945, July 5, 1948, August 1, 1945, December 6, 1945, May 2, 1946, September 5, 1946, April 3, 1947, May 1, 1947, December 4, 1947 Prince Edward County School Board District, Farmville, VA. 19. Prince Edward County School Board minutes, October 14, 1948, Prince Edward County School Board District, Farmville, VA. 20. Prince Edward County School Board minutes, November 3, 1949, December 12, 1950 March 2, 1950, April 6, 1950, and June 1, 1950, February 6, 1951, Prince Edward County School Board District, Farmville, VA; “New Negro School, Improvement to Farmville High School, Prospect Elementary School, Top Fund Needs,” Farmville Herald, February 7, 1950 and “Board Members, Architect Study Negro School Plans,” Farmville Herald, August 11, 1950, in “Farmville Herald School Closings: 1950–1955” Longwood University; Smith, They Closed Their Schools, 3–26. 21. Franklin D. Roosevelt to Miss Esterh V. Cooper, in “Proceedings Sixth All-Southern Negro Youth Conference,” SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “5th Conference 1942,” HU. 22. “Youth Work Boomed in 1943,” NAACP Bulletin 3, No. 2 (February 1944), 1,” Modjeska Simkins Papers, Topical Papers, University of South Carolina Digital Collection. http://library.sc.edu/p/Collections/ Digital/Browse/Simkinspapers. 23. “Handbook for Officers of Youth Councils,” NAACP Papers, Part 19, Series C, Reel 1, frames 52–55. 24. Ibid. 25. De Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World, 176–180; Rebecca de Schweinitz, “Holding on to the ‘Chosen Generation’: The Mormon Battle for Youth in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s” in Out of Obscurity: Mormonism Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 293–298. 26. Youth Work Boomed in 1943, “NAACP Bulletin” 3, No. 2 (February 1944), 1, “Modjeska Simkins Papers,” Topical Papers, University of South Carolina Digital Collection, http://library.sc.edu/p/Collections/ Digital/Browse/Simkinspapers. 27. Bynum, NAACP Youth, 25–30, quote on p. 30. 28. “New Orleans Conference Highlights and Delegates Backgrounds in Edward E. Strong Papers, Box 3, Folder “Southern Negro Youth

9

29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

233

Congress All-Southern Negro Youth Conferences, New Orleans, 1940,” HU; Gelman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 225–226. Letter from the New York Youth Committee for Concerned Peace Efforts, April 27, 1939, NAACP Papers Part 19, Series A, Reel 10189–10190. Bynum, NAACP Youth, 30–31. “Negro Youth Hold Meeting in Birmingham,” (October 3, 1940) in Edward E. Strong Papers, Box 2, Folder “Writings about Edward E. Strong,” HU. “Conscription and Negro Youth,” S.N.Y .C. News (October 1940) in Edward E. Strong Papers, Box 2, Folder “Writings about Edward E. Strong,” HU. “Edward Strong to Rev. James Robinson, June 20, 1940,” SNYC Papers, Box 9, Folder “NAACP,” HU. “The Poll Tax Bill Must Pass,” Southern Negro Youth Congress Bulletin, January 1943, in SNYC Papers, Box 8, Folder “Monthly Bulletin” HU. NAACP Papers, Part 19, Series C, Reel 9, frame 823; Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 256–260. “Fifth All-Southern Negro Youth Congress Statement of Principles,” SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “5th Conference 1942” HU; SNYC Monthly Bulletin 8, No. 9 (October 1944), SNYC Papers, Box 8, Folder “Monthly Bulletin” HU. Southern Negro Youth Congress Memorandum, SNYC papers, Box 1, folder Executive Board 1945, HU. “The Southern Negro Youth Congress presents Miss Esther V. Cooper,” “The Southern Negro Youth Congress presents Esther Cooper Jackson and James E. Jackson, Jr.” SNYC Papers, Box 2, Folder “Press Info— Lectures of Esther and James Jackson,” HU; see also: Sara Rzeszutek Haviland, James and Esther Cooper Jackson: Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015); Gelman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 225–226. “Legislative Statement of SNYC, 1947,” in SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “8th Conference” HU. “Louis E. Burnham to [Friend], April 15, 1946,” in SNYC Papers, Box 5, Folder “Birmingham, Al” HU. International connections such as those fostered by the SNYC led the organization to the difficulty terrain of civil rights organization in the Cold War, see: Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Lindsey Bever, “It took 10 Minutes to Convict 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. It took 70 Years After His Execution to Exonerate Him,” Washington Post, December 18, 2014; Deanna Pan, et al., “An Undying Mystery: George Stinney,” Post and Courier, March 25–29, 2018; Dustin Waters, “Resurrecting the Case of George Stinney,” Charleston City Paper,

234

42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47.

48.

49. 50.

51.

52. 53.

54.

J. HALE

August 31, 2016; Victor Streib, Death Penalty for Juveniles (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 107–110; Stuart Banner, “When Killing a Juvenile Was Routine,” The New York Times , March 5, 2005. “Forget Me Not: George J. Stinney,” Monthly Bulletin, 8, No. 7 (July 1944) in SNYC Papers, Box 8, Folder “Monthly Bulletin” HU. “Forget Me Not: George J. Stinney,” Monthly Bulletin, 8, No. 7 (July 1944) in SNYC Papers, Box 8, Folder “Monthly Bulletin” HU. see Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). “Parker High School Graduates 406; Talk On ‘New Bill of Rights,” 6– 1–44 in “Parker High School—Ed & Sch-Pub-Bhm” vertical file, LinnHenley Research Library, Birmingham, Alabama. “Citizenship Education Clinic Notice” and “State Teachers College chapter of Student Negro Youth Congress to All Student Organizations and Societies,” [undated], SNYC Papers, Box 5, Folder “Montgomery, Al State College,” HU. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 360–363; “Birmingham Report, July 1944,” and “Birmingham Report, June 1944,” SNYC Papers, Box 8, Folder “Monthly Summary of Race Relations” HU; “Summer Activities Hit New Peak,” S.N.Y.C. News (October 1940) in Edward E. Strong Papers, Box 2, Folder “Writings about Edward E. Strong,” HU. Southern Negro Youth Congress, Executive Board Meeting, “Masonic Temple Building, Birmingham Alabama, February 10, 11, 1945”, SNYC papers, Box 1, folder Executive Board 1945, HU. “Manual of Organization, 1947” SNYC papers, Box 1, folder “SNYC Manual of Organization, 1947,” HU. “Executive Board Meeting, President’s Report on Perspective of Political Climate, 1947” SNYC papers, Box 1, folder “Minutes Executive Board Meeting,” 1947, HU. “Know Your Government: A Manual of Citizenship Education,” in Edward E. Strong Papers, Box 4, Folder “Southern Negro Youth Congress—Manuals,” HU. Resolutions of SNYC, SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “7th Conference— Resolutions” HU. Training was held in Atlanta in 1944. Inez Adams, school schedule, Box 2, Folder “3rd Leadership Training”; “SNYC Third Leadership Training School August 5–August 18,” “Dorothy Burnham to Mr. Edgar Holt, July 10, 1946,” “Dorothy C. Burnham to Students of Atlanta Seminar, June 26, 1946,” SNYC Papers, Box 2, Folder “3rd Leadership Training School 1946”; HU. “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth” SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth,” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 156–162.

9

“FIGHT FOR YOUR LAND”: SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL …

235

55. “Manual of Organization, 1947” SNYC papers, Box 1, folder “SNYC Manual of Organization, 1947,” HU. 56. “Manual of Organization, 1947” SNYC papers, Box 1, folder “SNYC Manual of Organization, 1947,” HU; “Southern Negro Youth Congress” (a history) Edward E. Strong Papers, Box 3, Folder “Southern Negro Youth Congress—histories,” HU. This resolution closely followed of the “Durham Declaration” witted after the Conference on Race Relations, see “Durham Declaration,” in Southern Negro Youth Congress Bulletin, January 1943, in SNYC Papers, Box 8, Folder “Monthly Bulletin” HU; Resolutions of SNYC, SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “7th Conference Resolutions” HU. 57. “Operation Civil Rights,” NAACP Papers, Part 19, Series C, Reel 1, frame 251; the interaction of young people with Washington, DC. Politics is also signified by the 1950 White House Conference on Children and Youth, the first year that conference organizers invited youth to participate, de Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World, 195–196. 58. “Southern Youth Legislature” call - SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “The Call Coverage,” HU. 59. SNYC press release October 18, 1946 SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “7th Conference,” HU. 60. John McCray, “Civil Liberties,” SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “1939 SNYC 3rd Conference” [though placed in this folder, this address was delivered at the 1946 conference in Columbia, SC. 61. “John H. McCray” SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “7th Conference 1946 Speeches John H. McCray,” HU. 62. “Address delivered by Paul Robeson,” SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “7th Conference,” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 166–170. 63. “Excerpts of speech by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., October 18, 1946” SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “7th Conference,” HU. 64. W.E.B. Du Bois, “Behold the Land,” SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “7th Conference,” HU. 65. W.E.B. Du Bois, “Behold the Land,” SNYC Papers, Box 6, Folder “7th Conference,” HU. 66. “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth” SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth,” HU. 67. “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth” SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth,” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 166–170. 68. “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth” SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth,” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 166–170. 69. “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth” SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “Columbia Pact of Southern Youth,” HU.

236

J. HALE

70. Resolutions of SNYC, SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “7th Conference - Resolutions” HU; “Legislative Statement of SNYC, 1947,” in SNYC Papers, Box 7, Folder “8th Conference” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 164–166. 71. “Leroy Aiken to Louis Burnham, December 9, 1946,” SNYC Papers, Box 5, Folder “Moncks Corner, SC” HU. 72. “The Berkeley Wildcat,” and “Leroy Aiken to Louis Burnham, December 9, 1946,” SNYC Papers, Box 5, Folder “Moncks Corner, SC” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 163–164. 73. “The Berkeley Wildcat,” SNYC Papers, Box 5, Folder “Moncks Corner, SC,” HU. 74. Quote in “Berkeley Council SNYC Educational Institute, February 15– 16, 1947,” and “Summary of SNYC Institute Held in Berkeley County,” SNYC Papers, Box 5, Folder “Moncks Corner, SC,” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 163–164. 75. “The Berkeley Wildcat,” and “Leroy Aiken to Louis Burnham, December 9, 1946,” SNYC Papers, Box 5, Folder “Moncks Corner, SC” HU; Lau, Democracy Rising, 138–139, 164–166. 76. Lau, Democracy Rising, Gelman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 245–248. 77. Charron, Freedom’s Teacher; Septima Clark, Poinsette Brown, and Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement (Navarro, CA: Wild Tree Press, 1986); David P. Levine, “The Birth of the Citizenship Schools: Entwining the Struggles for Literacy and Freedom,” History of Education Quarterly 44 (2004): 388–414.

CHAPTER 10

The Hidden Politics of High School Violence Walter C. Stern

On Wednesday, May 14, 1969, a series of midday fights between Black and white students forced Walter Williams High School in Burlington, North Carolina, to close early for the day. The exclusion of Black girls from the cheerleading squad was the proximate cause of the affray. The police response to the confrontations then enflamed Black residents’ frustrations over racial inequalities within the school and the city. That night Black students drafted a list of demands that highlighted the majority white school’s disregard for Black students’ interests, its failure to ensure their safety, and its discriminatory administration of discipline. Those demands included the establishment of a “black-operated board of inquiry … to investigate incidents of violence at the school.”1 When students presented their concerns to city and school officials the next day, officials refused to listen. That prompted Black students to stage a walkout alongside students from Burlington’s all-Black Sellers High on Friday. Together, these

W. C. Stern (B) University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_10

237

238

W. C. STERN

students marched to the district administration building to again present their grievances to the superintendent. When the superintendent walked out on them, they “overturned desks, broke windows, ripped out telephone cords, and generally trashed the offices,” prompting multiple arrests. That night, the protest spread to a predominantly Black section of Burlington, with hundreds of residents squaring off against an almost equally sized contingent of local, county, and state law enforcement officers, their ranks bolstered by National Guardsmen. Around 3 a.m., the Country Grocery Store went up in flames, drawing police officers to the scene. Spotting suspected looters, the officers fired upon the individuals as they ran away. Leon Mebane—Black, unarmed, fifteen years old—was struck by multiple bullets, and he died moments later. While Burlington’s police chief charged that Mebane was shot in the crossfire between officers and “snipers” who were firing at them, others disputed that account. Since authorities did not conduct a followup investigation, the precise circumstances of Mebane’s death remain unknown.2 ∗ ∗ ∗ The school-based violence that spilled into Burlington’s streets and ended Leon Mebane’s life was endemic to American high schools during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those undergoing desegregation. Yet like Mebane’s death, the extent and the dynamics of this violence remain obscured beneath layers of contemporary misdirection and subsequent scholarly neglect. By examining the origins and consequences of violence in the civil rights era high school, this chapter illuminates the political and politicized nature of school-based conflict. While Black and other students of color experienced violence in similar ways, this chapter focuses on Black students as a starting point for broader inquiry into the political dynamics of racialized school conflict. Since politics is about power, particularly the state’s power to include and privilege some people while excluding and oppressing others, school violence was political when the people participating in and responding to it sought to reinforce or alter existing power relations.3 As this chapter will demonstrate, students and adults used school violence to pursue a wide range of political goals.

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

239

But the force that Black students at schools such as Williams used to defend themselves and their constitutional rights was fundamentally different than the violence that white students and police used to defend segregation and white supremacy.4 As evident in the Williams students’ demand for a “black-operated board of inquiry,” school violence frequently revolved around questions of race and power. Throughout the country, students and adults fought to determine whether white people would continue to monopolize authority over educational policy and practice, or whether civil rights reforms would redistribute power to include Black people. While violence regularly stemmed from and reinforced anti-Black discrimination within schools, public officials frequently recast it as a matter of school safety rather than racial justice. This politicized framing enabled the adoption of punitive crime control measures in lieu of reforms that addressed Black students’ demands for state protection and altered power relations. The political history of school violence thus exposes both the contestation and institutionalization of a new form of educational inequality that bound schools to the burgeoning carceral state. Scholars across multiple disciplines and fields, however, have underscrutinized this violence. Historians of the civil rights era, for instance, have persuasively characterized the period’s urban unrest as politically rooted rebellions rather than senseless “riots” without extending similarly nuanced and empathetic scrutiny to unrest within schools.5 Historians of school desegregation have also largely failed to analyze the dynamics of school violence, generally treating school fights and seemingly uncontrolled “riots” only in passing as tragic, if unsurprising, consequences of racial mixing.6 The most comprehensive study of desegregation in Burlington’s Alamance county, for instance, dispatches with the school violence that precipitated Leon Mebane’s death in three sentences.7 That study is representative of the broader historiography of desegregation, which overwhelmingly examines the era’s educational politics through the actions of adults.8 While the growing number of works on high school students’ experiences and activism have challenged this focus, this chapter builds upon that literature in order to deepen understandings of the politics, experiences, and meanings of desegregation.9 School violence also remains under-scrutinized within the historiography of mass incarceration despite a widespread acknowledgment among scholars of the roles that schools and the criminalization of youth play in funneling people of color into carceral facilities. Focusing on American

240

W. C. STERN

cities, scholars of mass incarceration have shown how liberal and conservative politicians simultaneously stoked and responded to unfounded fears of rising crime during the 1960s and 1970s as they pressed for punitive criminal justice measures that targeted Black people. While these scholars have also demonstrated how responses to politically motivated Black uprisings in places such as Watts in 1965, Newark in 1967, and Washington, DC., in 1968 contributed to the politicization and racialization of crime, they too have paid limited attention to unrest within schools.10 By focusing overwhelmingly on the urban North and West, histories of punitive discipline and police in schools have also overlooked the extent to which the criminalization of educational spaces was neither a regional nor an urban phenomenon.11 Lastly, scholars have largely failed to historicize the relationship between public schools and the broader “carceral state.” As political scientist Naomi Murakawa notes, this carceral state encompasses the government-sponsored mechanisms within and beyond the criminal justice system that fuels the United States’ world-leading prison population.12 While educational and legal researchers are increasingly attentive to the complexities of the “school-prison nexus,” they have produced a temporally vague literature that frequently—and inaccurately—points to the 1990s as the beginning of the “school-to-prison pipeline.”13 To be clear, not all incidents of high school violence during the civil rights era were explicitly political. The federal Center for Homeland Defense and Security, for instance, has cataloged 106 incidents in which a gun was brandished or fired or a bullet hit high school property during the 1970s. Of those, it categorizes just twelve as “racial,” which is the only one of its seventeen categories directly tied to politics. However, since the Center focuses only on incidents involving guns, its widely covered school shooting database overlooks the many political conflicts that did not involve firearms. Additionally, that database provides limited detail for each event and does not capture incidents such as the killing of Leon Mebane that originated in schools but occurred off-campus. The gaps in a seemingly comprehensive database such as this underscore the need for the close contextualized analysis of individual cases that this chapter seeks to provide and prompt.14 A detailed analysis is also necessary given the unreliability of data on school violence during the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary and retrospective accounts often lumped all school violence together under the vague banner of “unrest.” As with crime more broadly during this

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

241

era, lawmakers, the news media, and researchers exaggerated how much violence occurred within schools while muddying its origins.15 Despite the incomplete picture of the volume and categorization of violence within schools, several generalizations are both feasible and necessary in order to differentiate the reality of school violence from the rhetoric about it. First, the fact that protest accounted for much of the overstated uptick in school violence in the mid-to-late 1960s underscores that schools primarily faced a political problem rather than a crime problem. Second, after school violence leveled off in the early 1970s, it began declining in some places by the late 1970s. During this period of stabilization, schools reported an average of roughly one serious incident of “personal violence” per school each month. In the high schools, that meant that about one percent of students experienced a physical altercation each month, generally without injury. Third, school violence occurred throughout the nation in rural and suburban as well as urban areas. Finally, like violent crime in general, school violence increased most dramatically following—rather than preceding— the introduction of more punitive “zero-tolerance ” policies. As historian Heather Thompson notes, this punitive turn actually created a larger crime problem as expanded incarceration and policing increased poverty and antisocial violent behavior, which in turn led to more crime.16 The remainder of this essay analyzes the roots of high school violence in the southern, northeastern, and midwestern United States during the 1960s and 1970s as well as the policy responses to that violence. The next section examines the South, where a common set of factors frequently ignited unrest. Those factors included discriminatory disciplinary and curricular practices, Black student protest against those injustices, and white student resistance to Black student activism and assertiveness. In many cases, police and military forces actually instigated or exacerbated the violence, often with the support of school officials. These elements also shaped high school violence in the Northeast and Midwest, which are the settings for the third section. In the North, however, school violence more frequently stemmed from white responses to neighborhood-level demographic shifts—notably Black families moving into predominantly white neighborhoods. Following this survey, which considers some incidents historians have previously examined alongside many they have not, the final section examines how responses to school violence linked the state’s educational and security functions in novel ways during the 1960s and 1970s. School

242

W. C. STERN

and law enforcement officials regularly failed to consider the underlying causes or context of school violence, and they disproportionately targeted Black students for punishment. Multiple studies, for instance, found that suspension and expulsion rates for Black students were as much as three times the rate for white students by the early 1970s.17 Policymakers at the local, state, and federal level also expanded the police presence in schools and enacted harsher disciplinary rules that reinforced the discriminatory policies and practices so often at the root of school conflict. In doing so, they repackaged concerns about racial justice as matters of school safety. This framing provided a seemingly race-neutral justification for expanding surveillance and policing in schools while undercutting Black challenges to state authority. The history of school violence therefore reveals the inseparability of “school safety” from racial politics.

High School Violence in the South The history of high school violence in the South illuminates how responses to Black student activism bolstered the emerging carceral state. As was the case nationally, southern school violence occurred within the context of localized Black freedom struggles and the racial inequities they challenged. Those inequities included persistent school and housing segregation, racially differentiated labor markets, and the over-policing of communities of color, and they prompted teenagers to carry the freedom struggle into their schools. This section explores the intersection of four elements that were central to high school violence in the South: Black student activism, white student backlash, discriminatory discipline, and police involvement. It begins with a deeper examination of violence in North Carolina then shifts to Louisiana before widening its gaze across the rest of the region. The coincidence of violence, Black student activism, discriminatory discipline, and police repression carried particularly tragic consequences in North Carolina, where Leon Mebane was the first of two Black youths to die following student-initiated protests in the same month. In North Carolina and across the South, politicized school violence affected communities far smaller than Burlington as well as larger ones such as Greensboro, Wilmington, and Charlotte. In Greensboro—thirty miles west of Burlington—the police response to a student protest at the all-Black Dudley High School in May 1969 resulted in college student Willie Grimes’ death five days after Mebane’s

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

243

killing. There, police involvement and the suspension of Dudley students enflamed a peaceful protest over an activist’s exclusion from student council elections, setting the stage for the deadly confrontation.18 A detailed look at the Dudley conflict illuminates the ties between high school violence, Black students’ political struggles for equitable treatment, and the use of state power to stifle dissent. As with the unrest at Burlington’s Williams High, local as well as national developments shaped how the conflict unfolded in 1969. The Dudley battle occurred fifteen years after the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the segregation of schools by law was unconstitutional. But whites continued to control school systems in the twenty-one states that had legally required or permitted school segregation, and officials in nearly every southern district defied the ruling. Even as Black activists and Congress increased the pressure on southern districts to desegregate through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, school systems like Greensboro still took only minimal steps to do so. Like Greensboro, many adopted “freedom of choice” desegregation plans that placed the burden on individual Black students to request transfer to formerly all-white schools. White southern resistance continued even as civil rights activists restored Black voting rights via the 1965 Voting Rights Act and secured additional court rulings compelling greater desegregation. In 1968, for instance, the Supreme Court invalidated “freedom of choice” in Green v. New Kent County. The Court ruled that school boards must “take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.” Yet, the white majorities that still dominated the school boards and district administrations in places such as Greensboro and Burlington continued to operate segregated schools in defiance of this ruling. This power imbalance also enabled conditions within desegregating schools such as Williams to remain inhospitable to Black students.19 The Dudley conflict began in April 1969 when the school’s student elections committee excluded Claude Barnes from the list of three candidates it nominated for student council president. A recognized student leader, Barnes was junior class president, president of the student action committee, and vice president of the school’s Octagon Service Club. He was also active with the Greensboro Association of Poor People, and Dudley students viewed his exclusion from the ballot as retribution against that organization’s perceived Black Power militancy. Tensions

244

W. C. STERN

escalated on May 2—election day—when a handful of students walked out of an assembly where the presidential candidates were addressing the school. While the 600 write-in votes that Barnes received tripled the second-place finisher’s vote total, the school refused to acknowledge Barnes’s victory since he was not officially on the ballot.20 A flurry of activism followed the disputed election. As in Burlington, a single incident sparked students to mobilize to address longstanding racist and anti-democratic structures within their school and community. They were particularly concerned with Dudley’s hardline approach to student discipline and the school administration’s intolerance for dissent. The school, for instance, had recently suspended students for wearing bib overalls and Afros, which were stylistic nods to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black Power, respectively. While those suspensions were constitutionally permissible, the Greensboro public schools’ continued operation of segregated schools such as Dudley was not.21 On the day of the election, Dudley students requested assistance from student activists at the historically Black North Carolina A & T University, who for more than a year had been building “a coalition between campus and community” to attack Greensboro’s entrenched racial inequality. These college activists supported Dudley students as they transformed their frustration over the election into an actionable set of demands. On Friday, May 9, a large group of college and high school students tried to enter Dudley in an effort to hold a mass meeting. Police were already present, and they arrested seventeen students. That same day the Greensboro schools superintendent deployed Owen D. Lewis, the district’s white public information officer, to Dudley, ostensibly to assist Principal Franklin Brown, who was Black. But Lewis proved to be more of a liability than an asset. The central office staffer usurped Brown’s authority, and he doubled down on the principal’s authoritarian approach to discipline that had prompted students to act in the first place.22 As a Black public school administrator within a stubbornly segregated system, Brown was in a difficult spot. While he supported punitive policies that frequently harmed Black youth, he was not so much complicit in the Black subordination that Greensboro’s white leaders championed as he was constrained by it. Additionally, as historian Elizabeth Hinton writes about the urban uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s, overemphasizing Black support for get-tough policies distorts the complexity of the era’s politics. Like the uprisings, the history of school violence adds what Hinton

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

245

describes as “another, dynamic layer and set of actors to the story of the so-called ‘black silent majority.’” Discussing the “forgotten rebellions” that unfolded in nearly 1,000 segregated Black communities from 1968– 1972, she argues that “as much as some segments of the black middle class, political leaders, and clergy joined the clamor for ‘law and order,’ many others—who do not appear in traditional archives and many of whom were too young to vote—collectively defied the legitimacy of new policing and carceral strategies.”23 While the simple desire to challenge the high school’s apparent demand for obedience for obedience’s sake might have inspired some students, the student’s actions demonstrated that many acted upon more politically sophisticated motives. Following the May 9 arrests, Lewis and Brown refused to make concessions even as Dudley students, parents, their A & T allies, and a host of civic leaders met in hopes of resolving the impasse. Claude Barnes, whose recognition as president was among the students’ chief demands, later identified the administrators’ refusal as a critical error. “I think the whole situation could have been resolved last spring if the powers that be at Dudley and in Greensboro had shown some concern about the legitimate complaints and grievances of the students at Dudley,” Barnes said. The administration’s failure to do so prompted students to launch a boycott on Friday, May 16, which was the same day the Burlington students staged their walkout. The Greensboro protest turned violent on Monday, May 19, after police attacked and dispersed the small number of student picketers outside the school. When student protestors returned to campus and entered the building to encourage others to leave, “disruptions broke out, property was destroyed, more students were arrested, and several students were injured” by police. The confrontation involved more than seven hundred Dudley students.24 North Carolina’s advisory committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights later linked the violence to the students’ collective political resistance and the police’s forceful response to their protests. “The destruction of property in anger cannot be separated from the provocation and consequent violence of the other forces and individuals involved,” the committee wrote. At the time, however, school and law enforcement officials continued to focus on maintaining order rather than acknowledging grievances.25 That state action was not politically neutral; instead, it reinforced Black students’ subordinate position within Greensboro. On May 21, another spasm of violence—students hurling rocks, police firing tear gas—forced Dudley to close early, and Greensboro’s mayor

246

W. C. STERN

requested aid from the National Guard. The student protestors headed toward North Carolina A & T, and news about police injuring children incited Black residents and A & T students to join them. As college students hurled rocks and bottles at cars, police, and Guardsmen flooded the campus. Willie Grimes died from a gunshot to the head late that night. Over the next two days, police came under fire—whether from students or confused National Guardsmen no one knows for sure. Then, shortly after sunrise on May 23, Guardsmen stormed a dormitory suspected of housing student snipers as a “plane and helicopter unleashed swirling clouds of tear gas” to force out the students.26 While Ibram Kendi writes that the raid concluded “one of the most horrifying demonstrations waged at a college in the nation’s history,” it was also representative of the violent backlash against Black secondary school students and activism. Just two years prior, in fact, a protest against discriminatory discipline at a Houston junior high school preceded a deadly showdown between police and Black students at the historically Black Texas Southern University (TSU). The violence at TSU capped months of student demonstrations against anti-Black discrimination in Houston in general and “police mistreatment of TSU students” in particular, and it inspired a wave of Black college student activism nationally. Tragically, the violence at TSU heralded “a rising tide of lethal police assaults on Black college campuses.” Three Black high school students were among the at least thirteen Black youths killed during those assaults. Police killed seventeen-year-old Delano Middleton at South Carolina State University in 1968, fifteen-year-old Larry D. Kimmons at the predominantly white Pepperdine University in 1969, and seventeen-year-old James Earl Green at Jackson State University in 1970.27 In North Carolina, politically rooted school “riots” did not stop with Burlington or Greensboro. As historian Kenneth Janken notes, the tumult that preceded the groundless incarceration of the Wilmington Ten from 1972 to 1980 also “grew from the demands of African American students for an equal and relevant education.” In late January 1971, Black students from Wilmington’s two desegregating, formerly white high schools launched a boycott to protest widespread discrimination. This boycott followed earlier protests, and—as elsewhere—it targeted the closure of a historically Black high school, the mistreatment that Black students received from police and school disciplinary officials, and the role white outsiders played in instigating anti-Black violence in the schools.

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

247

Amid escalating assaults on the boycott headquarters in early February 1971, arsonists torched a nearby grocery store, police shot and killed nineteen-year-old student leader Steve Mitchell, and boycott supporters killed an armed white vigilante as he attempted to attack the headquarters. The erroneous charges tied to this conflict landed the Wilmington Ten in prison.28 While the violence in Burlington, Greensboro, and Wilmington spilled from the high schools into the streets, this was not always the case. On the same Wednesday in February 1972, for instance, twenty North Carolina state troopers descended upon Jones Senior High School in Trenton “to stop a destructive rampage by 80 to 100 students,” while elsewhere in the state “police were summoned to break up a brawl between 100 white and black student at Statesville Senior High School.” The former incident stemmed from Black student discontent over the suspension of a Black teacher, while the latter followed a bus driver’s refusal to admit a Black student whom he accused of using “abusive language.” Black students’ resistance to discriminatory discipline and other inequities in Charlotte-Mecklenburg also repeatedly fueled interracial violence in the county’s desegregating high schools during the early 1970s. Some of those conflicts, which occasionally involved hundreds of students and resulted in hospitalizations, immediately followed the violence in Wilmington. Long regarded as a rare desegregation success story, Charlotte’s violence highlights an under-emphasized aspect of its desegregation history.29 The quotidian—and political—nature of high school violence was also evident in Louisiana. There, the NAACP and others assiduously documented violence within the state’s desegregating high schools. Racial conflict in a high school in rural Plaquemines Parish in 1966 even provided the backdrop for the US Supreme Court’s landmark Duncan v. Louisiana ruling regarding the constitutional right to trial by jury. That case involved Gary Duncan, a Black nineteen-year-old who was sentenced to sixty days in the parish prison for touching the elbow of a white boy. The confrontation occurred when Duncan attempted to protect his younger cousins, who like other Black Plaquemines Parish youths had faced harassment in their desegregating high school.30 Violence became more widespread in Louisiana’s high schools as the scale of desegregation expanded after the Supreme Court’s 1968 decision in Green and its subsequent decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg ,

248

W. C. STERN

which authorized the use of cross-town busing for the purpose of desegregation.31 Three incidents from a single month—March 1973—highlight the extent of violence as well as its consistent ties to racist discipline, police involvement, Black resistance, and white intransigence. The first of those clashes occurred at Salmen High School in the town of Slidell, just north of New Orleans. As elsewhere, Salmen administrators applied rules differently for Black and white students. They would expel Black students for “wearing the black liberation flag and other black power symbols” while permitting white students to wear the Confederate flag and other white supremacist emblems. This disciplinary double standard emboldened white students to attack their Black classmates, as they did on multiple occasions that month. One round of fighting began in the cafeteria on Friday, March 23, after a white student threw food in a Black girl’s face and another white student called a Black student who intervened a “Nigger.” A second round occurred in a hallway the following Monday, after which principal C. B. Walcott called police to round up Black students. “I ask to call my parents but [Walcott] refuse to let me in the office to call them,” Black student Raymond C. Pierre recounted. “He also refused to tell me the amount of days I was suspended. Then he sent me home in a police car without any questions being ask.”32 That same week, an NAACP official reported that white students in northwestern Madison Parish regularly conspired to pick successive fights with a single Black student in order to secure the latter’s expulsion. “The sum total is 3 different white boys have 2 day suspensions and the same Negro boy has 3 – 2 day suspensions resulting in expulsion,” the official explained. “This must be planned or why do they pick out the same Negro boy to fight on three separate occasions[?]” Also that week, that same official reported that at Ponchatoula High School in Tangipahoa Parish, an agricultural community northwest of Lake Pontchartrain, “the dislike and hatred of young blacks against whites has reached an excessive proportion resulting in fights between students, free for all, and rebellion in the classrooms.” The spark for one series of mid-March fights at Ponchatoula High was white student Human Henrich hitting Blondis Sibley, a fifteen-yearold Black girl, with his truck as she walked to school. Seeking revenge, Black students marched the next morning to the school’s vocational wing, where they knew they’d find Ponchatoula’s “bad white boys.” White student Collins Kraemer struck first, hitting Black student Reginald Thorn in the head with a timing chain (the automotive equivalent of a metal bike

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

249

chain) then other students joined a short-lived hallway battle. Nevertheless, “in about 30 minutes,” the NAACP reported, “the principal, the Mayor of Ponchatoula and two city policemen came in. When the Negro attempted to tell them about the white boy hitting him with a chain, they said they didn’t want to hear it.” Ponchatoula’s Black residents asserted that school officials frequently used police to intimidate Black students.33 Black students in Louisiana faced similarly violent and punitive responses when they resisted discrimination through more organized forms of protest. At rural Abbeville High School in southwestern Louisiana, a large fight broke out on December 16, 1971, “with everyone swinging and whites committing assaults and batteries on Negroes, and Negroes assaulting and battering whites.” While the school took no action against white students, it suspended or expelled thirteen Black students, bringing criminal charges against several. This fight followed a walkout that Black students had staged earlier that fall to protest the lack of Black representation on the homecoming court. The homecoming court similarly sparked student protest, a police response, and suspensions, expulsions, and criminal charges in neighboring Iberia Parish the following fall of 1972. By then, Black students in Iberia Parish were accustomed to clashing with police. Officers had previously blocked a march they staged to protest a Black peer’s expulsion following interracial school fights.34 The exclusion of Black students from the homecoming court also spurred a 1969 walkout at Bogalusa High School, which was another place where administrators disproportionately suspended Black students. In fact, interracial fights became so common in Bogalusa—known as Klantown USA—that a federal judge dispatched US marshals to the high school in May 1970. Later, police in riot gear intervened in a 600student battle royal stemming from yet another brawl for which the school expelled Black students. Adam Fairclough points to Bogalusa as an example of the “seemingly trivial disputes between black and white students [that] sparked serious disturbances.” But his account of school unrest in Louisiana emphasizes “the cultural divide between the races” at the expense of student politics and racialized power differentials. While white students regularly attacked Black students in order to subordinate them, Black students fought to defend themselves and their right to be in institutions that treated them as though they did not belong.35

250

W. C. STERN

Similar dynamics were evident across the South, from towns like Ponchatoula to cities like Tampa. When civil rights organizations investigated school desegregation in forty-three southern cities in 1972, they found “student disruptions” were a major problem in one-fifth of those districts and “relatively widespread” in high schools. “Widespread student unrest is symptomatic of racism, insensitivity, and injustice found in many school districts of the urban South,” they concluded. Another of their major finding pertained to the disproportionate suspension and expulsion of Black students, and a third noted that the increased police and security presence in schools often exacerbated “tensions and resentment in the black community” rather than reducing disciplinary problems. The organizations responsible for the report, which included the Alabama Council on Human Relations, the American Friends Service Committee, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, also clarified that “student unrest should be more specifically identified as student protest or student conflict.” That distinction was important, they maintained “because many of the problems responsible for unrest have been rooted in student protest against the insensitivity and injustices of school officials and other students.” Reflecting upon the nature of these disruptions, the groups predicted that school violence would likely increase if officials did not address its underlying causes. “At this point the line between student protest and student conflict becomes very thin indeed,” they warned.36 Subsequent investigations reached similar conclusions, and examples from across the South highlighted the inseparability of school violence from broader political struggles over white supremacy and the meaning of Black freedom. “School confrontations are provoked through discrimination in disciplining black students, by use of Confederate symbols, and the displacement of black principals, teachers, and coaches,” the Southern Regional Council reported in 1973.37 An October 1974 fight involving more than seventy students at a suburban Virginia school provided one more example to support that contention. Following that brawl, investigators concluded that “racial tensions and antagonisms” sparked the confrontation, and they specifically highlighted the “widely held belief [that] existed among students of both races that disciplinary measures were not being fairly administered.”38 A Black high school student from Mississippi similarly reported: On April 28, 1972, there was a series of racial fights. So I left campus because I knew that the principal was going to put the blame on me ... He

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

251

continuously harassed me so I snatched away from him and he said come to the office and I was going there and he told two detectives to arrest me and this brother who was with me ... They put us in the paddy-wagon and took us to the station. I spent three days in jail.

Another southern Black student complained of school administrators targeting “black students [who] were branded as black militants and troublemakers.”39 In desegregating schools, Jon Hale notes, Black activists were particularly susceptible to retribution since they “operated beyond the reach of black elders who had worked to protect youths from the violence associated with joining the front lines.”40 The political aims of the violence that pervaded southern high schools varied depending upon the actors driving it. For the white youths and adults who regularly instigated it, violence provided a mechanism for enforcing Black subordination and stifling Black dissent. As with earlier forms of massive resistance, the state sanctioned and frequently encouraged the use of force for these purposes. For Black students, by contrast, violence was a protest mechanism of last resort and an often necessary means of self-defense and self-assertion. The centrality of Black student activism, discriminatory discipline, and police involvement to high school violence underscored the extent to which that violence involved politically significant power struggles. Recognizing that school and law enforcement officials used their state-derived power to stifle their freedom, Black students fought back. As the example of Dudley High School demonstrates, these political struggles over Black freedom permeated all-Black as well as desegregating schools. Similar yet distinct dynamics unfolded in the North, where the history of educational inequality both converged with and diverged from the southern experience. In contrast to the South, state-sponsored school segregation developed in the twentieth-century North either in the absence of laws requiring it or in blatant defiance of laws banning it. That history, along with the ongoing second Great Migration, added additional layers to many of the North’s school battles.

High School Violence in the North The history of high school violence in the North underscores the divergent ways in which white students, the police, and Black students enacted politics through force. While the North also experienced violence as a

252

W. C. STERN

result of the toxic mix of discriminatory policies, over-policing, and Black student protest, a palpable white resistance to shifting neighborhood demographics frequently added an extra element. After considering high school violence in Chicago, this section examines how white resistance to neighborhood change similarly influenced school violence in Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The section then highlights the prevalence of politicized school violence in northern small towns and suburbs. The similarities and differences between southern and northern school conflicts were on full display in Chicago, where violence frequently intersected with Black student activism. Chicago was among the many northern and western cities with a lengthy history of anti-Black violence in its schools.41 As in southern communities, Black high school students in Chicago also had a long history of protesting educational inequality. This was apparent in the city’s massive school boycotts of 1963 and 1964, and Black students continued their activism within both all-Black and racially mixed schools for at least another decade.42 In November 1967, for instance, Black students smashed windows and battled with police during a protest over the dismissal of a teacher at the South Side’s Englewood High School. Protest similarly turned violent at the nominally integrated Bowen High School in April 1968 after administrators rejected Black students’ demands for Black History and a memorial service to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.43 Yet at Bowen and other Chicago high schools, the movement of Black residents into historically white neighborhoods also shaped high school violence. As Jakobi Williams notes, at Chicago’s Gage Park High School, “the objections of established residents to the demographic change and the insistence of African American newcomers that their civil rights be respected played out violently among the area’s youth.” In addition to defending themselves from white students’ coordinated attacks, Gage Park High’s vastly outnumbered Black students held multiple protests to highlight the school and police’s failure to protect them and their rights. Persistent racial violence unfolded against this backdrop at Gage Park from 1966–1977, with both white students and police clashing with Black students.44 Chicago was not the only northern city where violent white opposition to school and residential integration affected high schools. Another example was Cleveland’s Collinwood High School, where Black residents reported in April 1970 that “attacks on black children by white youth are an old story.” Black Collingwood parent Naomi Donerson, for example,

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

253

had alerted city leaders several months earlier that “a gang of Collinwood hoodlums” had “attacked, beaten, and kicked” her fifteen-year-old son. “This same country and city that obligates black youngsters by law to defend it in time of war has refused to extend them the rudimentary protection of the law enforcement agency in order to attend high school,” Donerson charged.45 Cleveland’s Black residents had mobilized across class lines during the early 1960s to protest the school board’s relegation of their children to segregated, under-resourced, and overcrowded schools. But as the board ignored Black families’ demands, the battle shifted to the streets, where police traditionally offered Black residents little protection. The violence was particularly pronounced in the Collingwood neighborhood, where white working-class residents attacked Black protestors and violently defended the area’s racial status. These street battles continued as Cleveland’s growing Black population moved eastward across Lakeview Road during the post-World War II Black migration. By 1970, the dividing line between the predominantly Black and still-white sections of the city’s East Side had shifted roughly forty blocks east to E. 152nd Street. While Collinwood High School was located along that demarcation, the school board had gerrymandered its attendance zone to minimize Black enrollment. As a result, the school was under-enrolled and 70% white while nearby Glenville High School was overcrowded and 100% Black.46 During the first week of April 1970, the situation became so volatile that the school closed for two days “following a near-violent demonstration outside the school by 400 white youths and parents.” The protestors, whom the white Collinwood Improvement Council had organized, shattered school windows and destroyed furniture. While the Council ironically couched its concerns in terms of maintaining school safety and security, its demand “that transfer students from Glenville be returned” belied its primary interest in reinforcing segregation. Black parents, meanwhile, responded to the incident by asking the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to withhold federal funding from Cleveland on account of its racially discriminatory practices. The parents pointed to the overcrowding at Glenville, the lack of Black teachers and staff at Collinwood, and the “disciplinary transfers of black students out of Collinwood.”47 While HEW found that numerous inequalities existed between Glenville and Collinwood, it did not withhold funding, and Cleveland school officials refused to take further action. HEW’s unwillingness to

254

W. C. STERN

withhold the funds reflected the federal government’s longer history of tolerating northern segregation despite the blatantly discriminatory practices that districts used to maintain it. As Matthew Delmont explains, this permissiveness—which Congress inscribed into the 1964 Civil Rights Act—both encouraged and responded to white grassroots support for segregation.48 One hundred fifty police officers were on hand as Collinwood reopened on April 8, 1970, and Cleveland Mayor Carl B. Stokes placed 700 National Guardsman on alert in case of an emergency. While the Guard soon stood down, the violence continued for several more years, and police became a regular presence on Collinwood’s campus. On one September 1970 morning, about 300 white students bum-rushed a smaller group of Black students by the school entrance, igniting a “rock-throwing, fist-flying, bloody battle” that sent two students to the hospital. Prior to the attack, the Black students had attempted to block the entrance in response to fights and a rumored stabbing that had occurred the previous day. One police officer referred to the early morning mob attack as “nothing special,” noting that “it happens almost daily at Collinwood.”49 By October 1974, the situation had deteriorated. In separate incidents that fall, groups of white youths stabbed one Black Collinwood High student and shot and killed another. Two days of unrest followed the stabbing, causing more than $31,000 in damage to the school. One concerned citizen referenced these tragedies as she compared the racial violence in her city’s schools to the dangerous situation in Boston.50 Boston remains one of the most prominent examples of northern support for segregation, and the violent protests that gripped the city as it initiated a court-ordered desegregation plan in 1974 permeated its schools. Less well known is the fact that concerns about discriminatory disciplinary practices and police presence on school campuses had incited Black student protests and interracial school violence several years prior to the desegregation order.51 While the particulars varied, cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia experienced similar violence in their high schools.52 Like the South, violence provided a means through which youths and adults sought to resolve the tensions between white support for the segregated status quo and Black—as well as Latinx—demands for educational equity. While newspapers and lawmakers waxed hysterical about the perceived increase in school violence, they overstated its volume and under-analyzed

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

255

its root causes. One example from Cleveland reveals how the multilayered impact of racist policies and practices—as opposed to student-led racial politics—shaped even seemingly inexplicable incidents of school violence. In March 1971, ninth grader Kenneth Wagner was shot in the head and killed in a bathroom at Cleveland’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Junior High School. Roosevelt Principal Arnold Brown said four students attacked Wagner because he had previously beaten up one of them. Like Wagner, those four were Black fifteen-year-olds. Wagner and two of his alleged assailants were also “adjustment transfers” to Roosevelt, a euphemism for shuttling misbehaving students between schools with the hope that the new environment would induce rather than impede their compliance. The director of Cleveland’s secondary schools acknowledged that the lack of mental health and social welfare services led principals “to dump their worst behavioral problems onto one another.” The Baltimore Afro-American succinctly summarized the tragedy as follows: “Kenneth Wagner lived in poverty and died in violence.”53 While his death was not the result of racialized political violence, racism profoundly shaped the conditions under which he lived—and died.54 The same could be said of numerous other, often sensationalized, incidents of school violence during this era. Cleveland was neither the only city where tragedies such as Wagner’s death occurred, nor was it the sole place where shifting neighborhood demographics enflamed the politics of high school violence. Like Philadelphia, where racialized school violence was not limited to the city center, Pittsburgh illuminates this phenomenon across a metropolitan region.55 Within Pittsburgh’s city limits, white opposition to the North Side’s growing Black population provided the backdrop for persistent, low-level warfare within that area’s high schools. There, as in southern cities such as Greensboro, the police both sanctioned and participated in violence against Black students. Also like southern communities, white youths and adults often directed this violence toward Black youths who had demonstrated their refusal to tolerate discriminatory treatment. That spirit of resistance drove a multi-school Black student strike that in 1968 secured multiple concessions from the Pittsburgh school board, including the dismissal of Westinghouse High’s despised white principal.56 Pittsburgh’s Black students extended their resistance beyond the successful strike, and North Side high schools were among those where Black students had to regularly defend themselves from physical attacks. Racial clashes, for instance, forced both Oliver and Allegheny High to

256

W. C. STERN

end classes early on September 23, 1969. At Oliver, where white students outnumbered Blacks three-to-one, white students camped out in the school parking lot with bricks, bottles, and sticks, waiting for their Black peers to arrive. They allegedly formed their posse to exact payback for the Black power graffiti that four white members of Students for a Democratic Society had scrawled on the school building. Fights erupted, and when police arrived they joined in on behalf of the white students. The Black students “were abused and mistreated,” teacher Wiley Burton told the Pittsburgh Courier. “Not one white child was touched. They didn’t even approach the white students, and while they were battling the black students they (whites) were across the street throwing bricks at them.” All six of the students police arrested were Black; Black parents reported that “the white students know that the police are protecting them and that when trouble breaks out that the black children will have to fight the police for their own protection.” In the weeks following this fight, police continued to harass Black students in the neighborhood, particularly those who sought to ease the explosive situation at area high schools. When the Black Rangers youth group convened a meeting two weeks after the September dustups, police raided it with guns drawn to disperse the teenaged participants.57 Later that school year, the violence affected Perry High School, an overwhelmingly white North Side high school whose students had participated in the 1968 student strike. There, white students attacked Black students as they exited the buses that ferried them to campus from their homes in the Northview Heights Housing Project. John Young, Perry’s Black vice principal, reported that police arrived almost immediately and “were once again discriminate in their treatment of students.” When Young objected as an officer arrested a Black student whom he had instructed to seek help for his wounded sister, the officer shoved Young backwards down a flight of steps. “As has become their custom,” Young recounted, police “began using excessive force on the black students” as soon as the white students assaulted them. Black students alleged, and the Pittsburgh Board of Education confirmed, that most of the white students involved transferred to Perry following their expulsion from Oliver. Conflicts continued into the next school year at Perry, where former student Regi Ward said the administration’s neglect of Black students forced them to fend for themselves. “They should be given some voice in their own destiny,” he said. “The blacks end up taking a beating from two sides, the cops and the whites. It’s tradition.”58

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

257

As in other cities, the politicized violence in Pittsburgh’s high schools extended to nearby towns. At Donara High School, which is perhaps best known as the alma mater of baseball stars Stan Musial and Ken Griffey, Sr., Black student discontent over the lack of Black teachers and counselors contributed to an April 1971 melee that resulted in the arrest of multiple Black but no white students. The violence coincided with high school racial battles in the nearby steel towns of Monessen, McKeesport, and Coraopolis, and it occurred amid a surge of labor unrest in the area. Clashes between Black and white students in Aliquippa, another steel mill town where Black students alleged discrimination, had temporarily shuttered schools the previous spring.59 A judge ultimately sentenced the Black Donora youths to serve ten-tothirty-day sentences over weekends in a county jail twenty miles from the Monongehela River town. To protest the punishments, civil rights organizations from Pittsburgh and the Mon Valley staged a march to escort the students to the jail. While white counter protestors heckled the marchers, the protests remained peaceful. The following fall, however, violence returned to Monessen after a white security guard shot an eighteenyear-old Black youth in the back at Monessen High. “It is ironic that the shooting occurred at the school,” Rev. William Bass, the president of the Monessen Organization for Racial Equality (MORE) said. “The school is the center of all our trouble.” Prior to the shooting, MORE had demanded the Monessen School Board strip the school security guard of his gun, hire more Black faculty and staff, and implement a Black Studies curriculum.60 Given Black residents’ decades-long ties to western Pennsylvania’s steel towns, shifting demographics likely played a limited role in Donora’s and Monessen’s violence.61 But Black in-migration did influence high school violence in some non-urban communities. Section 235 of the 1968 Housing and Urban Development Act, which used interest-rate subsidies and federal mortgage insurance to grant African Americans access to the conventional housing market that had long excluded them, played a notable role here. While Section 235 ostensibly expanded Black residential opportunity, its dependence on an industry that continued to profit from racial discrimination meant that “predatory inclusion” largely replaced exclusion. Meanwhile, white suburbanites drew upon longstanding racist associations between Black residents and blight to attack Black Section 235 residents for bringing the “urban crisis” to their communities. In the Flint, Michigan, suburb of Beecher, for

258

W. C. STERN

example, several years of conflict erupted within Beecher High School following the arrival of Black Section 235 residents. While a Black Beecher student attributed the violence to “constant provocation” from white students, the district’s superintendent complained that Section 235 had pushed Beecher from “integration to disintegration.” White residents also opposed Black Section 235 residents in St. Louis’s racially “changing” neighborhoods and suburbs, sometimes couching that opposition in terms of its impact upon schools.62 While white resistance to shifting neighborhood demographics occasionally distinguished violence in northern high schools from the violence in the South, policy responses to school violence were consistent across the country. As the final section shows, public officials shared a penchant for targeting Black students for arrest and punishment in response to political violence. These responses bolstered the carceral state and contributed to mass incarceration.

High School Violence and the Carceral State The institutionalization of policies that targeted Black students was not foreordained in the 1970s. As this chapter has highlighted, school and criminal justice officials regularly punished Black students for political violence regardless of its origins. They even penalized Black students for being the victims of political violence. But many public officials also critiqued the discriminatory disciplinary treatment that Black students received. This acknowledgment of the discriminatory impact of school discipline was evident at all levels of government. In 1973, for example, HEW’s top civil rights official described suspension and expulsion as “a problem, not only of school desegregation in the South, but also of school administration generally throughout the Nation.”63 Officials and civil rights activists also agreed that suspensions and expulsions created more problems than they solved, and many pressed for alternatives. The Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice, comprised largely of police chiefs, sheriffs, and prosecutors, reached the following conclusion in 1975: “The practice of suspension and expulsion provides no solution to the problem. In dealing with disruptive students, there is a need for increased available counseling and guidance services in today’s schools.” Similarly, the Chancellor of the New York City Schools proclaimed that adding security guards to schools was “at best, merely a

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

259

short-range and necessarily limited treatment of a symptom…Although school authorities clearly must make all possible efforts to make schools safe by using a variety of means, the major emphasis should be the development of long-range solutions to the causes of unsafe schools.” Civil rights groups often went further, demanding the removal of police from schools.64 Drawing upon some of this very data and testimony, a Congressional subcommittee examining school violence called for a balanced response to school violence in 1977. “The subcommittee is totally opposed to the views that our schools must be turned into armed fortresses in order to provide a secure place in which to teach and learn. From the beginning it has been our intention to seek out and develop programs that not only make good security sense but also make good educational sense,” chairman Birch Bayh wrote. “School violence and vandalism problems cannot be viewed in either a purely educational or a purely security context and an effective and comprehensive program will often include aspects of both of these approaches.”65 Despite this rhetoric, punitive responses to school violence did not simply persist during this era; they dramatically expanded. This occurred largely because conservative as well as liberal policymakers such as Bayh sought immediate solutions to the perceived crisis within the nation’s schools. For politicians who were well-versed in the politics of race, a gettough approach presented the resolve that they believed the voting public craved. Indeed, numerous scholars have noted the bipartisan support during the 1960s and 1970s for “law and order” policies such as mandatory minimum sentences and militarized policing. While popular accounts frequently associate these punitive policies with Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs, and the broader post-civil-rights-era resurgence of the Right, liberals offered plenty of support.66 Several factors explain this reaction. First, punitive approaches to school violence both depended upon and responded to deeply rooted assumptions about Black criminality.67 Second, they depended upon policymakers selectively addressing the political underpinnings of school violence. While the myriad local, state, and federal reactions to school violence merit further analysis, an abundance of evidence demonstrates that policymakers responded more earnestly to violent assertions of white supremacy than they did to either peaceful or forceful defenses of Black constitutional rights. In this sense, the attacks that white students,

260

W. C. STERN

residents, and police carried out against Black youths achieved their objectives. That is because this violence, like the “chronic urban guerilla warfare” that Arnold Hirsch identified as endemic to Chicago’s postwar cityscape, “not only targeted blacks but was aimed at influencing white policy makers as well.” While some Black parents and civil rights activists also called for more centralized approaches to school discipline and expanded security patrols to protect Black children, they typically paired those requests with demands for broader racial justice reforms. Yet, policymakers and school administrators generally responded favorably to the former while sidestepping the latter.68 The feedback loop between school violence that disproportionately harmed Black students and the institutionalization of discriminatory disciplinary policies and practices unfolded at the local, state, and federal level. This institutionalization was perhaps most evident through the creation and expansion of school-based police and security forces that frequently targeted Black students. Civil rights observers in the South concluded in 1972 that “school administrators are increasingly using law enforcement personnel as aids in controlling students who are dissident, disruptive, dangerous, or just different”—distinctions that the observers argued were not always clear to administrators. The school system in Savannah, Georgia, for instance, allotted $18,000 per month for 35 armed guards to walk the halls at schools that had experienced fights. St. Petersburg, Florida, similarly augmented its 24-person School Security Patrol (all but one of whom were white) with regular police officers stationed at schools, and numerous other southern districts dispatched police officers to high schools that had experienced fighting, protests, or a combination of the two.69 Baltimore City Schools added officers to its schools following a wave of student activism during the late 1960s, as did Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Detroit. While the police often instigated violence in Pittsburgh’s schools, the superintendent expanded patrols in schools such as Allegheny and Oliver High following fights.70 According to Judith Kafka, school officials in Los Angeles “both responded to and helped perpetuate local and national fears about school violence in the 1970s by enacting centralized policies and systems that would today be termed ‘zero tolerance.’” These included mandatory suspension and expulsion for weapons and drugs and the increased delegation of school disciplinary authority to law enforcement officers. Los

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

261

Angeles’s school security force, which included roughly two dozen officers in the mid-1960s, ballooned to 225 officers by 1973, and 300 by 1977.71 The police presence in Chicago’s schools expanded as well. Much like the bipartisan—and at times interracial—support for “law and order,” “schoolhouse disorder” in the Windy City pushed many of the system’s growing corps of Black administrators to tout “no-nonsense” approaches to school discipline. Additionally, when Prince George’s County, Maryland, adopted its first centralized disciplinary code in 1974 following racial violence in its schools, the superintendent conceded that the demand for tougher discipline was partly “a reaction to court-ordered busing.” Throughout the country, schools tightened disciplinary codes even as constitutional interpretations of students’ rights expanded, and teachers willingly sacrificed disciplinary discretion in favor of policies that increased principals’ authority to remove students from schools. While Kafka traces the roots of modern school disciplinary regimes to the post-World War II shift away from discipline as a core educational function, the racialized reaction to civil rights–era unrest accelerated this punitive turn.72 State governments often encouraged these local developments. In 1969, for instance, Kansas passed legislation empowering schools to hire security officers and appoint campus police officers who could support other law enforcement agencies. Five years later, Hawai’i established a statewide school security patrol. Hawai’i’s legislation, in fact, was among the roughly 100 proposals related to “student control and school safety and security” that state legislatures passed in 1973 and 1974 alone. Florida passed the most comprehensive “safe schools” act during these years, creating a fund to assist local districts in developing programs to combat school violence, vandalism, and disruptions. North Carolina, meanwhile, initiated a study of school unrest and increased its reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of school vandals.73 As desegregation commenced in Louisiana in the early 1960s, the state provided schools with a key tool for pushing out Black students by mandating that a fourth suspension automatically trigger expulsion. The legislature also expanded the list of suspendable offenses, and after increasing schools’ power to expel students in 1970, Louisiana’s list of suspendable offenses grew even longer by 1978.74 Finally, the federal government played a key role in the punitive turn as well. Under the 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act, school districts in cities such as Cincinnati and Tucson received funds to expand

262

W. C. STERN

their school-police partnerships. Nine years later, the 1974 federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act that Birch Bayh authored allowed Baltimore and other districts to increase the law enforcement presence in their schools. Critically, that law had already expanded Justice Department authority within schools and federal funding for school security by the time Bayh issued his 1977 warning against making schools fortresses. While additional federal legislation to bolster school-based police forces failed in 1974, Congress instead mandated a national study of school violence. In 1985, the Supreme Court selectively cited the resulting report to justify warrantless searches of students’ belongings, thus tightening the bonds between schools and the carceral state.75

Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that political violence tied to the freedom rights of Black students was a national phenomenon in the civil rights–era high school. Additionally, it has shown how responses to that violence systematically criminalized Black students by binding public schools to the growing carceral state. In tracing these developments, this chapter broadens understandings of who engaged in politics and where and how people acted politically during the late civil rights era. This chapter also suggests possibilities for further research. Most significantly, it highlights the need for focused cases studies of the causes and consequences of high school violence. While the complexities of mass violence make it an especially challenging subject for historical research, they also underscore the need to study it at the local level. In order to test and evaluate the conclusions offered here, future studies should pay more attention to the relationship between specific violent incidents and particular policy changes. By clarifying the drivers of school violence and the roles of the various actors who participated in and responded to it, historians will be able to clarify similarities and differences across communities, regions, and levels of government. This knowledge should prove essential for dismantling the punitive disciplinary regimes that criminalize Black youths.

Notes 1. “Teen Slain During N.C. Racial Clash,” The Afro-American, 24 May 1969, p. 1.

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

263

2. As with most mass protests and disturbances, Burlington’s 1969 “riot” generated conflicting accounts. The absence of a public investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mebane’s killing adds to these evidentiary challenges. I based my narrative upon the following sources: “‘Police Brutality Racism’ Blamed for 2-Day Violence in Burlington,” The AfroAmerican, 31 May 1969, p. 11; “Teen Slain During N.C. Racial Clash,” The Afro-American, 24 May 1969, p. 1; “33 Years Ago,” Alamance News, 23 May 2002, p. 1–A, 4–A, 5–A (quote on 4–A); Jim Lasley, “Black Youth Killed in Night of Violence,” The Daily Times-News, 17 May 1969, p. 1–A, 3–A; A. Howard Smith, “It Was a Long, Tragic Night for Burlington,” The Daily Times-News, 17 May 1969, p. 1–B; Charlie Frago, “A Troubled Legacy,” News & Record, 20 April 2001, p. A1, A11; Jessica Williams, “Family Commemorates Boy Slain in Burlington’s 1969 Riots Burlington,” Times-News, 20 May 2018; Pat Jordan, Black Coach (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1971), 72–77. For an account of Mebane’s killing published after this chapter went to press, see Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s (New York: Liverlight, 2021), 155–59. 3. My definition of “politics” draws from Thomas Holt’s definition of “political” as “meaning the work of addressing all aspects of power relations in the world that oppress some and privilege others, that impoverish some and enrich others.” See Thomas C. Holt, “African American History as American History,” paper presented at The Future of the African American Past Conference, Washington, DC, May 19–21, 2016, https://future afampast.si.edu/sites/default/files/08_Holt%20Thomas.pdf. This definition also follows the derivation of “politics” from “politic,” which in turn traces its origins to the ancient Greek word for “belonging to the state or its administration, political, relating to public life, of or relating to citizens, civic, civil.” See “politics, n.” OED Online. September 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ view/Entry/237575 (accessed October 15, 2020); “politic, adj. and n.” OED Online. September 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/view/Entry/146885? rskey=89Qsfo&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed October 15, 2020). Jill Lepore’s gloss on the derivation of the word “police” also influenced my thinking. See Jill Lepore, “The Long Blue Line,” The New Yorker, 20 July 2020. 4. For discussion of the similar false moral equivalencies that the news media drew between supporters and opponents of school desegregation, see Matthew F. Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016).

264

W. C. STERN

5. On “riots” as uprisings or rebellions, see Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945–2006, 3rd ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), chap. 6; Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016); Hinton, “The Minneapolis Uprising in Context,” Boston Review, May 29, 2020, http://bostonreview.net/race/elizabeth-hinton-minnea polis-uprising-context, accessed 22 July 2020; Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Chicago: Haymarket Press, 2016); Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (New York: Basic Books, 2016). The sharp distinction that Nicholas Kryczka draws between “political acts of social disruption in schools” and “less coordinated, recurrent episodes of mayhem, gang activity, and violence in urban schoolhouses” reflects the prevailing approach to school unrest. Kryczka, “Selective Renewal: Choice, Community, and School in Post-Civil Rights Chicago,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2019, 23. 6. See, for instance, Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870–1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 191; David S. Cecelski, Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 172; Ansley T. Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 141, 152, 221, 224; Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 135–137; Delmont, Why Busing Failed, 149; Pamela Grundy, Color & Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 70–72; Tracy E. K’Meyer, From Brown to Meredith: The Long Struggle for School Desegregation in Louisville, Kentucky, 1954–2007 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 59; John L. Rury and Jeffrey E. Mirel, “The Political Economy of Urban Education,” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997), 76; Davison M. Douglas, Reading, Writing, & Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 225–227; John L. Rury and Shirley Hill, The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling, 1940–1980: Closing the Graduation Gap (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 136–144; Andrew Highsmith,

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

265

Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan, and the Fate of the American Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 212–213; Gael Graham, Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 64–68, 77– 79; Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972, 2nd Ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 449–453. 7. Jim Bissett, “The Dilemma over Moderates: School Desegregation in Alamance Count, North Carolina,” Journal of Southern History LXXXI, No. 4 (November 2015), 916. 8. While especially true for synthetic treatments of Brown, this narrow conception of the politics of desegregation extends to many of the case studies cited in note 6. Key overviews include Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 1975); Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 9. Key works on high school activism include V. P. Franklin, “Black High School Student Activism in the 1960s: An Urban Phenomenon?” Journal of Research in Education 10, No. 1 (Fall 2000): 3–8; V. P. Franklin, The Young Crusaders (Boston: Beacon Press, 2021); Graham, Young Activists; Kathryn Schumaker, Troublemakers: Students’ Rights and Racial Justice in the Long 1960s (New York: New York University Press, 2019); Tess Bundy, “‘Revolutions Happen through Young People!’: The Black Student Movement in the Boston Public Schools, 1968–1971,” Journal of Urban History 43, No. 2 (2017): 273–293; Dionne Danns, Something Better for Our Children: Black Organizing in Chicago Public Schools, 1963– 1971 (New York: Routledge, 2003); Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), chap. 6; Jeanne Theoharis, “‘W-A-L-K– O-U-T!’: High School Students and the Development of Black Power in L.A.,” in Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level, ed. Peniel E. Joseph (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Mario T. García and Sal Castro, Blowout! Sal Castro & the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Jon Hale, The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (New York: Columbia University Press; Jon Hale, “‘The Fight Was Instilled in Us’: High School Student Activism and the Civil Rights

266

W. C. STERN

Movement in Charleston, South Carolina,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 114, No. 1 (January 2013), 4–28. On students’ desegregation experiences more broadly, see Grundy, Color & Character; Michelle Purdy, Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018); Rachel Devlin, A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools (New York: Basic Books, 2018). 10. See, especially Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar America,” Journal of American History 97, No. 3 (December 2010): 703–734; Thompson, Blood in the Water, chap. 2; Thompson, “The Racial History of Criminal Justice in America,” Du Bois Review 16, No. 1 (Spring 2019): 221–241; Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime; Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Julilly KohlerHausmann, Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); Vesla Weaver, “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 21 (Fall 2007): 230–265. An exception published after this chapter went to press is Hinton, America on Fire. 11. Urban-focused works that draw attention to the relationship between schools, the criminalization of youth, and/or the growth of the carceral state include Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, esp. chap. 6; Max Felker-Kantor, Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD (Chapel Hill, 2018), chap. 4; Judith Kafka, The History of “Zero Tolerance” in American Public Schooling (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Donna Jean Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Miroslava Chávez-García, States of Delinquency: Race and Science in the Making of California’s Juvenile Justice System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Geoff K. Ward, The Black Child Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Tera Agyepong, The Criminalization of Black Children: Race, Gender, and Delinquency in Chicago’s Juvenile Justice System, 1899–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018); Edward J. Escobar, “The Dialectics of Repression: The Los Angeles Police Department and the Chicano Movement, 1968–1971,” Journal of American History 79, No. 4 (March

10

12. 13.

14.

15.

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

267

1993): 1483–1514; Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters, 710– 711; Heather Ann Thompson, “Criminalizing Kids: The Overlooked Reason for Failing Schools,” in Michael B. Katz and Mike Rose, eds., Public Education Under Siege (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). On the need to more fully consider schools in relation to the carceral state, see Heather Ann Thompson and Donna Murch, “Rethinking Urban America through the Lens of the Carceral State,” Journal of Urban History 4, No. 5 (2015), 754. Murakawa, The First Civil Right, 213, n9. See, for example, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010), 199–200; Monique Morris, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (New York: The New Press, 2016), 66; Julia Cass and Connie Curry, America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline (New York, 2007); Christopher A. Mallett, The School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Comprehensive Assessment (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2016); Judith A. Browne, Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track (Washington, DC: The Advancement Project, 2003); Nancy Heitzeg, “Criminalizing Education: Zero Tolerance Policies, Police in the Hallways, and the School to Prison Pipeline,” in Anthony J. Nocella II, Priya Parmar, & David Stovall, eds., From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline, 2nd ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 2018); Erica R. Meiners, Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies (New York: Routledge, 2007); Sabrina S. Vaught, “Vanishment: Girls, Punishment, and the Education State,” Teachers College Record, 121 (2019): 1–36. An important exception to the lack of historicization in this literature is Damien M. Sojoyner, “Black Radicals Make for Bad Citizens: Undoing the Myth of the School to Prison Pipeline,” Berkeley Review of Education 4, No. 2 (2013): 241–263. Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security, K–12 School Shooting Database, https://www.chds.us/ssdb/. For the extent of press coverage the Center’s database receives, see https://www. chds.us/ssdb/in-the-news/. Gordon A. Crews and M. Reid Counts, The Evolution of School Disturbance in America: Colonial Times to Modern Day (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), xii, 84–86, 89–99. While Crews and Counts are more skeptical of reported increases in school violence during the late 1960s than they are of those reported during the 1970s, the questions they raise about the general unreliability of crime statistics cast doubt upon the validity of reported increases during the 1970s. Subsequent studies support this contention. See, especially US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Violent Schools–Safe Schools: The Safe School Study Report to

268

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

W. C. STERN

Congress (Washington, DC, 1978), vol. 1, p. 2; Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters, 726–728, esp. 727 n56. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 238; U.S. Congress, Senate, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Committee on the Judiciary, Our Nation’s Schools-A Report Card: ‘A’ in School Violence and Vandalism, 94 Cong., 1 sess., April 1975, pp. 7– 8; Violent Schools–Safe Schools, vol. 1, 31–75; Crews and Counts, The Evolution of School Disturbance in America; Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters,” 728. Southern Regional Council and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, The Student Pushout: Victim of Continued Resistance to Desegregation (1973), 5, 51, 75; Children’s Defense Fund, Children out of School in America (Washington, DC, 1974), 126–134, 326. North Carolina State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, The Trouble in Greensboro: A Report on an Open Meeting Concerning the Disturbances at Dudley High School and North Carolina A & T University, March 1970. For a discussion of the Dudley protest and its aftermath, see William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 185–202. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 39 US 430 (1968), at 437–8 (for quote); Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 116–117, 157– 159, 165–170; James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). The Trouble in Greensboro, 1, 4; “University Closed by Violence,” Journal and Guide, 31 May 1969, p. 1; “High School Officials Blamed for Violence at N.C. College,” The Afro-American, 11 October 1969, p. 12; Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 185. The US Supreme Court did not resolve lower court disagreement over the constitutionality of school districts’ power to regulate students’ hair and dress. But the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction included North Carolina, sided with students in the 1970s in cases challenging school districts’ authority to restrict hairstyles. See Gael Graham, “Flaunting the Freak Flag: Karr v. Schmidt and the Great Hair Debate in American High Schools, 1965–1975,” Journal of American History 91, No. 2 (September 2004), 540–541; Massie v. Henry, 455 F.2d 777 (1972); Mick v. Sullivan, 476 F.2d 973 (1973). The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction did not include North Carolina, had ruled in 1966 that the First Amendment granted high school students the right to wear SNCC buttons. That ruling, which did not cover the speech implications of hair or dress styles, provided a key precedent for the US

10

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

269

Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, which acknowledged high school students’ right to wear black armbands to protest the war in Vietnam. On these cases, see Hale, The Freedom Schools, 164. On the persistence of school segregation in Greensboro, see Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 165–170, 200. The Trouble in Greensboro, 1–9; Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 176 (for quote), 185–186. Hinton, “The Minneapolis Uprising in Context.” “High School Officials Blamed for Violence at N.C. College,” Baltimore Afro-American, 11 October 1969, p. 12 (for quote); The Trouble in Greensboro, 1–9 (quote on 6). Ibid., 10–14; Ibram Rogers (Ibram X. Kendi), The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 139–140 (140 for quote); Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 187–200. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), 41; Rogers (Kendi), The Black Campus Movement, vi, 140 (first quote), 143; Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 31–32, 157 (second quote on 31, third on 157). Unlike Chafe’s classic account, Kendi’s discussion of the A & T protest overlooks its roots in high school protest and violence. See, Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 185–200. Kenneth Robert Janken, The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 1–2, 11–41 passim (see p. 12 for quote); Cecelski, Along Freedom Road, 172. “Violence Reported at Schools in Wide Area,” Journal and Guide, 19 February 1972, p. A1 (for quotes); Grundy, Color & Character, 69–71; Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 173, 190–193; The Student Pushout, 59; The Alabama Council on Human Relations et al., It’s Not Over in the South: School Desegregation in Forty-three Southern Cities Eighteen Years After Brown (May 1972), xii. On Charlotte’s reputation as a desegregation success story, see Walter C. Stern, “Why Desegregation Matters: Educational Inequality and the Pursuit of Democracy,” Journal of Urban History 46, No. 3 (May 2020): 695–696. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 US 145 (1968); Fred P. Graham, “Justices Extend Five Legal Rights in Criminal Cases,” New York Times , 21 May 1968, p. 1; William Kling, “Right to Jury in Contempt Case Upheld,” Chicago Tribune, 21 May 1968, p. 12. See also Matthew Van Meter, Deep Delta Justice: A Black Teen, His Lawyer, and Their Groundbreaking Battle for Civil Rights in the South (New York: Little, Brown and Company: 2020), esp. 3–6, 37–42. Thanks to James Forman, Jr., for bringing

270

31. 32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

W. C. STERN

the links between Duncan, school violence, and desegregation to my attention. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, 402 U.S. 1 (1971). Memo, n.d., (first quote); Raymond C. Pierre to whom ever it may concern, 29 March 1973 (second quote). See also statements of Ricky Viner, Elizabeth Oneal, Mrs. S. Scott, Oliver Pierre, Jr., Leonard E. Craft, Rhonda Tarregano, and Melvin Wilson, all in folder 11, box 28, NAACP Office of Field Director of Louisiana Records, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans, La. (cited hereinafter as ARC). Daniel E. Byrd, Special Report, 24 March 1973, p. 2, (first quote); Byrd, Special to Norman Chachkin, Esquire, 31 March 1973, (quote on p. 2), all in folder 9, box 4, Daniel Ellis Byrd Papers, ARC; “What’s the Difference Between a Timing Chain and a Timing Belt,” CARFAX, https:// www.carfax.com/blog/timing-chain-vs-timing-belt, accessed 13 February 2019. Vermillion Parish Citizens for a Democratic Society to the Vermillion Parish School Board, January 1972, folder 7, box 5; Daniel E. Byrd, “Special Report, Vermillion Parish, Louisiana,” 14 January 1972, folder 9, box 4 (quote on p. 1); Daniel Byrd to Margaret Ford, 16 December 1972, folder 8, box 3; Daniel Byrd, “Activity Report,” December 1972, folder 3, box 4, Byrd Papers; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 451–452. Vermillion Parish Citizens for a Democratic Society to the Vermillion Parish School Board, January 1972, folder 7, box 5; Daniel E. Byrd, “Special Report, Vermillion Parish, Louisiana,” 14 January 1972, folder 9, box 4 (quote on p. 1); Daniel Byrd to Margaret Ford, 16 December 1972, folder 8, box 3; Daniel Byrd, “Activity Report,” December 1972, box 4, folder 3, all in Byrd Papers; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 447–453 (first quote on 451; second quote on 449). It’s Not Over in the South, ii, xi-xiii, 5–9, 72 (first quote on 72; second, fourth, and fifth on 5; third on 7). Elsewhere in the report, these groups asserted that “most of the unrest … involved student protest over issues of symbolic importance as well as over injustices.” While the report noted the overlaps between “student protest” and “student conflict,” its cursory treatment of most incidents generally fails to clarify how protest and conflict intersected. Nevertheless, the report documents numerous incidents the future researchers would benefit from examining in greater detail. Southern Regional Council, The Student Pushout, ix. U.S. Congress, Senate, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Committee on the Judiciary, Our Nation’s Schools-A Report Card: ‘A’ in School Violence and Vandalism, 94 Cong., 1 sess., April 1975, p. 11. Southern Regional Council, Student Pushout, 15–16.

10

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

271

40. Jon N. Hale, “Future Foot Soldiers or Budding Criminals?: The Dynamics of High School Student Activism in the Southern Black Freedom Struggle,” The Journal of Southern History LXXXIV, No. 3 (August 2018), 644. 41. For examples of anti-Black violence in northern schools prior to the civil rights ear, see Davison Douglas, Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 139; Rachel Devlin, A Girl Stands in the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools (New York: Basic Books, 2018), xxi; Murch, Living for the City, 48–50. 42. On Black educational activism in Chicago, see Danns, Something Better for Our Children; Dionne Danns, “Chicago High School Students’ Movement for Quality Public Education, 1966–1971,” Journal of African American History 88, No. 2 (April 2003): 138–150; Elizabeth ToddBreland, A Political Education: Black Politics and Educational Reform in Chicago Since the 1960s (Chapel Hill: University of Chapel Hill Press, 2018). 43. “Chicago Jails 80 in Racial Fights,” New York Times , 22 November 1967, p. 54; Jakobi Williams, From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 69–70. 44. “Chicago Jails 80 in Racial Fights,” New York Times , 22 November 1967, p. 54; Williams, From the Bullet to the Ballot, 66–72 (quote on 70). For additional examples of violence occurring in the context of Black student protest in Chicago high schools, see Robert Cross, “The Tardy Bell Is Ringing at Waller High,” Chicago TribuneSunday Magazine, 19 April 1970. 45. Ellen Delmonte, “Parents Mobilize to Stifle Violence,” Call and Post, 18 April 1970, p. 1A. 46. Leonard N. Moore, Carl B. Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 28–33, 66; Reed v. Rhodes (1981), 662 F.2d 1219, at 1222–1223; Total Population: Black, 1950, Social Explorer (based on tract-level data from US Census Bureau; accessed 25 August 2020); Total Population: Black, 1960, Social Explorer (based on tract-level data from US Census Bureau; accessed 25 August 2020); Total Population: Black, 1970, Social Explorer (based on tractlevel data from US Census Bureau; accessed 25 August 2020). On conflict between Black Cleveland residents and the police, see Moore, Carl B. Stokes , esp. Chaps. 4, 6, and 8. 47. “Parents Mobilize to Stifle Violence,” Call and Post, 18 April 1970, p. 1A, 16A (for quotes); Moore, Carl B. Stokes , 28–33; David Stradling and Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the

272

48. 49.

50.

51. 52.

53.

54.

55.

W. C. STERN

Struggle to Save Cleveland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 186–187; Reed v. Rhodes, 662 F.2d 1219 (1981), 1222–1223. Reed v. Rhodes, 662 F.2d 1219 (1981); Delmont, Why Busing Failed, esp. Chaps. 1, 2, 4. Stradling and Stradling, Where the River Burned, 187; “Guard on Alert as Classes Resume at Collinwood High,” Call and Post, 11 April 1970, p. 1A; “School Erupts Again: Two Wounded in Collinwood White-Black Clash,” Call and Post, 26 September 1970, p. 1A (for quotes); Frances Ward, “Outlook for Cleveland Uncertain,” Los Angeles Times, 6 May 1971, p. 4. “One Dead in Violence by Whites,” The Afro-American, 19 October 1974, p. 16; Susan E. Langford, “Voice of the People: Racial Violence” (letter to the editor), Call and Post, 26 October 1974, p. 2B. Bundy, “‘Revolutions Happen through Young People!’”. For Philadelphia, see Countryman, Up South, 236–255; Thomas A. Johnson, “U.S. Studies Riot in Philadelphia,” New York Times , 19 November 1967, p. 71; “Schools in 3 Cities Hit by Race Trouble,” Chicago Tribune, 11 October 1968, p. 6; J. Brantley Wilder, “Girl Shot as Racial Clash Erupts Near Local School,” Philadelphia Tribune, 31 October 1972; J. Brantley Wilder, “3 More Youths are Injured as Violence Grips Southside,” Philadelphia Tribune, 4 November 1972. For New York, see Frederick H. Treesh and Peter Freiberg, “New York’s Problem: Violence in Schools,” Journal and Guide, 19 April 1969, p. 6; Lesly Jones, “GW Students Present Demands,” New York Amsterdam News, 24 October 1970, p. 1; New York City Commission on Human Rights, After Integration: Problems of Race Relations in the High School Today: A Study of Madison High School with Recommendations for New York City Schools (October 1974). For Los Angeles, see Kafka, The History of “Zero Tolerance,” 81–85; Theoharis, “‘W-A-L-K–O-U-T!’”; García and Castro, Blowout!, chap. 6, esp. 160–161. For Milwaukee, see Dougherty, More than One Struggle, 135–137. “Parents Must Help Stop Violence, Principal Says,” Cleveland Call and Post, 6 March 1971, p. 7A; Jeffrey A. Tannenbaum, “Outbreaks of Violence, Many of them Deadly, Occur at More Schools,” Wall Street Journal, 11 May 1971, p. 1, 20 (first quote on p. 20); “Mother Asks No Death for Son Slayers,” The Afro-American, 13 March 1971, p. 16 (second quote). On the role of racism in shaping Cleveland, see Moore, Carl B. Stokes; Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976). For examples of racialized school violence in Philadelphia’s suburbs, see “Parents Expected Violence to Erupt at Abington High,” Philadelphia

10

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

61.

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

273

Tribune, 4 March 1972, p. 1; “Glassboro Cops Restore Peace After Weekend Racial Clashes,” Philadelphia Tribune, 20 May 1969, p. 3. Joe W. Trotter, Jr. and Jared N. Day, Race and Renaissance: African Americans in Pittsburgh since World War II (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 120–121. Valuable information on Pittsburgh’s North Side neighborhoods and their schools can be found in the August 1974 series of community profiles published by the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning. See, for instance, “Pittsburgh Department of City Planning,” A Community Profile of Perry South, 1, No. 1 (August 1974), Historic Pittsburgh Book Collection, University of Pittsburgh, https:// historicpittsburgh.org/collection/historic-pittsburgh-book-collection. Diane Perry, “Cops Blasted in School Uproar,” Pittsburgh Courier, 27 September 1969, p. 1; “Outbreaks On Increase At Area Schools,” Pittsburgh Courier, 18 October 1969, p. 1. Trotter and Day, Race and Renaissance, 120–121; Diane Perry and Ralph Kroger, “Race Violence Erupts at Perry High,” Pittsburgh Courier, 11 April 1970, p. 1, 4 (quotes on p. 1); Bill Beerman, “Smoldering Hate, Fear Still Threaten Perry, South Hills,” Pittsburgh Courier, 3 October 1970, p. 1; “Pittsburghers Speak Out on Perry Conflict,” Pittsburgh Courier, 26 September 1970, p. 4 (for Ward quote). “Racial Violence Disrupts Classes at Donora High,” Valley Independent, 21 April 1971, pp. 1–2; “School Talks to Continue,” Valley Independent, 22 April 1971, p. 1, 5; “Monessen High Students in Racial Fight,” Valley Independent, 22 April 1971, p. 1; “Miners Remain Off Job,” Valley Independent, 22 April 1971, p. 1; “All Donora Area Schools Shut Down as Precaution,” Valley Independent, 23 April 1971, p. 1, 2; “Tensions Calmed in Monessen,” Valley Independent, 23 April 1971, p. 1, 2; “Blacks Plan Washington Jail Protest,” Valley Independent, 18 June 1971, p. 1, 5; Larry Stone, “Donora, Birthplace of the Griffeys and Stan Musia, is a Dying Town Clinging to its Sports History,” Seattle Times, 1 April 2016; “‘Uneasy Calm’ in Aliquippa,” Pittsburgh Courier, 20 June 1970, p. 1, 14. “Monessen Blacks, ‘Hard Hat’ Whites Have Clash on March” Pittsburgh Courier, 26 June 1971, p. 1, 6; “Monessen School Board Denies Discrimination,” Pittsburgh Courier, 21 August 1971, p. 1, 4; “Agreement Reached in Monessen,” Pittsburgh Courier, 4 September 1971, p. 1, 8; “Youth is Shot in Monessen, Sets of Wave of Firebombings,” Pittsburgh Courier, 28 August 1971, p. 1, 4 (quote on 4); “Monessen School Board Denies Discrimination,” Pittsburgh Courier, 21 August 1971, p. 1, 4. On Black entry into western Pennsylvania’s steel industry, see Joe William Trotter, Jr., Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), 66. County- and tractlevel census data show that the Black population in Donora and Monessen

274

62.

63. 64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

W. C. STERN

remained fairly stable in size and residential location throughout the postWorld War II period. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 19–23, 88–89; Highsmith, Demolition Means Progress, 202–215 (quotes on 212); US Commission on Civil Rights, Home Ownership for Lower Income Families: A Report on the Racial and Ethnic Impact of the Section 235 Program (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1971), 15–20, 73–75, esp. 73 n 213. Southern Regional Council, The Student Pushout, 5, 51, 75 (quote). See also Children’s Defense Fund, Children out of School in America. Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Standards and Goals: Juvenile Justice and Community Crime Prevention, 1975, vol. VI, p. 103 (first quote); Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Our Nation’s SchoolsA Report Card: ‘A’ in School Violence and Vandalism, pp. 18–19, 35–36 (second quote on 36); It’s Not Over in the South, 7 (third quote). For another example of this line of thinking, see Vernon Jordan, “Violence in School,” Pittsburgh Courier, 27 September 1975, p. 6. U.S. Congress, Senate, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Committee on the Judiciary, Challenge for the Third Century: Education in a Safe Environment–Final Report on the Nature and Prevention of School Violence and Vandalism, 95 Cong., 1 sess., February 1977, p. 3 (first quote), p. 48 (second quote). See, for example, “Trump Declared Himself the ‘President of Law and Order.’ Here’s What People Get Wrong about the Origins of that Idea,” Time, June 2, 2020, https://time.com/5846321/nixon-trump-law-andorder-history/; Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters,” Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime; Murakawa, The First Civil Right, Weaver, “Frontlash;”. The seminal history on the idea of Black criminality is Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). For how these ideas influenced the civil rights-punitive turn, see Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime; Ward, The Black Child-Savers. Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 41; Todd-Breland, A Political Education, 171; Kafka, The History of “Zero Tolerance”, chap. 4. For examples of Black demands for increased security and additional reforms, see “The Campus and Violence,” Los Angeles Sentinel, 26 December 1974, p. A6; Dianne Perry, “Cops Blasted in

10

69. 70.

71. 72.

73.

74.

75.

THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF HIGH SCHOOL VIOLENCE

275

School Uproar,” Pittsburgh Courier, 27 September 1969; Ron Suber, “Parents Discuss Problems,” Pittsburgh Courier, 2 November 1974, p. 3. It’s Not Over in the South, 82–83 (quote on 82). Crews and Counts, The Evolution of School Disturbance in America, 87; Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters,” 710–711; Thompson, “Criminalizing Kids,” 134; Kenneth A. Noble, “Policing the Hallways: The Origins of School-Police Partnerships in Twentieth Century American Urban Public Schools,” Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 2017, 242; Dianne Perry, “Cops Blasted in School Uproar,” Pittsburgh Courier, 27 September 1969. Kafka, The History of “Zero Tolerance,” esp. 7–11, 98–99 (quote on 99), 109. Todd-Breland, A Political Education, 127; Kryczka, “Selective Renewal: Choice, Community, and School in Post-Civil Rights Chicago,” 23–24, 201, 226–227; Nicholas Juravich, “The Work of Education: CommunityBased Educators in Schools, “Freedom Struggles, and the Labor Movement, 1953–1983,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2017, 89; Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Our Nation’s Schools–A Report Card, 12; Deirdre M. Dougherty, “Making Race and Making Space: A Genealogy of School Desegregation in Prince George’s County, Maryland, 1954–1974,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2018), 98–99; 186–213 (quote on 209); Schumaker, Troublemakers, chap. 3. Thompson, “Criminalizing Kids,” 134 ( first quote); Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Our Nation’s Schools–A Report Card, 37 (second quote); Florida Safe Schools Act of 1973, Chapters 73–346. See also Hale, “Future Foot Soldiers,” 645–651. For the expansion of public schools’ disciplinary authority in Louisiana, see LA Acts 1922 Reg Sess no 100 § 54; LA Acts 1962 Reg Sess no 206 § 1; LA Acts 1970 Reg Sess no 306 § 1; Louisiana Acts 1970 Reg Sess no 194 § 1; LA Acts 1974 Reg Sess no 683 § 1; LA Acts 1975 Reg Sess no 216 § 1; LA Acts 1977 Reg Sess no 658 § 1; LA Acts 1978 Reg Sess no 60 § 1; Student Pushout, 32–33. Noble, “Policing the Hallways,” 235–236; Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters,” 710–711; Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 225–238; Schumaker, Troublemakers, 200–203; Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Our Nation’s Schools–A Report Card, 35. While Hinton incorrectly asserts that the 1974 renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act “introduced widespread police patrol” in public schools, she provides essential insight into the 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act’s impact on schools. See Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 236; Education Amendments of 1974, sec. 825, 88 stat. 602 (1974).

CHAPTER 11

Shifting Public Perceptions of Wichita’s Southeast High School, 1957–2000 Lauren Elizabeth Coleman-Tempel

Historical studies have pointed to myriad causes for the pervasive educational inequities that face the country today. A common explanation in histories of large metropolitan areas is that when more affluent white families moved from cities to the suburbs during the second half of the twentieth century, they took their political influence, tax base, and cultural and social capital with them. Two decades after the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling, additional court rulings such as Milliken v. Bradley (1974), which stymied efforts to implement cross-district busing, contributed to widespread geographical and educational inequity.1 The suburbs were sheltered from policy efforts to integrate their schools with urban ones. Although this reality played a large part in the decline in enrollment and academic achievement in many city school districts, it

L. E. Coleman-Tempel (B) University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_11

277

278

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

was not the case in all districts. For example, in Wichita, Kansas, a midsized midwestern city, public school enrollment did not endure the same decline. Although the Wichita Public Schools faced some level of white flight in the 1970s, policy initiatives during the 1980s resulted in fewer students leaving the district than what has been documented elsewhere.2 While fewer students left the district entirely, Wichita’s public schools faced a different set of issues. Chief among them were the changes wrought by the introduction of test-in magnet and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, which combated the overall loss of students but ultimately contributed to within-district inequities that are still present today. Met with the threat of declining student enrollment in the 1980s, Wichita harnessed these innovations in high school offerings (which were popular nationally) in an attempt to keep students and families by promising exclusivity and academic rigor. As they gained in popularity, their success meant that the concentration of high achieving, often middle-class, students shifted from the traditionally “high-status schools,” including the once-prestigious Southeast High School, and into just two high schools. This movement, coupled with the migration of some middle-class white families out to the city altogether, had long-term political repercussions for school leaders and their constituents alike. While there are some widely held ideas about what constitutes an “urban core school,” the Wichita Public Schools have pushed the envelope on the spatial characteristics of the term.3 Today, Wichita is a sprawling city where blue-collar jobs serve as the economic backbone. The population within city limits is currently approaching 400,000, with an additional 255,000 residents living in surrounding suburbs. The racial and socioeconomic composition of the district for the 2017–2018 school year demonstrates a student population rich in diversity. The district staffs ninety-three schools in total. Of the 50,641 students enrolled in the district, thirty-five percent are Hispanic, thirty-three percent are white, and nineteen percent are African-American. There are 119 different languages spoken in homes in the district, and seventy-three percent of students enrolled come from households facing poverty, as defined by the Federal Free and Reduced Lunch threshold.4 None of these statistics are unusual when looking at urban core school districts today, but the ways in which residents and commentators have made sense of them—in their own words and as they changed over time— is rarely explored in the historical literature, especially outside of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. As such, the story told here is about

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

279

Southeast High School and the changing public perception regarding its status, a process that unfolded over five decades. In 1957, for example, students filled the halls and classrooms of Southeast for the first time, breathing life into a new building in what was then—owing to decades of racist housing policies and real estate practices—a highly segregated part of the city. The high status of the school described by alumni from the era paint a picture of a homogenous, overwhelmingly white, and affluent student body. Interviewees familiar with the school during the late 1950s and early 1960s boast of high numbers of National Merit Scholars, rigorous science programming, and a financially flush community base, which all inform the community’s collective memory of the school during this time.5 Following a profile of the opening and early years of Southeast, the chapter then outlines the greater battle for racial equity and integration in the district spearheaded by Black leaders, notably in local chapters of the NAACP and the Urban League. Although much of the national attention given to civil rights activism in Wichita has surrounded its famous drug store sit-in, the city was on the verge of a more complicated and significant push for civil rights both before and after the incident.6 American public schools have historically been sites for battles concerning equity and inclusion, and the Wichita Public Schools were no exception throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. As this chapter explains, elementary and middle schools in the Black community in northeast Wichita were overcrowded, and families who tried to advocate for more equitable resources were met with racist opposition and with a slew of bureaucratic obstacles to their requests. Civil rights groups persisted nonetheless, and, eventually, the NAACP brought a formal complaint to the Federal Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) department, initiating a process that culminated in a comprehensive desegregation plan in 1970.7 Up until the significant desegregation efforts within the district, Southeast High remained home to the children of the city’s white elite.8 While battles over integration played out in the 1970s, however, affluent white families increasingly left the public schools for smaller private schools on the east side of Wichita, as well as for a slowly expanding and adjacent suburban school district. This resulted in incremental yet noticeable changes in the demographic composition of Southeast’s student body and, with time, the overall level of academic achievement within the building. In response, as stated, school leaders introduced magnet

280

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs in separate high school buildings, effectively trading an equity problem of one kind for another. The inclusion of voices from the community over the course of these events seeks to capture what it was like to attend and work in the Wichita schools in the second half of the twentieth century. Through the unique process of “perspective taking” offered by in-depth and community-based interviews, this chapter presents a fine-grained analysis of a high school in a period of significant transition. The interviewees spoke directly to the events that shaped Wichita’s schools, including the origins of Southeast High, battles over desegregation, shifts in the student body composition late 1970s and early 1980s, and changes in the public perception of Southeast that had solidified by the early 1990s.9 Community members, school staff, and media hold diverse ideas about the origins of Southeast’s current reputation, and this chapter seeks to capture those beliefs, especially their tendency to downplay policy efforts with racist intentions.10 To add complexity to the narrative, US census data is used to describe the socioeconomic and racial composition of the school’s neighboring communities. District academic and suspension and expulsion data was collected to outline shifts in academic rigor and school disciplinary trends. Finally, it is worth noting that focusing on Wichita serves to broaden the range of locations historians and education researchers study in attempting to describe the creation of modern urban school systems, however defined. Larger cities such as Chicago, Kansas City, Nashville, and St. Louis, among others, boast rich scholarship that has contributed to sociological and policy-related questions about school segregation and its effects on underserved students and their loved ones.11 While those studies were used as a model for this work, the story of a mid-sized, reliably blue-collar city shifts the emphasis, which is told not only through city and district archival material, but also though primary oral history interviews and geospatial data and mapping. As a result, this chapter sheds new light on the social, historical, and spatial factors influencing our conception of urban schools, as well as how we might make them more equitable in the future.

The “Golden Years,” 1957–1979 Situated in an under-researched part of the country, Wichita, Kansas in the 1950s was on a course of rapid development that would set the pace for the city’s expansion for decades. Touted as an economic haven,

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

281

this mid-sized midwestern city attracted young families and small businesses with the promise of upward mobility. The metro population grew from 168,279 in 1950 to 254,698 in 1955. Wichita invested almost $60 million during this decade alone in infrastructure and development projects, employing thousands and insuring stability for the anticipated population growth.12 Wichita appeared preoccupied, and understandably so, with preparing for the continued growth. Figure 11.1 demonstrates efforts to project population characteristics from 1945 to 1980.13 After the purchase of the old municipal airport in 1951, the federal government made it possible for Wichita to continue growing at a rapid pace by spending over $37 million in the development and construction of a new Air Force base in the far southeast quadrant of the city. The east side of Wichita expanded with the continued growth of the aircraft manufacturing industry, spurred by government contracts related to the escalating military engagement in Korea. With growth came a need for strong investment, often in the form of bonds, to support the expansion of the Wichita Public Schools (WPS) facilities. To keep up with 2000–5000 per year student increase during

Fig. 11.1 Projected Population Growth in Wichita, 1945–1980

282

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

this decade, over 30 new elementary schools, 8 junior high schools, and 3 new senior high schools were added (Fig. 11.1).14 In addition to the growth of the district’s physical plant, another 10 peripheral districts were annexed by WPS during the 1940s. The expansion did not come without resistance, and the board of education was continually working to justify its purposes for the allocation of bond moneys as a result of 1950 and 1954 bond issues. In comparing the current facilities to districts in larger cities, it became apparent that if Wichita was going to offer a high-quality education to all of its families, investment had to occur at all levels, including an investment in administrative buildings and offices. Concerns about the costs associated with a growing district appeared in newspaper headlines. Comparing operating costs from 1902 to 1952, a Wichita Enquirer article noted that the annual budget of $42,104 (approximately $1,200,000 today) was dwarfed by the $19,888,082 (approximately $189,000,000 today) 18-month budget of 1951–1952 school year.15 These figures, under the headline “Costs Rocket,” ignored the per pupil expenditures that accounted for such an increase in budget, not to mention the overall expansion of the city. The district was in a battle to justify the steady increase in operating costs of the district. In a 1955 article defending the allocation of $500,000 ($4,700,000 today) funds for the administrative building, superintendent Dr. John Grubbs stated, “The board room is not set up to give proper hearing to what’s going on-we’ve been embarrassed.”16 As a result of the contentious 1954 bond issue calling for $6,499,000 ($60,800,000 today), continued media attention focused on the rapid growth of the student population of WPS, with particular attention being directed at the district’s ability to continue offering excellence in the classroom. On the heels of the opening of the new Southeast High, a headline reading “Nearly 70,000 Wichita Students Will Attend School Here This Fall,” the Wichita Tower outlined the district’s plans to continue adding qualified instructors. “There are sufficient instructors employed to assure Wichita youth and adults that classrooms opened in September will offer the ultimate in modern approach to an adventure in learning.”17 The new senior high school, which opened in 1957, served students from 10 to 12 grades and enrolled 1578 students in its first year. The school employed 67 teachers, and 3 administrators, which amounted to a student teacher ratio of 24:1.18 Situated in a modest single-family neighborhood, Southeast High boundaries served the largest area in the school system, and its

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

283

opening was intended to decrease the burden placed on the city’s oldest high school, Wichita East. The perceptions surrounding Southeast’s initial prestige derived from the boundary drawing and original demographic composition of the school. As one East High student remembers, the opening of Southeast dramatically changed the composition of East almost overnight, sparking feelings of resentment and misunderstanding: When they opened Southeast, of course they had to redraw boundaries. And at that time, the students that they took from East high for the most part were very upper income students, because we only had North and East and Southeast [high schools]. I remember a lot of my friends were here and then all of a sudden, they were over here as golden buffaloes. It was quite an interesting experience from the student’s perspective. We just knew that this big fancy new high school was built and all of our friends were there now.19

Although none of the Wichita Public Schools were integrated by law yet, Wichita East, being the oldest high school in the district, was the only racially integrated school at the time of Southeast’s opening, and, as is often the case, socioeconomic disparities in Wichita fell along racial lines. As such, the movement of students along the boundaries drawn changed the racial composition of East High dramatically. From the opening, community rhetoric began branding the new high school as “The Country Club School” as told by 1960s alumni of East High. In the words of an East student, “It was called the country club high school. It was called that because of the wealthy people who went there. Wealthy people and country clubs go together. Whether they do or not, it’s the perception. There was some resentment; it was kind of a public–private school.”20 Some differences were impossible to overlook, such as Southeast’s state-of-the-art facilities, but the freshness did not aid in hampering these perceptions: “They [Southeast families] had a brand-new school. East was old and it was the original high school in [Wichita]. I think it was like, ‘well why did they get all this brand-new glitzy stuff and were over here in the dingy East high school?’”.21 The 1960s continued to see a boom in population across the metro area, including the areas surrounding the new air force base at the southeast edge of town. This base was a major employer for Black service people, but, unfortunately, they were struggling to buy and rent homes

284

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

in the area. As was the case across the nation, Black service people faced discrimination in the housing market and were regularly denied loans. Real estate developers openly discriminated against Black families, pushing them away from this area of the city.22 Conversations surrounding the segregation of Wichita’s students surfaced at meetings of the school board as early as 1947, with a petition opposing the separation of students and teachers from the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, Mark Shepherd.23 The petition started a long and arduous process for Black students and families across the city. As a remedy, the school board hired two people to drive Black students (who volunteered) outside of their neighborhood attendance area to attend other Wichita schools throughout the city. The board also created a committee to study local race relations, chaired by white Quaker activist, Maria Turnbell. This initiative resulted in a series of observations in the fall of 1947, revealing the contours of a Jim Crow society in Wichita. Many surrounded the plight of Black children in the community, such as segregated parks and pools. Schools were also a major focal point, as the committee noted that Black students attended separate schools through the eighth grade, all taught by Black teachers. Finally, civic life was completely separated, evidenced by separate wings or sections of hospitals reserved for Black people, restaurants and movie theaters that did not serve Black patrons (unless the theaters had balconies or the restaurant was Black-owned), and, most concerningly, state laws that recognized restrictive covenants, which prevented the sale or rental of houses to Black buyers.24 From then on, there remained a core group of Wichita citizens committed to eliminating segregation in the community and its schools. As it stood throughout the 1950s and most of the 1960s, Black students and faculty were limited to schools in the northeast quadrant of the city, where enrollments were almost completely African American. Families living in these areas lacked choices mobility through housing and, as a result, lacked choices in schools. When asked about schooling during the 1960s, Maxine Johnson, an African-American employee of the district, stated, “That was the district [assignment area] we were in. That was during the time of busing, and that’s how my kids all went to East High School, but during the time when we moved here in the sixties it was still segregated because my kids, they had to go to the neighborhood [elementary] schools.”25

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

285

Continuing into the 1950s, this core group of citizens worked tirelessly, securing a school board decision in 1952 that established that Black families, now moving into previously all-white neighborhoods, had the right to send their children to either their neighborhood schools (which were marginally integrated) or to an all-Black school in the northeast part of the city.26 Due to the vague mandates of the Brown II decision in 1955 (which famously asked locales to end segregation “with all deliberate speed”), coupled with the local control allowed in the process, segregation continued to afflict the school system.27 Although the structures in place did not encourage change, members of the NAACP continued petitioning the school board into the 1960s, making headway in 1963 regarding the placement of Black teachers across the district: of the 156 Black teachers employed by WPS, the board reported that, for the first time, there were now Black teachers assigned to South High, Southeast High, and multiple majority white junior highs.28 This was an important change at Southeast, which, for its first six years of its existence, employed zero non-white teachers.

The Road to a Final Desegregation Plan In the mid-1960s, the onslaught of petitions and continued pressure from the anti-segregation coalition reached a boiling point surrounding boundary decisions for a new junior high in a more affluent part of the east side of Wichita. Roosevelt Junior High, as it was named, became central to the equity debate within the Black community, with some parents wanting access to resources and less crowded classrooms in their neighborhood schools, and others wanting access to an integrated school for their children.29 Roosevelt was a high-status school that fed, as one might expect, into the new Southeast High. Regardless of the purposes for the requests, it became evident that parents within the Black community were not backing down. In 1966, eighty percent of parents in one of the majority Black junior highs petitioned for their children to be able to transfer to nearby junior highs, including Roosevelt. With the debate reaching a momentary conclusion in 1966, it was decided that the school did not have room for Black transfer students. The district superintendent at the time explained that racism was at the core of the reluctance, noting, “When a school goes beyond thirty percent [Black], people begin to move.”30 This heated debate appeared to close with white families

286

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

retaining the majority and full access in this area, at the expense of the wishes of the Black community. Prior to the official boundary vote, the coalition of Black parents, led by NAACP president Ronald Cook, took an even stronger stance, boycotting their current junior high schools and stating in local newspapers, “This is the time to stop segregation in the junior high school system…Setting the boundaries for Roosevelt affords the opportunity to integrate the junior high system.”31 The school board meeting to decide boundaries drew a full house, with both white and Black families crowded together, some sitting on the floor. Arguing that de facto segregation is not the same as policy mandated segregation, the superintendent determined that families from the all-Black junior high school could send their children elsewhere, but only if they were able to pay for the transportation costs. One board member suggested that only those students holding A and B grades be allowed to transfer, heightening the levels of anger and distrust already felt by the Black community.32 With the Superintendent’s proposal winning approval, this was far from a win for those fighting segregation during the 1960s, but that did not stop the Black community from banding together to put a positive spin on the inequitable decision. Multiple community groups and families came together to create a fund to finance transportation for Black children unable to pay, calling the effort “Operation Transport.”33 By 1966, elementary schools had become the focal point for the district’s resistance to any form of integration. Black elementary schools continued to be overcrowded, which the board defended by allowing Black parents to transport their own children to other schools in the district at their own cost. The Black community was hardly satisfied, especially given the district’s efforts to retain the policies through the placement of additional portables at the most overcrowded of the seven Black elementary schools. A common proposed “solution” to overcrowding in segregated districts across the country, these portables became a tangible symbol of the district’s scrambling to redress racial inequity.34 Although the superintendent recommended that about 500 students be transferred to other schools with the support of free district transportation, he was countered with continued pushes from the board of education for placement of portables at approximately seven times the cost of transportation.35 Once more, the president of the local NAACP, Ronald Cook, became a vocal leader on the issue, stating, “You leave white classrooms open and stack Negroes on top of each other. If you tell

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

287

people in that area that you are putting that many additional portables on those sites, you are inciting trouble.”36 The proposed plan to place portables was put on hold due to the strong opposition by Black leaders. In an effort, roundly criticized, to understand the desires of the Black community, the superintendent canvassed homes in Black residential areas. This effort was seen as “too little, too late” by Black leaders, and it did not result in the resolution of the controversy at hand. In a complaint filed with HEW in 1966 by Ronald Cook of the NAACP, the district was charged with maintaining dual education systems. The complaint noted that almost ninety percent of Black teachers were assigned to all-Black schools, and, as a result, a strong movement was initiated supporting those fighting for racial equity. Approximately six months after the board’s vote on Roosevelt Junior High, the school board agreed to appoint a task force to investigate the problems, which it deemed the “Low Economic Area Problems” (LEAP) committee. It was comprised of multiple Black community members, church leaders, school board members, community business owners, and school staff. It took another seven months to complete the charge, but the committee was tasked with, and ultimately completed, a comprehensive report of the issues affecting the northeast Black residential area of the city. The report, “School and Society in One City,” ended with recommendations that were quite controversial, but they sparked discussions throughout Wichita. The report’s recommendations included the elimination of student tracking and grouping by ability, the desegregation of all schools through any means necessary, and the institution of tax-supported summer reading programs for students lagging in those skills.37 In 1968, as a result of the effort to quell an investigation started by HEW, the school board presented an additional plan to address the high concentration of Black students in elementary and junior highs in the northeast neighborhoods. This plan proposed the closure of the only allBlack junior high, assigning those students across the city to ensure an end to high concentration of Black students at any secondary school.38 Within this plan, as an extension of the integration of Black students throughout the city’s junior highs, Black students would also be bused to maintain racial balance throughout the city’s high schools. The plan also called for a halt on additional portable classrooms and new construction initiatives in Black elementary schools, which suggested updated facilities and larger learning spaces. It was negotiated by the board with significant opposition, but was finally adopted on January 6, 1969 to begin the following

288

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

school year. Although a cross-town busing plan was repeatedly suggested by HEW and by those compiling the LEAP report as the only viable solution to the inequities in the segregated system, desegregation at the secondary level was as far as the board was willing to go. Many believed this would not be the final iteration of an integration plan, but it would stand for the time being.39 The consistent work towards educational equity culminated after years of investigation into both housing and educational discrimination, with a federal mandate from HEW in 1969. This resulted in investigations and, ultimately, a demand from HEW to take appropriate measures to desegregate the all-Black schools in the area. The city continued to be torn on the racially charged issue of busing; sentiments on the matter were also fueled by comments made by President Nixon opposing busing as a solution to the nation’s racial inequities. This period also marked an increase in local school districts’ reliance on federal funds, and Wichita was no exception. Much of its Special Education funding, for example, was provided by the federal government and was put in jeopardy by noncompliance on the 1969 mandate. After much debate, the school board’s decision was stated in a letter to the Director of the Office of Civil Rights. The board president stated, “Our Board has considered further the matter of elementary school integration and has concluded it will not make a present commitment to abandon the neighborhood school concept and completely ‘desegregate’ the seven elementary schools by the fall of 1970 as you have requested.”40 The plan proposed held that only Black students would be bused in the secondary schools, continuing to place the disproportionate burden on the Black community. Continuing the incremental suggestions for a solution to the issue, the board proposed yet another plan to satisfy HEW for the 1970–1971 school year. It would close two elementary schools in the Black residential area, and bus those students to predominately white schools. The remaining five elementary schools in the Black residential area would continue to serve students from K-3, and transport students in grades 4–6 to other white schools. This plan, approved by the board in a ten to one vote, was again met with outrage by Black community members. Wichita’s Urban League president stated in response, “We will protest the savage, racist action of the Board of Education by a boycott. We are not only fighting the Board of Education, but the whole white power structure.”41 On January 14, 1970, just 234 of 3720 secondary Black students, and fifty-six of the 172 Black teachers across the district attended

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

289

school. Only five days after this effective boycott, HEW made its decision, stating that it planned to recommend enforcement proceedings against the district. The compliance gymnastics continued throughout the spring semester of 1970. The board suggested that white volunteers be bused to ease the burden on the Black community, which failed miserably, with fewer than one percent of white families volunteering. It was no surprise to those advocating a cross-busing policy.42 Finally, administrative hearings began in 1970 in Kansas City, Missouri to determine whether Wichita was in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and questioning whether the district used federal money to operate programs that were discriminatory. If so, HEW had the power to freeze all federal funds offered to the district until compliance was met. The case garnered significant national attention, as the outcome could influence desegregation guidelines after Supreme Court rulings on what was then defended as de facto segregation.43 As expected by the those in favor of integration in Wichita, the ruling stated that WPS was in violation of Title VII and would immediately lose funding from HEW, the National Science Foundation, Community Action Program, the Child Nutrition Act, the Manpower Development and Training Act, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The board was faced with a decision to “throw off the last vestiges of the old order” or to “tell the government to go to hell and keep its money” as stated by a school board member at the convening school board meeting in 1970.44 Ultimately, it decided to follow the suggestions presented by the LEAP committee and move forward with a final desegregation plan. The LEAP committee suggested the closure of three all Black elementary schools, busing Black students into the white elementary schools with the lowest enrollment numbers (approximately 4000 Black students bused), the busing of approximately 1000 white elementary students into formerly all Black elementary schools, and finally holding a commitment to an eighty-six percent to fourteen percent white to Black ratio in all Wichita Public Schools by all transportation means necessary. The final plan hardly satisfied the general public, but the school board was prepared for dissent.45 The summer of 1971—after all announcements had been made— became known for heated protests, marches, and anti-busing advertisements. Black residents protested the inequity of the incomplete desegregation plan, while whites protested the “destruction” of what they viewed as their neighborhood schools. On par with national trends, some whites

290

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

moved their children to private schools or left the district altogether, opting for growing suburban communities. Others filed lawsuits against the district to air their discontent. Three lawsuits calling for the cessation of busing were filed, but all lost.46 This decision held national significance, with a 1973 study highlighting Wichita as one of ten large districts (the only one in the Midwest) to successfully complete a desegregation plan and be “right on the mark,” along with Providence, Rhode Island; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Niagara Falls, New York; Pontiac, Michigan; and Pasadena, San Francisco, Riverside, Santa Monica, and Berkeley, California.47 The desegregation plan was framed as the first step on the road to integration, but not the end of the era of discrimination and unequitable educational opportunity.

Implications of the Desegregation Plan The district finally adopted a busing policy in 1970 that would satisfy HEW, marking the beginning of decades of change at Southeast High, which had remained one of the most affluent in the metro area, with local private schools seen as rivals and above any other Wichita public schools. Southeast also remained very large. Nancy Yoder, a district employee who graduated in 1969, spoke of its students in the years before busing: “When I worked there [in the 1990s], Southeast was very diverse, but when I was a student, we had about seven African American students out of the student body of 2500. My graduating class, I think we had about 660 students.”48 A district official commented, I think it started transitioning back in the early 1970s when we had forced integration and Southeast which at that time, I am guessing Southeast at that time was still predominantly white and with forced integration, all of a sudden non-white students were appearing at Southeast. That happened in all our high schools and elementary schools. I think that’s when the change probably began at Southeast.”49

As stated in the Wichita Public Schools Compliance Progress Report in June of 1969, the Black enrollment at Southeast almost tripled from 1968 to 1970. The anticipated enrollment increased from fifty-two to 144 Black students.50 With Black students making up fourteen percent of the entire district in 1969, Southeast’s enrollment percentage of less than six percent did not represent racial balance.

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

291

Southeast during the 1960s and 1970s was supported by intense parental involvement and significant fundraising. Academic rigor and extracurricular involvement were trademarks of the school. “I do know that there was great pride in the Southeast student body and the community, it was kind of ‘the school’ in Wichita. It won championships galore in athletics. It had high academic success with national merits and high ACTs and kids going on scholarships to Ivy League and West Coast, Stanford, Pepperdine. There was a great amount of pride in that.”51 Again, the message that Southeast was elite was reinforced by the networks of parents who rallied together to keep it well-funded and supported. The following quote from a former Southeast High student and later school staff member suggests that community support for the school high during this period: The booster club might be 40-50 people for a football team. Just the football team. They’d be lucky to get 40 people total to come to booster club meeting right now [2000s]. Parents were involved. Moms weren’t working as many do now. Dads were supportive; kids had parent support.52

Commenting on the power of the parental networks, long-time employee, Maxine Johnson, a Black security officer, described the booster gatherings: “Because when I started out these were the who’s who, you know, the Hadids [socially and economically influential Wichita family], all the big money and their booster club meetings were like at some big hotel, it really was. It was just like high dollar!”.53 When asked about how Southeast responded to busing in the early 1970s, a Southeast graduate compared it to South High, which served a less affluent community, They were different schools in the cultures that they had. Southeast had some diversity, and certainly that could lead to some issues, but I don’t remember anything that was significant. South had some issues that were very well based in bigotry and racism, that culture of South has the hardest working community of blue-collar workers that you can imagine. Southeast was more of a white-collar community. Excelled in the country club sports tennis, golf, swimming. Those are sports Southeast was always good at, goodness gracious. If you weren’t an elite golfer you weren’t making the team. Now they can’t get enough kids to fill a team. Same with tennis, you played year-round. If you made the team, you’re really good. That’s long gone. And South maybe didn’t have some of that. It was a country

292

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

club mentality for Southeast enough that it permeated and had an impact on some of things that happened in the building.54

This suggests that Southeast continued to set itself apart from other Wichita schools, which it had since its founding. From this student’s perspective, its students did not struggle with the seemingly constant racial conflict cited at other Wichita high schools during this time. These experiences were not congruent with the broader media representation, which depicted Wichita as largely divided over the final compliance plan. This quote speaks to an insulated atmosphere at Southeast during one of the district’s most turbulent decades.55 In a counter-narrative offered by Maxine Johnson, it is evident that the atmosphere of Southeast at the beginning of busing was in fact different than many other schools, but alternatively demonstrated a lack of full acceptance of the new community of students moving in, rather than overt racial violence. Johnson stated, “When they first started the integration, it wasn’t good, to me it wasn’t. The kids had to get up and get on the bus. I’ve always said, here in [Wichita], it’s only the African American kids that integrated. They were the ones who rode the bus. I was the bus supervisor at Southeast, so I knew. Our kids were the ones bearing the burden of integration.”56 When asked how the white families and students received the first wave of integration, she responded, “They did because this is what the law said [to] do. I always say the kids [Black kids] didn’t feel like it was their school. Over the years, that was the case, this is not our school, you know, this is their school. It was not good.”57

Little Harvard Transitions, 1980–1999 When analyzing community perception of the status of Southeast High during the 1970s and 1980s through first-hand interview data, a general theme emerges: Little Harvard, an elitist school, a “country club mentality,” the alpha dogs, Snob Hill, and the high school. Community pride and involvement were hallmarks of Southeast, so much so that this perception and pride permeated the classroom and extracurricular activities. At a time of demographic and social change, many remember Southeast weathering them with grace: I feel like our whole class was just one big group of friends. Even though you had classifications of people, you would have what we’d call the socials

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

293

and the Jesus freaks, and the druggies, and whatever. We all hung out together and we were all friends and I think that has to do with just the classrooms we were in. The parties that would happen, everybody would go. So yeah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot.58

Attending in the early 1980s, this Southeast graduate remembered a time when academic rigor continued to be high, and school pride was demonstrated through a commitment to sports teams and other activities. The district worked hard to convey the message that the integration plan had resulted in a successful model for other urban school districts to consider. With percentages of Black students steadily increasing at Southeast from two percent in 1969 up to sixteen percent in 1972, it became clear that school composition had changed.59 The district’s message was expressed clearly in a 1980 newspaper district supplement headline, “School integration success in Wichita.”60 Through consistently outlining the desegregation plan to the community, Wichita Public Schools maintained that shifts in the way the city educated its children were worth the work. The article referenced above boasted that “Although the obvious goal of Wichita’s desegregation program has been to try to assure equal educational opportunity for minority students, the program has provided benefits for both minority and majority students. Students now acquire a broader range of social contacts through their school experience and new friendships across racial lines are not uncommon.”61 According to many individuals interviewed, this opportunity for cross-racial friendships happened more often in structured school circumstances, such as sports and clubs, than organically in classrooms and hallways. The same Southeast graduate who reported that everyone hung out together also noted another facet of daily life at Southeast: “Another memory I have, there was a section of the old school where, and I don’t want to sound racist, but this was back then where all the Black people stood. That was like their area where they all congregated and I would have to walk by there to go to choir.”62 Although these memories recollected a series of cordial interactions, and she even points to many of her Black classmates as friends, this statement does not paint a picture of the social integration touted by the school district’s claims of full social integration. After being bused into Southeast, graduating in 1986, completing a college degree, and returning as principal some years later, Henry Bridge recalled his experience as a Black student during the mid-1980s:

294

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

I personally, being African American, I was kind of viewed differently amongst my peers because I was, I was smart if you will. I was getting tested gifted in the third grade, so I went to alternative schools until I went to Southeast. And I feel like personally I’ve benefited at Southeast at a time where, I would say some African Americans struggled because we were just viewed differently.63

Henry, who also participated in athletics, had many white friends. He referenced an understanding that his experiences were a bit skewed in comparison to many other Black students. The understanding that he was viewed differently was most pronounced outside of school when Henry stepped into the social environment of one of his wealthy, white classmates. This experience stood out in his memory as a turning point when he was no longer viewed as “cute and cuddly Henry,” but now a young Black man: I remember going over to the Fender’s house, for example, and Nick and I were good friends. They had a pool, you know what I mean? Wow. They didn’t have to go to a public pool. And I remember going to the door and his dad looks through the door. He looks at me, looks me up and down. He goes, Nick, it must be for you. Nick comes to the door or whatever, but he wouldn’t even let me in the house. I remember when the transition occurred, when it was cool for us to run around and hang out. I don’t want to say I ever lost my Blackness or my identity, but it was, I distinctly remember when our relationship status changed. I’m dating outside of my race. You know what I mean? When it just wasn’t cool, even though we all went to school together. You’re cute little cuddly Henry, and then at some point in there I was African American or Black Henry, but it was about eighth grade, eighth or ninth grade.64

With Southeast High having two different feeder junior high schools, many noted that these schools were proxies for social status, which seem to have remained memorable even thirty years later. As one student recalled, Several of us went to Norris Junior High as a group and then we all moved over to Southeast and then we combined with the Roosevelt kids. I know you’re talking about Southeast, but Roosevelt was a feeder. Roosevelt was probably eighty percent white and very affluent as a junior high. Norris was the more, the poorer of the two and Norris and Roosevelt fed into

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

295

Southeast. So, if you were a Roosevelt kid, yeah, you know what I mean? You were the part of that, I’m going to say elitist, you know what I mean? If you were a Norris kid, we were reviewed differently and we’ve talked about that still. Even at our ten-year, twenty-year, thirty-year reunion of how we’ve had some of these discussions.65

To the student, these origins matter, especially considering the contentious proposed integration plan at Roosevelt that was ultimately voted down. Ten years later, the status of one’s junior high continued to saturate the experiences of students at Southeast. In neighboring Oklahoma, supporters of neighborhood schools saw a large win over city-wide busing in the early 1990s. The local Wichita Enquirer published an article in January of 1991 that outlined a five to three U.S. Supreme Court case Board of Education of Oklahoma v. Dowell , which determined that the local school board in Oklahoma City had successfully eliminated “vestiges of past discrimination to the extent practicable,” allowing it to eliminate busing programs and restore local control.66 This case set a national precedent that worried many supporters of the school desegregation plan adopted by WPS in 1970. The article communicated to the community that since the Wichita school desegregation plan was technically not ordered by a court, it was not directly affected by the ruling. The school district did not see an elimination of this plan for decades to come.

District Policy Changes: Trading One Problem for Another During this period, the district adjusted to many changes under the new leadership of Dr. Roger Dougherty, who was named superintendent in 1987. Many of his proposals were met with resistance from teachers, and much of the resistance came from teachers at Southeast. The teaching staff at Southeast was considered “top notch,” quite politically savvy and powerful, and, according to Dennis Aust, a Southeast alumni and 20 year English teacher, As a researcher, he came in saying, ‘okay, we’re going to have criterion based tests so we won’t have to measure ourselves by the standardized tests of everybody else.’ So they tried to do that, but you know how hard

296

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

it is to write tests and how the standardized tests are precise and they need test reviews. It was just a slop validation process, just slop. Then that also meant that he wanted the curriculum toned down. You said we’re not going to have as many honors classes or w’re going to try to get minorities in the honors classes, which is a good idea. And which teachers should have really embraced that a little bit, but oh, it was just like, ‘well, what are we going to do? Then they’re just going to fail? We would all look bad?’ And that was a kind of hectic the first couple of years.67

Dougherty’s policy changes and calls for a more dynamic style of teaching continued to be met with resistance from teachers, especially as the demographics of WPS shifted. As one teacher recalled, For instance, one of the heads of the social studies department, a great lecturer and, my first son and nephew were in his class. They enjoyed it, but they said, and this is like 1989, but as they look around, they would see people just putting their heads down. And so he’d be lecturing the class of twenty-five and there’ll be five people with their heads up. When he gets evaluated, same thing. So he’s pissed because his evaluations go down. But he wouldn’t change. And he became one of the really defiant ones.68

Another policy change in the late 1980s was associated with heightened concerns surrounding student behavior and marked the beginning of an era of increased media scrutiny surrounding public schooling in Wichita. The 1988–1989 school year was the first year that a large redistricting plan—associated with the move of sixth graders into junior highs and ninth graders into high schools—was implemented across district. Teachers, students, and school staff had grown accustomed to high school beginning in tenth grade, but, with this new plan, students from the neighboring campus of Norris Junior High and the new high-status, Roosevelt Junior High would transition into Southeast their ninth grade year. Southeast was still very much a focal point for the students coming out of Norris Junior High as an important stepping stone in their educational journey. As noted by a 1991 Southeast graduate, At that time [Southeast] was a middle to upper class school and they did some redistricting and more students from lower income areas started to move in during that time because at the 1988 they went from having what

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

297

they called middle school and it went from seventh, eighth and ninth to six, seven, eight. So when I went when I was a ninth grader in junior high school in 1988 I moved to Southeast, but the next year eighth graders moved on and got to go to high school. So that was the transition year from freshman joining high school here and it was very, very different because in junior high school when you went to high school, you felt like you were grown to the junior high school students. So that was a big change because you had to add more administrators and teachers. Um, sports had to change because we had, um, varsity, junior varsity and sophomore, but now you had varsity, JV, sophomore and freshmen. And so, that was a change. You need to add more. Whether academic or it was for extra curricular activities, it all changed because you had to add on. So that was a huge change.69

Along with the added necessity of personnel, resources, and extracurricular activities, student behavior began to challenge the school system. This adjustment period became very public through a series of newspaper articles that summarized spikes in instances of student behavioral problems that resulted in suspensions. As shown in Fig. 11.2, there was a dramatic increase in student behavioral incidents from 1988–1989 school year to the following year. The attending newspaper article continued to discuss the nature of disciplinary incidents and suggested school officials were surprised by the increase. The Youth Services Director for the district mentioned that the district as a whole was “stumped,” and an equal distribution of incidents across all secondary schools eliminated the possibility of a school-specific crack down on behavior.70 Although the largest jump occurred in the sixth-grade population, the numbers were cause for concern across all schools. The local newspapers were inundated with articles that referenced district officials’ efforts to address student behavior. A local newspaper article cited a “basic breakdown in respect for authority at all levels, local principal of South High set her sights to finding solutions to help the increasing number of ‘troubled students’ cope with outside circumstances resulting in negative behaviors at school.” Countering this narrative, the superintendent is quoted reassuring the public that “schools are safe.” Many quotes in the article demonstrate an air of distrust in leadership coming directly from building employees. The chair of the social studies department at Southeast was quoted stating that schools “have not developed an appropriate response to some of the changes in society.”71 These statistics, and further school staff validation of the problem, continued

298

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

Fig. 11.2 Increase in Suspensions in Wichita Public Schools, 1987–1990

to be of concern to the public and contributed to an increase in public apprehension of the ability of WPS to be seen as safe and effective. Across multiple interviews, moreover, it was apparent that the changes in racial composition and socioeconomic status of the study body were the foundations of this fear of change. Many interviewees understood Southeast to be a perceived oasis amid the demographic shifts, and some of the language interviewees utilized to describe the school harkens back to times of homogeneity—when Southeast was primarily white, wealthy, and college-bound. The following is an excerpt of an interview that

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

299

commented on attitudes of Southeast staff during this time of transition, specifically the changes in status, The ninth graders didn’t get treated very well. They kind of acted a little childish there. The teachers didn’t like it at all. A lot of them really had forgotten why they wanted to be teachers in the first place. I think it was like, “don’t mess with us we have a great thing going here! We were the Harvard of Wichita for a long time and now, now we’re just lower income housing like everybody else”, but that was the demographic of the neighborhood. There were fewer and fewer of the affluent people come in sending their children to Southeast, whereas there might be four or five honors Sophomore classes, now there were only two. And there were of course, still sharp kids, but it was homogenized before and now they were just like everybody else.72

The jump in the number of suspensions also fueled a growing sense of uneasiness regarding school safety, notably among the white, middle-class residents. Of note, community comments in media outlets increasingly referenced the increase of “gang presence in schools” as the cause of the spike in disciplinary action in the 1989–1990 school year.73 There was some violence among students, but the issue of gangs in Wichita schools was much more complicated than what the public was often told and the rhetoric in the media was regularly misleading. Students who were documented as having any number of affiliations with their peers, for example, were labeled by the school as “gang members” throughout their time as students. As a result, simple conflicts pertaining to normal high school life, such as gossip, relationship issues, or family squabbles, would be reported as a “gang fight,” due to the label placed on the student. One Southeast alumni recalls the police being called to investigate a “gang fight,” which was actually just a fight between two girls over a boy, an altercation that posed no threat to the rest of the student body. These calls were easily documented by media because of their public nature. In turn, they were easily blown out of proportion, increasing the fear surrounding Southeast and other Wichita schools. Many families, who did not live near the school or have any first-hand experience with actual gang violence, were left relying solely on media reports of the problem.74 Perhaps as a result of the sensational coverage, the last decade of the twentieth century ushered in a new understanding of the issues facing the city’s high schools. “We’re at the mercy of a lot of things happening in the community that come into your school” stated Southeast principal

300

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

when asked to comment about community fears of gang issues infiltrating the school. The teachers and staff interviewed noted a significant shift regarding student safety and the community’s perception of the school. When asked to use one word to describe Southeast High School in the 1990s, one alumnus and longstanding teacher was unequivocal: “gangs.” She continued to describe hall duty during some of her earlier years teaching at Southeast, noting, We had more diversity come in. We had more gangs. I can remember this particular year I was on hall duty and right around the corner, a group of boys were chanting some things about the Crips and the Bloods, so it was a little bit more scary. Then they wore things that represented their gangs. Then we kind of caught on to some of that and then they had wash rags that would affiliate them with a certain gang. They kind of versed us on some of that, but I don’t think all of us knew exactly what to do yet to understand the culture.75

Many of the teachers in the 1990s had taught at Southeast for a number of years, graduated from Southeast, and even possibly still lived in the surrounding neighborhoods. The majority of the teaching staff remained white, and they often attributed the increase in poverty in the school to a breakdown in parental supervision and discipline at home, as it compared to the preceding decades. They never suggested there were structural reasons, decades-old, that played a role in creating the situation at Southeast. One white teacher explained, If I got in trouble at school, I was in more trouble at home. Now the kids get in trouble at school, and the parents are pissed at you as the administrator, or the teacher. But what happens to the kid? Hold your kids accountable, please! That doesn’t happen like it used to happen. Part of the issue is parenting.76

With time, the public perception of Southeast shifted in the minds of the city’s residents. In turn, parents with options and mobility (typically white parents) began looking for alternatives, either in private schools, in neighboring districts, or—often—in newly conceived test-in options in WPS.

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

301

District Seeks to Retain Students with Policy Initiatives By the 1990s, Wichita offered many alternative choices to keep students within the public system, most notably Northeast Magnet and East High’s IB program, and both immediately garnered the attention of white families with options. One white parent interviewed, being confident in his sons’ abilities to choose good peer groups, chose to send them to Southeast. Alternatively, he and his wife chose to send their youngest daughter to Northeast Magnet due, in part, to there not being anyone to “look after her” if she went to Southeast. Sentiments like these were increasingly common and demonstrative of shifts in public opinion. Changes in community perception were accompanied by social composition shifts happening in the areas directly surrounding Southeast, as Figs. 11.3 and 11.4 demonstrate.77 Figure 11.3, in particular, shows the percentages of adults twenty-five and older who held a college degree (the school is marked by the black marker), which here serves as a proxy of socioeconomic status and elevated levels of cultural capital. In 1980, adults twenty-five and older who held a college degree in the census tracts directly surrounding Southeast were thirteen and thirtythree percent. These percentages dropped by nearly fifty percent each by the following census date of 1990, and, as stated, they were accompanied the increasingly negative rhetoric that surrounded the school. As this story continued to progress into the early 2000s, demographic shifts like these continued to fuel conversations about what “types of people and students” called Southeast home, and what it meant to be “a good school,” both in Wichita and the nation. The implementation of the magnet and IB programs in the 1990s had a strong impact on the composition of the district, functioning as the catalyst for changes in enrollment between Southeast and its neighboring schools. But they were merely a means to another inequitable end, keeping high-achieving students enrolled in the district instead of transferring to one of the increasing number of private school options or out of the district altogether.78 While other large urban school districts indeed lost enrollment at a dramatic rate, the Wichita Public Schools were able to retain their enrollment numbers, but at the expense of the other high schools in the city, including Southeast.

302

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

Fig. 11.3 College Completion in Adults Twenty-Five Years and Older, 1980

Conclusion The mid-twentieth century in Wichita, just as in the majority of mid-to large-sized American cities, was marked by rapid social and demographic shifts. In Wichita, most of these shifts happened in the southeast quadrant of the city, pushing city planners and the school board to consider a large bond and a new high school. This area of Wichita grew in large part because of a $37 million ($330 million in current US dollars) investment by the US government in the construction of an air force base. Growth in student enrollment during the 1950s signaled an increased need for investment in public schools, and, as a result, Southeast High School opened in 1957 with an enrollment of 1578 tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students. This area of Wichita was home to a majority white,

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

303

Fig. 11.4 College Completion in Adults Twenty-Five Years and Older, 1990

middle-to-upper class populous, and the school’s profile reflected this status during its first few decades. The racial composition of the school reflected the city’s segregated housing patterns, which were a result of government sanctioned restrictive covenants, exclusive access to subsidized housing for whites and racist real estate practices.79 During the latter part of the 1960s, the Black community in Wichita fought tirelessly towards the goal of more equitable education for their children. In 1966, over eighty percent of Black parents at one of the city’s middle schools petitioned for access to the newest middle school, which was a feeder to Southeast High. This petition sought to ease the overcrowded classrooms in the neighborhood

304

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

schools in the Black community in the northern sector of the city. Continuing the battle for educational equity in Wichita, the NAACP filed a complaint with the federal Health, Education and Welfare office citing the same problem seen a few years prior: segregated and overcrowded schools. In 1969, the district chose not to comply with the HEW request to bus students from the white community and the Black community. This choice brought intrusive scrutiny from HEW and finally administrative hearings at the federal level, which resulted in the district adopting a comprehensive desegregation plan. The plan affected the composition of all Wichita schools, and the composition and status of Southeast as “The Country Club School” began to shift. The community surrounding Southeast High saw shifts in racial and socioeconomic composition during the 1980s and 1990s. The declining levels of educational capital in the neighborhood surrounding the school are most notable and telling when analyzing the declining status of the school. Socioeconomic and racial composition shifts influenced how the Wichita community saw Southeast High, but this was clouded by the often-unsubstantiated claims of school decline and violence. This social experience, coupled with public scrutiny of the safety within the school leaves us to question the driving forces behind the two important district policy changes of this time. The first of these policy changes moved ninth graders from middle school into the high schools across the city, which caused tension among teachers and staff in Southeast. The second policy added an IB program to East High School and the selective Northeast Magnet High School program, which both shaped the academic landscape in WPS for years to come, which, by pulling students with high test scores elsewhere, contributed to the decline in status of what was once “The Country Club School.” The policies initiated to retain white and middle-class families, after an onslaught of race-based fear and anger associated with integration, had negative consequences for the reputation of Southeast. Furthermore, the ways in which residents of Wichita have come to understand the origins of Southeast’s reputation matter greatly for future policy efforts. As long as the dominant narrative tends to ignore the blatantly racist policies—both in housing and education—that guided Southeast’s trajectory at every turn, it stands to reason that there will be little political will to use justice-oriented policies to address them, let alone reverse them. In Wichita, the so-called “good” and “bad” high schools did not form in a vacuum. They were created over multiple decades.

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

305

As researchers of schools, therefore, we should take seriously the power of memory in obscuring the history, assigning blame, and holding our schools and their leaders accountable.

Notes 1. Warren, Earl, and Supreme Court Of The United States. U.S. Reports: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483. 1953. Periodical. https:// www.loc.gov/item/usrep347483/.; Burger, Warren Earl, and Supreme Court Of The United States. U.S. Reports: Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267 . 1976. Periodical. https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep433267/. 2. White flight is traditionally defined by the movement of white families from city centers to suburbs often with subsidy from the federal government during the 1950s and 1960s as in Kenneth T. Andrews, “Movement-Countermovement Dynamics and the Emergence of New Institutions: The Case of ‘White Flight’ Schools in Mississippi,” Social Forces 80, No. 3 (2002): 911–936. This definition does not completely encompass the evolution of the modern phenomenon of white families also retaining residence within a city center, but choosing to send their children to private, parochial or even selective charter institutions. For a discussion on this expanded definition see Erika K. Wilson, “The New White Flight.” Duke J. Const. L. & Pub. Pol’y 14 (2019): 233. 3. For a discussion on the origins of the definition of urban core schools, typically seen in large cities see: John Rury, Urban Education in the United States: A Historical Reader (Springer, 2005). 4. Kansas Department of Education Report Card, 2017–2018. https:// ksreportcard.ksde.org/home.aspx?org_no=D0259&bldg_no=1842&rpt Type=1. 5. Data substantiated by yearbooks depicting an all-white student body and teaching staff. Southeast High yearbooks from 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1961 all tout above average academic programming and scholarship, as well as numerous acceptances to elite college programs. 6. Gretchen Eick, Dissent in Wichita (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 2–4. 7. LEAP Committee, “School and Society in One City,” (Wichita: Unified School District No. 259, July 1969). 8. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 9. Ibid. 10. For a discussion on this particular definition of school reputation see: D.A. Jenkins, “School Reputation as a Site of Struggle: An Investigation

306

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

of the Impact of School Choice in Washington, DC on a Neighborhood Public School,” Urban Review 52 (2020): 904–923. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s11256-020-00562-2. In the same manner that this study draws on community, staff and student perceptions, Jenkins utilizes these to develop a conceptual frame to analyze the material impacts of school reputation on modern urban schools. Examples of the existing extensive historical work in larger urban settings see: Dionne Danns, Desegregating Chicago’s Public Schools: Policy Implementation, Politics, and Protest, 1965–1985 (Springer, 2014); Eve L. Ewing, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side (University of Chicago Press, 2018); Ansley T. Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (University of Chicago Press, 2016); Hope C. Rias, St. Louis School Desegregation: Patterns of Progress and Peril (Springer, 2018); John L. Rury and Shirley A. Hill, The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling, 1940–1980: Closing the Graduation Gap (Teachers College Press, 2015). Wichita & Nation, Decisions for Development (1982), 193–208. Kansas State Board of Agriculture (Population); Sedgwick County Health Department (Birth Rates & Number of Births); Larry Smith Economic Base Study (Population Projections). Sondra VanMeter, Our Common School Heritage (Shawnee Mission, KS: Inter-Collegiate Press, 1977), 189. “Wimberly, School Population Boosted 10 Times in Half Century,” (Wichita Eagle, 1952, September 8). S. VanMeter, Our Common School Heritage (Shawnee Mission, KS: InterCollegiate Press, 1977), 189. “Nearly 70,000 Wichita Students Will Attend School Here This Fall,” (Wichita Beacon, 1957, August 25). Nina Davis, “A History of Wichita Public School Buildings,” (Unified School District No. 259, 1978). All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. Ibid. Ibid. Eick, Dissent in Wichita (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 49. “Board of Education Agenda,” (Wichita Public Schools, 1947, May 5). A. Michener, “Committee Report on Study of Community Resources for Race Relations Clinic, Wichita, Kansas,” (Ablah Library Special Collections, Wichita State University, 1947, October 4).

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

307

25. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 26. “Board of Education Agenda,” (Wichita Public Schools, 1951, September 4). 27. For a definition of de facto segregation see: Erica Frankenberg, and Kendra Taylor, “De Facto Segregation: Tracing a Legal Basis for Contemporary Inequality,” JL & Education 47 (2018): 189, which separates this form of segregation from de jure segregation by the legal bounds of segregation happening as a result of private choices which are protected by law and not a result of legal/policy mandates. The usage of this term does not contradict the extensive work on the myth of de facto segregation, see: Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Liveright Publishing, 2017), rather directs discussion towards the effects of segregation of this nature, without diving into the realities of the origins of policy driven segregation. 28. “Board of Education Agenda,” (Wichita Public Schools, 1963, August 5). 29. This tension arose as a response to the vast racial inequities seen throughout the district. Examples of these inequities are over-crowded Black primary schools, homogenous teaching staffs and no equitable future plans for integration of the school system. 30. Eick, Dissent in Wichita, 31. 31. “Board of Education Agenda,” (Wichita Public Schools, 1960). 32. VanMeter, Our Common School Heritage, 268–271. 33. “Board of Education Agenda,” (Wichita Public Schools, 1960, October 3). 34. For other examples of portables as temporary solutions see: Dionne Danns, Desegregating Chicago’s Public Schools: Policy Implementation, Politics, and Protest, 1965–1985 (Springer, 2014); John L. Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools: Benjamin Willis and the Tragedy of Urban Education,” History of Education Quarterly 39, No. 2 (1999): 117–142. 35. “Board of Education Agenda,” (Wichita Public Schools, 1962, April 16). 36. Wichita Beacon (1968, May 27). 37. LEAP Committee, “School and Society in One City,” (Wichita: Unified School District No. 259, July 1969). 38. “Plan of Compliance Wichita Public Schools,” (USD #259, 1968, December 2). 39. Ibid. 40. Alvin Morris, “Letter to Leon Panetta,” (1969, August 19). 41. J. Stringer, “All Black Elementary Schools Virtually Emptied by Boycott,” The Wichita Beacon (1970, January 15).

308

L. E. COLEMAN-TEMPEL

42. Jack Kennedy, “City’s Integration Stride Called Both Short, Long,” The Wichita Eagle (1970, September 18). 43. J. Stringer, “All Black Elementary Schools Virtually Emptied by Boycott,” The Wichita Beacon (1970, January 15). 44. Jack Kennedy, “City’s Integration Stride Called Both Short, Long,” The Wichita Eagle (1970, September 18). 45. Ibid. 46. Kennedy, “City’s Integration Stride Called Both Short, Long,” (1970, September 18). 47. Article found in USD 259 museum and archives from an unnamed newspaper source. The 1973 study was pulled from a national study of desegregation plans, but the official authors of the study are unknown as the article was an excerpt upon retrieval. 48. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 49. Ibid. 50. Stringer, “All Black Elementary Schools Virtually Emptied by Boycott,” (1970, January 15). 51. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Furnas, “School Battles Blamed on Outside Agitators,” The Wichita Eagle and Beacon (1970, September 19); Kennedy, “City’s Integration Stride Called Both Short, Long,” (1970, September 18); Stringer, “All Black Elementary Schools Virtually Emptied by Boycott,” (1970, January 15). 56. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Brian Grace Berry, and Leonard Wesley (Ad Hoc Desegregation Committee: Final Report, June, 1991). 60. “School Integration Success in Wichita,” (Wichita Public Schools Newsletter for Parents and Community, 1980, February). 61. Ibid. 62. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 63. Ibid.

11

SHIFTING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WICHITA’S SOUTHEAST ...

309

64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Epstein, “Busing Efforts Hit Breaks,” The Wichita Eagle 1991, January 16). Case mentioned: William H. Rehnquist, and Supreme Court Of The United States, U.S. Reports: Board of Ed. Of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237. 1990. Periodical. https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep498237/. 67. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Sevetson, “Jump in Suspensions Stuns School Officials,” The Wichita Eagle (1990, August 17), 4A. 71. Ibid. 72. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 73. Sevetson, “Jump in suspensions stuns school officials,” The Wichita Eagle (1990, August 17), 4A. 74. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. U.S. Census Bureau (1980). Total Population College Degree, 1980. Retrieved from: https://www.socialexplorer.com/4b80b0169c/ edit; U.S. Census Bureau (1990). Total Population College Degree, 1990. Retrieved from: https://www.socialexplorer.com/4b80b0169c/edit. 78. All interviews were confidential; the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. All names utilized within this chapter are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of interviewees. 79. Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Liveright Publishing, 2017).

CHAPTER 12

Funding the “High School of Tomorrow”: Inequity in Facility Construction and Renovation in Rural North Carolina, 1964–1997 Esther Cyna

“Some of your school buildings could apply for Social Security,” a representative of Construction Control Corporation said of the Robeson County Schools in 1997.1 The consultant, Leonard Pellicer, found that the county had some of the oldest and most inadequate school buildings in the state. He estimated that the district needed over $239 million to pay for school construction projects, including a brand new high school.

Dick Brown, “High School of Tomorrow,” The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), September 14, 1969, IV, 1. E. Cyna (B) Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_12

311

312

E. CYNA

The survey came after decades of struggles to reform school funding for construction and renovation in North Carolina.2 Buildings aged, the economic crisis of the 1970s strained budgets, and demands for the modernization of high schools to keep up with evolving standards of equipment plunged many poor rural counties such as Robeson in deep financial distress. The complexity of school funding in North Carolina led to astonishing situations. In Warren County, in the northeastern Piedmont region, the county commissioners’ pledge to not increase taxes in the early 1980s puts the school board in the impossible position of having to choose between building a new high school with no funds to furnish and equip it, or prioritizing equipment over the planned expansion.3 The local newspaper attributed the dilemma to a “drastic reduction in the capital outlay appropriation to the school budget by the Warren County Board of Commissioners in their efforts to ‘hold the tax rate down.’” The sudden budget cuts, decided by the Board of County Commissioners (the entity responsible for raising taxes and administering the county’s budget), happened while the new Warren County High School was in the middle of construction. Building a high school is the most expensive capital investment a school district can make beyond its operating expenditures, and, as such, it marks a significant event in the history of a school district. The sense of pride and belonging associated with high schools adds to the stakes of building a new one, and triggers interest, mobilization, and sometimes controversies in surrounding communities.4 Additionally, a new high school often implies altering attendance zones, modernizing equipment, and it symbolizes new educational opportunities.5 This chapter highlights these crucial moments in several school districts in North Carolina at different moments in time between 1964 and 1995, and it sheds light on the parental, citizen, labor, political, and financial mobilizations that high school construction has entailed. A high school building represents the opportunities that a district provides to its students beyond the symbolic power of its façade. Research has shown that the physical environment matters for student learning, and school buildings provide an important and underutilized angle to our understanding and articulation of educational inequality.6 For that reason, high schools have held a particular place in school finance litigation, because attorneys have emphasized reduced opportunities to meet graduation standards, as well as unequal equipment, in poorer districts.

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

313

Educational historians, however, have rarely focused on funding for educational facilities.7 In this chapter, I argue that looking at funding for the construction of new high schools allows us to see a schooling issue at the nexus of land use, urban and rural planning, racial segregation, school district consolidation, funding responsibilities, and school bond votes. Studying high school construction and renovation expands the framework of school finance history beyond the reliance on property taxes, giving the field the chance to investigate bond issues, county allocations, and state intervention in funding for educational facilities.8 While the specific arrangements of North Carolina’s school funding structures may be unique, the challenges of decentralization and racial and socioeconomic inequality that they reveal resonate nationally. As a case study, North Carolina illuminates complex schemes of district, county, and state responsibility. Beginning in 1931 with the School Machinery Act, the state assumed responsibility for its public schools’ operating costs, including teacher salaries, whereas county governments were required to provide for capital expenses, such as school construction and maintenance (Fig. 12.1).9 Local governments, therefore, cover about 95% of all capital funds, and most funds that localities raise come from property taxes. As it defined funding responsibilities for the first time, 1931 Act designated county governments as the unit for operating schools, with county commissioners as allocators of county funds. In counties that have several school districts, local units compete for county funds. The poorest districts often cannot raise sufficient funding, leaving them dependent on county funds in part or exclusively. Many poor school districts shift the capital outlay money (for construction and maintenance) that they receive from county commissioners to cover their day-to-day expenses and keep schools open. In Halifax County, for example, county commissioners’ minutes from the 1980s show that out of the three school districts in the county, the poorest, Halifax County Schools, moved capital outlay money around every few months.10 County commissioners had the authority to sanction these last-resort transfers. As a result of these districts scrambling for funds, school officials ran out of money to maintain, renovate, or build facilities. Deferred maintenance locked school districts in chronic financial crisis (Fig. 12.2).11 This chapter pays particular attention to rural counties.12 Diverse in their demographics and distinct in their educational landscapes, rural counties exhibit both the unsustainability of underfunding and the power of local authorities to use school finance as a tool to inequitably distribute

314

E. CYNA

Fig. 12.1 Representation of School Funding for Facilities in North Carolina

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

315

14.1% Percentage of Local Budgets for Repairs

12.7% 11.4%

11.0% 9.6% 8.6% 6.7%

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1982

Fig. 12.2 Percentage of School District Budgets Dedicated to Repair (National Average), 1982 (Source American Association of School Administrators, “The Maintenance Gap: Deferred Repair and Renovation in the Nation’s Elementary and Secondary Schools,” 1983, 10–11)

resources within a county. A decline in student population, which shrinks per-pupil state funding, combined with the increased cost of maintaining and modernizing aging buildings, put rural school districts under acute pressure, leading to untenable situations.13 A 1992 report by The North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center summarized these struggles by describing the difficult position of local leaders, who, “[at] a time when they need to be planning for the future […] are strapped with the needs of the present.”14 This vicious cycle pushed local leaders to choose “saving a penny and losing the school.”15 That said, the trajectories of high school construction projects in rural counties show that the declension narrative is only one aspect of these incredibly diverse and inescapably local stories. Political choices and public policies at the state and county level have placed significant power in the hands of often predominantly white county commissions, which are the taxing and funding entities in the state. These commissions have consistently and systematically chosen to engineer poverty in rural, nonwhite communities. The crumbling buildings discussed in this chapter,

316

E. CYNA

therefore, are symbols of both an unsustainable funding system and of individual decisions made at all levels of educational policymaking. As this chapter shows, multiple governance structures—namely school districts, counties, and the state—have compounded inequalities and created significant opportunities for racial discrimination in the allocation of funds. These challenges have disproportionately affected low-income students of color. Older schools in North Carolina and elsewhere have tended to be located in poorer communities, and they, relative to newer schools, are populated by a higher percentage of students who receive free or reduced-cost lunches.16 Because the local needs for school construction, waves of political activism, and moments of funding allocation are never linear processes, this chapter intentionally dispenses with a neat chronology, providing instead an opportunity to look at the historical persistence of specific processes that have occurred across time and space.17 This organizational strategy pays respect to the work of James D. Anderson, who, in his study of Black high schools and school construction in the South in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shows that the fight for equality in educational resources has been a constant, nearly cyclical struggle. Anderson, for example, documents the systematic diversion of public funds from Black taxpayers to white schools during Reconstruction.18 Decades later, in Little Rock, Arkansas, white public officials acted similarly, spending the entirety of the city’s school funds to build a new, superior white high school in 1928, thus preventing the construction of a new Black high school.19 And through his study of the Black common schools and the Rosenwald movements between 1917 and 1932, Anderson shows that “school construction campaigns were not isolated incidents but examples of widespread grass-roots reforms that epitomized the educational beliefs and behavior of black southerners.”20 All the while, Anderson makes clear, wealthier white communities have consistently used school finance to divert funds from people of color for their exclusive benefit, using school district lines and the discretion of predominantly white county commissions. As such, I situate local debates about high school construction in the second half of the twentieth century within the longer history of school equalization efforts to stress continuities in wealthier, white communities’ use of school finance policies to uphold privilege, even decades after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that the explicit racial segregation of educational facilities was unconstitutional.21 School funding policies

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

317

remained a powerful instrument for the creation of dual, inequitable systems. Using archival sources, oral history interviews, and newspaper coverage, this chapter seeks to expand the frame of analysis from legal theory on the use of property taxes to broader issues of resource inequities in school funding formulae at the county and state levels. This survey of high school construction controversies across the state of North Carolina from 1964 to 1995, in particular, reveals many opportunities for political discretion and decision-making in the raising and spending of capital funds. First, I focus on politics at the county level to trace the advocacy of citizens who mobilized to support or challenge county and city officials in their plans to construct new high schools that would maintain or disrupt racial segregation. Despite their varied outcomes, these moments of upheaval highlight the unique position of high schools in calling attention to school district lines and district consolidation. Then, I shift to a discussion of state governance patterns and state-county funding responsibilities to show how residents in rural districts mobilized in the legislature and courts to influence state funding formulae, thus recasting rural counties as sites of robust political and educational organizing.

“The Road to Disrepair”22 : School Districts Funding New Construction for (De)Segregation Some high school constructions projects have led to a complete reevaluation and overhaul of district boundaries. In Moore County, a rural county known for its golf courses, the building of Pinecrest High School in the 1960s created an immediate controversy (Fig. 12.3), and led to the consolidation of the three school districts in the county, which had been fragmented into small districts around predominantly white, wealthier towns, to the exclusion of residents in the more rural parts of the county.23 The $1.65 million bill associated with the new, ambitious project for a brand new high school pushed county residents to reflect on the inefficiency and inequity of maintaining three separate systems, especially since two city school districts, Pinehurst and Southern Pines, concentrated the county’s wealth.24 In 1964, Southern Pines requested $175,300 from the county’s common pot of money for a high school construction project estimated at $730,000.25 The district had just approved a bond issue of $554,700 in the fall of 1963.26

318

E. CYNA

Fig. 12.3 Pinecrest High School, Moore County, 1969 (Source The Pilot, September 7, 2013)

Because Southern Pines asked county commissioners to allocate the largest part of the county’s resources to build their own high school, other districts in the county naturally protested the allocation process and pushed for consolidation for a more equitable repartition of the county’s overall expenses. The total amount that districts in Moore County requested exceeded available county funds. A reporter in the local newspaper lamented that there was “no answer to this impasse—the kind of thing that generates bitterness and recriminations among the school units […]. These capital outlay muddles will continue, to the detriment of the school program in all the districts.”27 He promoted the idea of consolidating all districts in Moore County, suggesting that “eliminating all such disrupting competition, would be the creation of one good, big school system for the entire county.” In 1966, the county’s districts merged to create a single county system, and a countywide Board of Education.28 Dr. David Bruton, a pediatrician who was unanimously elected to the Moore County Board of Education in 1969, remembered there was an “angry crowd—a lot of angry people who did not want us to integrate

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

319

the schools and/or consolidate.” Consolidation in Moore County was a racial question: as in many parts of the country, separate school districts curtailed racial integration. The wealthier, predominantly white towns of Southern Pines, Pinehurst, and Aberdeen isolated their tax bases by using district-based supplemental taxes in addition to fencing off their property tax dollars. The three districts sued the Moore County Board of Education for its attempt to merge all districts, and crucially based their claims on school finance arguments.29 The bond money for Pinecrest High was central to their claim, as they argued that the Moore County board could not allocate money that was appropriated at a time when districts were separated to a consolidation project. The three wealthier districts around the towns of Southern Pines, Pinehurst, and Aberdeen claimed that their supplemental tax efforts entitled them to fiscal segregation. As David Bruton recalled: [The Moore County Board of Education] had to go to court to get Southern Pines, Pinehurst and Aberdeen to join the Moore County system, and the reason was, they were quite certain that the county would not put up the necessary extra funding to have good schools. They had put on totally unreasonable ad valorem property tax for the schools, particularly in Southern Pines and Pinehurst.30

Yet the expense associated with the new Pinecrest High was too high to be so inequitably distributed, and the previous merger of rural districts gave the Moore County Schools more voice in the process of consolidation. In 1969, Pinecrest High School welcomed students from starkly segregated areas: white schools in Southern Pines (Pinehurst, Aberdeen, and West End) and from three Black high schools outside of Aberdeen (West Southern Pines and Taylortown).31 Although local historical narratives in Moore County have emphasized racial harmony, and the fact that Pinecrest High “completed a bitter struggle to end school segregation,” the building of Pinecrest was far from the end of racial oppression in Moore County.32 In 1971, violence between white and Black students at Pinecrest prompted school officials to close the high school for a few days. In a striking euphemism, The News and Observer described the physical fights at Pinecrest as “racially inspired.”33 Although Pinecrest High shows how, at certain moments in time, mobilization around high-school building investments led to countywide reform, and to hopes for more equitable opportunities, the county

320

E. CYNA

has maintained stark racial lines by excluding small poor communities of color from whiter, wealthier municipalities, and it remains famous for its blatant segregation today.34 Examining school construction debates in North Carolina shows that consolidation has not been a panacea to school funding allocation issues. The trajectory of Perquimans High School from 1977 to 1986 further illustrates the complex layers of funding involved in high school construction, even in a small, consolidated, and desegregated school district. Perquimans, a small county on the northern coast of North Carolina, was and remains a single school district with one integrated high school.35 As the school fell into disrepair in the 1970s, conflicts between the Board of Education and county commissioners delayed repairs at the high school for over a decade. The slow path to renovation at Perquimans High sheds light on the crucial role of voter mobilization for school bond referenda in changing the course of public education for local communities. In 1977, the cafeteria and science laboratory at Perquimans High required significant renovation.36 The Perquimans Board of Education realized that local and state funding would not come close to meeting the needs of the necessary renovations at the fifty-year-old high school, and proposed a bond referendum.37 The proposed amount of $1.85 million would complement the county’s capital reserve of $1 million— money county commissioners earmarked in 1973 from a previous bond issue—to renovate and fund new construction at the school.38 School parents, teachers, and other residents organized to garner support for the bond, and promoted it in the local press.39 Appealing to the necessity of educational progress, Laura and Isaac Lowe, a Black couple then in their seventies, called upon fellow Perquimans County residents to organize, and presented the school bond as an investment in a “modern high school”: Now is the time to build what has been needed in our county—A Modern High School. At this point in time, a school such as we have now; that is almost six decades old should tell every tax payer that our boys and girls have been short changed for a long time. It is time we had Concerned Citizens ready and willing to build a school which will meet the standards needed for these times, and serve the future generations better. As supporters of public education, tax payers, North Carolinians, and above all, voters, we question, why renovate? Let us go to the polls and vote yes for a new High School.40

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

321

The Lowes’s call for support reveals how symbolic they thought the new high school could be of new opportunities for Perquimans County students: a new school would bring a new day to Perquimans, and would epitomize progress in the county. Despite significant mobilization in support of the referendum, the bond failed at the polls on November 8, 1977.41 The Perquimans County Board of Education, which had unanimously promoted the bonds, did not abandon their renovation and construction projects, as Perquimans High still needed significant improvements.42 Using the county’s reserve only, they initiated work at the school with available funds a few months after the bond defeat, even though the superintendent, James “Pat” Harrell, admitted that the money on hand would not be sufficient to complete the entire plan, and that planning work was all that school officials could initiate.43 Whatever the county’s limited funds achieved was not enough according to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Five years after the defeat of the school bond, state officials surveyed school facilities in Perquimans County and recommended new construction, including a partial tear-down of the high school, while categorizing the 1924 structure as unfit for renovation because it violated state safety codes.44 The state survey considered that what the board had managed to achieve over the past few years were “makeshift improvements,” which were far from meeting state standards when it came to science and lab facilities and equipment and clashed with the “ever increasing need to update and expand on this very important area of instruction.”45 In dire need of funding, Perquimans county commissioners decided to implement a new half-cent sales tax to finance construction and renovation at the high school in addition to a new bond referendum.46 Still, the county would not follow the state’s recommendations to build an entirely new high school, which would require six to seven million dollars according to the Board of Education’s estimates.47 The 1984 project would already cost county taxpayers more than it would have in 1977 during the bond campaign—it was now estimated at two million dollars. Construction needs included the “fire hazard” of the art room, “due to the volatile and combustible materials used,” an “overcrowded band room,” and work on the “stage and auditorium areas,” which school teachers used for instruction and to store textbooks for lack of space.48

322

E. CYNA

Perquimans High School also needed a new roof, new windows, new electrical wiring, an entirely new heating and cooling system, and school-wide refurbishing.49 The 1984 $2 million school bond passed in every precinct in Perquimans County, and passed by a margin of almost five to one.50 Contractors demolished part of the high school, and other parts were renovated (Fig. 12.4). The removal of asbestos insulation in the auditorium had added $30,000 to the two million construction and renovation project.51 The new high school was completed ten years after the board had identified the need for renovation. The consolidation of school districts was not a uniform or continuous movement in the state, as the literature tends to suggest about rural counties. In Robeson County, which counted five school districts until 1989, the building of new high schools set the issue of merging school districts to the forefront. The school boards, in concert with city and county planners, selected sites for high school construction to maximize school racial segregation.52 The approval of an $8 million school bond allowed for the constructions of three new high schools in Robeson County.53 In May

Fig. 12.4 Perquimans High School Demolition, Perquimans County, 1986 (Source Harris, “School Demolition Nears Completion”)

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

323

1980, a group of parents sued the Robeson County Board of Education on the grounds that the existence of five separate school districts in Robeson County discriminated against communities of color in the county.54 Plaintiffs felt a strong sense of urgency not only because the situation had existed for decades, but also because the imminent construction of three separate high schools would drain county resources and, because of their locations, further patterns of school segregation in the county.55 As the parents showed in their complaint, county officials, including commissioners and the five boards of education, implemented policies that maintained and furthered segregation in the county, which could not be attributed to housing patterns alone. Lynnette Bishop, a reporter for the local newspaper The Robesonian, framed the lawsuit as a case that put the spotlight on racial discrimination, something, she argued, “most believed resolved long before the beginning of this decade.”56 The 1980 lawsuit exposed the racially discriminatory function of city school districts, charging that school district lines were “drawn to virtually eliminate minorities in the city schools.”57 The population of Robeson County was almost equally split between Black, Native American, and white residents, and county officials designed city school systems, especially in Lumberton and St. Pauls, to carve pockets of resources out of the county system for the exclusive benefits of white residents within these isolated areas.58 In contrast, Robeson County Schools resorted to shifting its capital outlay budget to cover operating expenditures every year to keep its schools afloat.59 The 1980 lawsuit challenged segregation in the county and linked it to the existence of five separate school units, which county commissioners designed to exacerbate racial segregation, and, the plaintiffs argued, wasted county tax dollars on the operation of five administrations and intricate bus routes.60 In addition to the documented segregating function of district lines, and to their centrifugal isolation of tax dollars, the creation of several districts inside a single county also allowed for the disproportionate channeling of county funds toward certain districts. In Robeson, the school district of Lumberton—which was whiter, wealthier, and held more political influence—disproportionately benefitted from state dollars that county commissioners controlled when it came to facility investments. A few years after the unsuccessful lawsuit, Robeson did merge all of its school districts as a result of a grassroots campaign led by Black and Native

324

E. CYNA

American activists.61 The new Public Schools of Robeson County Board of Education redrew attendance lines for its six high schools, and planned a countywide construction effort to renovate and expand its old high school facilities.62 Although the overall high school student population in Robeson County was expected to decline over the next few years (from 7,115 in 1989 to 5,889 by 1991–1992), which would result in decreasing state aid, the high schools desperately needed renovations, and the newly merged board approved projects for additions to all six high schools. Invitation for bids for high school renovations flooded the public notice section of the Raleigh-based News and Observer the following year.63 Even in consolidated metropolitan districts, funding for high schools has thrown stark racial divides into relief.64 In the largest school district in the state, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), intradistrict disparities came to the forefront during school bond referenda. Nationally famous for the desegregation case that crystallized debates around “busing” for integration, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971), CMS tried to equalize opportunities between Black students who lived in poor urban neighborhoods and wealthy white students from the suburbs through a desegregation plan from 1970 to 1992. In 1993, as the desegregation plan unraveled, Mecklenburg County residents approved the largest school bond package in the history of CMS—an astounding $192 million—and it planned for the construction of seven new schools, and for the renovation of nine schools.65 CMS was playing catch-up to a growing student population, which put it in sharp contrast with rural counties across the state.66 Several Black leaders voiced their opposition to the 1993 bonds because of the location of the proposed new schools, two of which, at least, would be in predominantly white suburban areas.67 The Charlotte Post, the city’s leading Black newspaper, published a map of proposed funding allocation in October 1993 to expose the board’s prioritization of suburban areas in southern Mecklenburg. Bob Davis, chairman of the Black Political Caucus and a member of CFEG, the anti-tax increase group, explained his opposition to the bond package by affirming that Black Charlotteans had “seen the broken promises.”68 The Charlotte Observer showed that from 1967 to 1989, CMS had allocated money toward school construction in booming suburbs and magnet schools while failing to dedicate promised bond money toward older uptown schools.69 Although CMS is most famous for its success in implementing a desegregation-minded busing plan, paying attention to high school funding allows for an

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

325

assessment of this history through the lens of intradistrict disparities.70 Needs were great in Charlotte in the 1990s. The student population steadily increased, growing by 20% between 1991 and 1997, and over half of school buildings were over 30 years old and required repairs and modernization.71 Arthur Griffin, one of the two Black members of the school board, opposed the 1993 bonds because it favored the white population of booming suburbs outside of Charlotte, while insufficient money was to be allocated to repair, renovate and enhance schools in predominantly Black inner-city neighborhoods.72 Out of the $192 million, $34.45 million were allocated for the expansion or renovation of six high schools—Myers Park, North Mecklenburg, Olympic, Providence, South Mecklenburg, and West Mecklenburg—and $21.9 million for the renovation or expansion of three “inner city schools,” University Park, Northwest Middle, and Marie G. Davis. He argued that the construction of two new high schools in the vicinity of West Charlotte High, but closer to white neighborhoods, would drain students and resources from the historically Black high school.73 While Griffin was at odds with the rest of the school board, he received the support of Charlotte’s Black political caucus, which also opposed the bonds. Not only was there a correlation between bond money allocation and race, with white suburban schools receiving disproportionate capital investment, but the CMS district also historically excluded Black contractors from the benefits of working on school projects.74 By 1997, Black contractors only worked on 6% of the projects involved by bond votes.75 In the 1990s, dozens of county boards of education and commissioners in North Carolina wrote to Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., known to have run his campaigns on his commitment to public education, to demand new funding sources from the state. Poor rural counties demanded the passing of a new sales tax to help them relieve their growing capital needs, worsened by deferred maintenance. The superintendent of Moore County Schools, home of modern Pinecrest High School (completed in 1969), wrote to Governor Hunt to communicate the untenable pressure under which his district operated in the name of North Carolina’s tradition of local control.76 Moore County Schools had stretched their resources beyond the point of being able to ensure basic student safety. Rural county residents and school administrators mobilized to demand reform at the state level throughout the twentieth century, but their demands accelerated in the late 1980s, as the combination of federal and state cuts precipitated school districts into financial distress. A coalition of

326

E. CYNA

rural counties pressed the state to implement a sales tax as well as a new funding scheme, and when their demands were not met or reform efforts came severely underfunded, resorted to school finance litigation.

“No Help”77 : County and State Accountability for Resource Disparities The state of North Carolina reformed its approach to capital funding in 1987 in response to several alarming studies about the conditions of educational facilities across the state. Counties had deferred maintenance cost during the economic crisis of the 1970s, which had only worsened and stretched their resources further.78 The legislature passed the School Facilities Finance Act in August 1987, which created new revenue with a corporate income tax increase from six to 7%, and earmarked additional funds from the state sales tax.79 According to state officials, repairing, renovating, building, and maintaining school facilities, as well as increasing their accessibility, would cost counties $3.2 billion.80 At the time, the Department of Public Instruction estimated the cost of building a single new high school at $8.4 million.81 Moving away from the state’s traditional approach of supporting capital needs through bond issues only—that is to say by borrowing money—the legislature showed significant commitment to supporting public education with this unprecedented reform effort, which was forecast to generate $1.36 billion in new revenue over the following decade (Fig. 12.5).82 The state’s approach to increased responsibility in financing capital needs was twofold. First, it allotted money from new revenue on a per-pupil basis through a matching fund system at the county level to all counties, regardless of their needs and ability to match funds (“Public School Building Capital Fund,” $645 million). A second funding pool provided grants for specific, critical needs for the counties with the lowest tax bases (“Critical School Facility Needs Fund,” $185.9 million over ten years, with $96 million allocated the first year).83 The state’s double approach was symptomatic of the delicate political balance between needsbased equity and satisfying all counties, including wealthier ones. As Fig. 12.5 shows, the state had been an unstable source of capital support for school districts over time. From time to time, state bonds injected revenue into the coffers of counties, and remained the largest source of state aid for capital money.

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

327

Fig. 12.5 North Carolina State Funding for Capital Outlay, 1958–2014 (Source North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, “The North Carolina Public School Partnership,” August 2016 Conference Presentation, 20)

These significant efforts from the state to increase its role in funding and maintaining facilities proved insufficient, however. Despite state funding reform and additional funding for school construction, rural county officials wrote regularly to their governor about their struggles with insufficient state funding for school construction and improvement. Janet Lloyd, a science teacher in rural Vance County, a rural county that was 45% Black and 55% white in 1990, reached out to the state superintendent in 1992 to call his attention to the county’s dire need of science equipment. In her letter, Lloyd directly linked the county’s school funding issues and the students’ low test scores: Students in Vance County have consistently scored low on standardized tests. We have worked diligently to improve these scores, but progress is slow…At my school, we have a critical shortage of science equipment. We have been frugal with the funds we were allotted—a mere $240.00 per

328

E. CYNA

teacher. I have 133 students, so that small amount means I can only spend $1.80 per student. How can I realistically be expected to provide quality science investigations on so little? Even when the teachers pool the financial resources, we are still unable to purchase equipment other schools accept as ‘standard equipment.’84

In 1993, a reporter for the Raleigh-based News and Observer described Vance as a “hard-scrabble county pressed against the Virginia state line,” where “there [was not] a lot of wealth to spread around in the county of 39,000 people,” and “a tough place to run a school system.”85 The reporter explained that in Vance, the “power structure is entrenched, the racial tensions run deep and violence is a thread woven into much of the county’s history.”86 A few months after the News and Observer ran a story about the dismissal of the county’s school superintendent, a Vance County minister wrote a letter to the editor in the same newspaper, and deplored, “We are clearly pulling our weight, but that is still not enough.”87 Rev. Allen listed the horrifying conditions of Vance County schools, with their “paint peeling off walls, roofs leaking day after day, labs going unfurnished, PE classes taking place in hallways because there is no gym, rooms needing curtains, buildings without restrooms, and teachers having to pay for supplies out of their already meager salaries.”88 Vance County had one of the highest property tax rates in the state, but its small and shrinking tax base could not support its growing maintenance needs—it was tenth in the state for tax effort, but seventy-fourth out of a hundred counties for actual ability to pay.89 The following year, the state repealed its Critical School Facility Needs Fund, which was its equity-based new funding source, and replaced it with a bond act that gave county commissioners control over state bond revenues.90 This marked a reversal in the state’s equity approach, and, of great consequence, it increased the discretion of county commissioners in the allocation of state funds. Citing the gross insufficiency of property tax and state funding to meet capital needs, several rural counties passed resolutions in 1995 to request for a sales tax to create additional revenue for school construction and renovation at the state level.91 In 1995, the new superintendent of Vance County Schools joined other rural counties in imploring the state for additional funding, and emphasized the collective effort of rural counties. Craig Phillips, who had been the state superintendent under

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

329

Governor James B. Hunt in previous years, let Hunt know that Vance had passed a resolution petitioning for a state sales tax, and shared, “a number of Boards of Education across the State have adopted similar resolutions. All of us are greatly concerned about school construction needs and the imperative of significant state derived funds for those needs.”92 Several rural counties made pleas to state officials that year. The Yadkin County Board of County Commissioners wrote, “Our local property taxes cannot meet our facility needs alone. We need a combination of state funding, sales tax revenue and local property tax revenue to come close to meeting the schools’ funding needs.”93 In March 1995, Yadkin County had passed a resolution to ask the North Carolina Legislature to implement a one-cent sales tax.94 Johnson County faced similar issues. Kay Carroll, chairman of the Johnston County Board of Education, called Governor Hunt’s attention to the need for increased state funding. Johnston County had passed the same resolution pressing for a one-cent sales tax, and Carroll explained in a letter to Governor Hunt: Johnston County and many other counties are facing critical building needs in education. Property taxes in our county cannot stand the pressure of this problem. The tax base is not great enough. Three cents of property tax raises approximately $300,000 in Johnston County versus $3 million in Wake County. We have asked the legislature to help us with alternate revenue sources (1% sales tax option) dedicated solely to school construction and payment of debt on construction. We have hammered away at the legislature on this issue with no results. A lot of talk and posturing, but no help.95

Although Governor Hunt never supported the sales tax, the letters show that rural counties organized in their demands to the legislature. These letters from teachers, superintendents, and citizens claimed their rural identity when they highlighted the common challenges that they faced because they had low tax bases. This coalition grew under the leadership of several superintendents, including Steven L. Wrenn, superintendent of Halifax County from 1989 to 1992. There, Wrenn had been outraged by the poverty, inadequacy, and dilapidation of school buildings. When he had arrived, he had been shocked to see the Northwest Halifax High School band practice in the lobby of the gymnasium, as it had for over a decade, with no proper room to install chairs and equipment. Student

330

E. CYNA

musicians spent half of practice time just setting up in the lobby.96 The school was in such financial despair that it could not provide enough desks for students, and in 1995, many had to sit on the classroom floor during class.97 For Wrenn, the “lack of funds […] made it harder to teach and harder to learn.”98 Guided by Wrenn, Halifax County Schools sued county commissioners for more capital money. The school board struck a deal with the county commissioners: they would not sue commissioners if they would agree to allocate three dollars per student every year so that advocates in Halifax would eventually be able to file a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina. A couple of years later, they sued.99 Plaintiffs in Halifax County filed Leandro v. State in May 1994, and alleged that the state funding formula violated the equal protection and educational clauses of the North Carolina constitution.100 There were five rural counties involved, all from diverse parts of the state: Robeson, Hoke, Halifax, Cumberland, and Vance. Undeniable numbers fueled the plaintiffs’ argument: they identified the violation in the inequitable school funding formula, which chronically disadvantaged counties with low tax bases. The condition of school facilities held real shock value.101 Affidavit after affidavit, witnesses for plaintiffs described the horrifying conditions of high school buildings in poor rural counties. Through dramatic testimonies, plaintiffs in Leandro v. State argued that, given the structure of school finance in North Carolina, local governmental units had to bear the burden of 25% of all operating expenses, and “almost all building funds.”102 Kathleen Leandro, mother of Robert Leandro, the named plaintiff who was a student at Hoke County High School, testified, “Hoke County schools have failed to offer Robert the advantages enjoyed by students in other parts of the State. In the sciences especially, supplies and equipment are inadequate. Last year, Robert’s biology teacher went to a slaughter house to obtain some specimens.”103 He himself recalled “watching science experiments on video tape because his biology classes had no laboratory equipment, having to begin each class by copying school materials by hand off of an overhead projection machine because his teachers did not have funds to make photocopies, and being frustrated that some of his school’s athletic teams could not play away games because the district did not own sufficient buses.”104 Some of those facts stood out to Justice Orr, who sat on the bench of the North Carolina Supreme Court when Leandro was heard in 1997. In a 2018 interview,

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

331

Justice Orr specifically recalled hearing that “instead of having hands-on lab experiences, the kids were consigned to watching videos.”105 The 1997 North Carolina Supreme Court decision in Leandro detailed the inadequacies of school buildings in the state, citing “insufficient space, poor lighting, leaking roofs, erratic heating and air conditioning, peeling paint, cracked plaster, and rusting exposed pipes.”106 At that time, Hoke County had an adjusted tax base per child of $136,293 and a per-pupil expenditure average of $563, while those numbers for the wealthiest county in North Carolina, Dare County, were $262,357 and $2,348, respectively.107 This was despite the fact that Hoke County taxed itself at a higher rate than Dare County. Yet the inequities that rural North Carolinians faced went beyond the reliance on property tax—discrimination in county fund allocation reinforced racial and class disparities. Leandro, while addressing one form of funding inequality, masked the political process of school finance and the inequalities inside counties that further disadvantaged poor and low-income students of color. The study of school funding differences between high schools, from the construction of buildings to their maintenance, from capital outlay to current expenses, provides necessary contextualization for differences in educational achievement and test scores.108 What plaintiffs in school finance cases sought to argue in the 1990s drew from decades of activism about the relationship between resource allocation and educational achievement. In Halifax County, where Steven Wrenn was superintendent as he prepared what would become the Leandro lawsuit, the differences between the three school districts epitomized these disparities. In 1980, as testing began across the state, the front-page of the Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald captured the stark differences between the wealthy Roanoke Rapids Graded School District (RRGSD) and the poor Weldon City Schools. Juniors at Roanoke Rapids High learned that they had obtained the highest test scores in the state in math competency, scoring 98.1% passing compared to 89.4% in the state.109 The article featured directly below contrasted with the cheerful announcement. The neighboring district of Weldon City Schools recorded the second lowest test scores in the state, with a 70.9% passing rate in math.110 What the lawsuit masked, however, were the myriad ways county and state officials shortchanged poor and low-income students of color, often in rural areas. In Halifax, where the Leandro case began, county commissioners allocated disproportionate amounts of money toward RRGSD. In 1987, as North Carolina passed its sweeping School Facilities Finance Act,

332

E. CYNA

the capital outlay pockets of Halifax County Schools (HCS), a predominantly poor and majority Black school district, were completely empty. Meanwhile, RRGSD and Weldon still had some reserves.111 The three districts competed in obtaining funds from the state for capital needs, but were unequal in their ability to complement these funds. The superintendent of HCS fully recognized that her school district had “the habit of using the Capital Outlay Budget to balance the Current Expense Budget.”112 Two high schools in the county needed significant renovations— Southeast High School in RRGSD and Northwest Halifax in HCS— but their needs differed greatly. Roanoke Rapids High School needed upgrades to its air-conditioning system and renovation in its auditorium.113 Southeast High in HCS needed a water line.114 Commissioner Dock Brown from Halifax opposed the allocation of funds for the high school in Roanoke Rapids High School and expressed concerned about the exclusion of Southeast High from the county’s projects. The Halifax County Black Caucus consistently denounced racism in allocation.115 In 1988, county commissioners denied funds for capital improvements to HCS on the grounds that it was already receiving money from the state.116 Testifying for the Leandro case, superintendent of Halifax County Schools Willie Gilchrist lamented another high school in HCS, Northwest High School, which offered deplorable learning conditions for students: At Northwest High School, there are likewise problems with old and poorly maintained facilities. There is such shortage of desks that some students must sit on the floor during classes. There are no lab tables in some of the science classrooms and there is little science equipment. Science and other textbooks are out of date. There is a great need for new technology such as VCRs and computers. In addition, there is a need for such basic items as blackboards in good repair.117

He directly attributed these issues to a lack of sufficient funding, yet the added layers of inter-district competition within a single county were lost because of structural constraints in the lawsuit. Attorneys in Leandro stayed silent on racial discrimination in the system of school finance.118 Schools such as Northwest High School symbolized decades of racial and class discrimination in educational funding. In court, it seemed that all

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

333

Halifaxians could say was that the county as a whole had a meager tax base.

Conclusion In 1986, when Buncombe County residents of the Hominy Valley, nestled between Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains, inaugurated Enka High School, the local newspaper featured a double page about the shiny new school, calling it a “dream come true.”119 After a decade of negotiations with county commissioners and state legislatures, bond referenda and delayed construction, Enka High and its modern features symbolized citizen commitment to public education and new opportunities for students (Fig. 12.6). Yet in the same county, only a few miles from the new Enka High, Owen High School was falling apart, and students took classes in crowded, dilapidated mobile classrooms in trailers outside the school (Fig. 12.7).

Fig. 12.6 Enka High School, Buncombe County, 1986 (Source Moore, “New Enka High: A Dream Come True”)

334

E. CYNA

Fig. 12.7 Trailers Outside Owen High School, Buncombe County, 1987 (Source Ewart Ball, Asheville Citizen-Times, August 30, 1987, 9A)

School finance lawsuits such as Leandro v. State, because they have focused on county tax bases, fail to make the contrast between high schools like these legible. Yet Enka and Owen illustrate the lived reality of the disparities that have separated communities because of complex layers of decision-making, discrimination in allocation, and inequities in fundraising capacities and political influence. While the system of countybased funding provides opportunity for equitable distribution, fiscal segregation between separate districts and communities has historically prevailed. Wealthy people have regularly called for this fiscal segregation, and they have tended to hold the disproportionate political power to achieve it. Whether a brand new building, with majestic façades and new equipment, or dilapidated facilities in need of renovation, high schools have stood as symbols of the educational opportunities that districts promise to their students.120 Moore County residents prided themselves on Pinecrest, their “school of tomorrow.”121 Across the county line to the south, Hoke County once reopened a closed high school, deemed substandard and unsafe, for lack of space, which symbolized the failings of a school finance system that exacerbated inequities between school

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

335

districts.122 Compared to the widely recognized influence of A Nation At Risk, which many scholars credit for intensifying the country’s emphasis on testing and accountability in education by criticizing deteriorating standards, late-1980s reports on the poor state of school facilities in the United States have not led to widespread reform.123 Legal scholars and education policy experts have shown that basing school funding on local property taxes exacerbates inequalities between wealthy and working-class or impoverished districts. Looking at high school construction highlights the fact that, beyond its mathematical equations, school finance is a political process—one that involves school district lines, uneven taxation, the voting and allocation of school bonds, and legislative and judicial negotiations. High schools are not unequal simply because they were situated in neighborhoods with different levels of wealth. County and state officials have devised specific funding mechanisms that contributed to inequalities between local schools. And we live with this problem today. In 2019, the North Carolina Justice Center issued a report on the critical needs of school facilities in North Carolina. “Years of tax cuts, broken funding promises, and inadequate resources in many communities have left many of North Carolina’s schools outdated, overcrowded, and in bad shape,” researchers noted.124 Criticizing the state’s unwillingness and inability to face this crisis, researchers argued that the “sorry state of North Carolina’s schools” was a “self-inflicted wound.”125 The widening gap between booming metropolitan areas and struggling rural counties only exacerbated this crisis, as more urban schools were needed to accommodate growing urban populations, and rural schools continued to fall apart, with decreasing per-pupil state aid and dwindling tax bases. Hopes that the Leandro v. State lawsuit would lead to consequential reform for facilities by revising the state school funding formula, which left unequally resourced counties responsible for buildings, quickly faded after the Supreme Court declared in 1997, just as it established that students in North Carolina had a right to a “sound basic education,” ruled that students were not, however, entitled to equal educational opportunities, closing the door on funding equalization. The court did not include language on school buildings within its definition of what a “sound basic education” signified. In December 2019, in the latest development in the case, the consulting firm WestEd released a 300-page report to outline a course of action for the state to provide a “sound basic

336

E. CYNA

education” to its students, and comply with the Leandro mandate.126 In it, the researchers did not address issues of school facilities. Once more, the import of the high school building was ignored.

Notes 1. Barbara Collins, “Study: Schools in Need of Major Work,” The Robesonian (Lumberton, NC), April 11, 1997, 1A. 2. In a 1995 national survey, less than 50% of schools in North Carolina reported adequate facility conditions regarding lighting, heating, ventilation, indoor air quality, acoustics for noise control, and energy efficiency and physical security of buildings. United States General Accounting Office, “School Facilities: America’s Schools Report Differing Conditions,” Report to Congressional Requesters, 1996, 11. Prior to 1995, the federal government had only conducted one national survey of school facilities, in 1965. 3. Bignall Jones, “Lack of Funding Hits School Hard,” The Warren Record (Warrenton, NC), September 4, 1980, 1. 4. Several historians have focused on a single high school, which is a testament to their symbolic and social importance for the surrounding community. These works have emphasized community activism to improve and preserve local high schools, especially Black high schools when white administrators threatened to close them during desegregation. See, for example, Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (University of North Carolina Press, 1996); David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Pamela Grundy, Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle Over Educational Equality (University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Faustine Jones, A Traditional Model of Educational Excellence: Dunbar High School of Little Rock, Arkansas (Howard University Press, 1981); Erika Kitzmiller, The Roots of Educational Inequality: Philadelphia and Germantown High School, 1907–2014 (University of Pennsylvania Press, under contract). 5. On the history of high school architecture, and its reflection of evolving school reform, see Dale Allen Gyure, The Chicago Schoolhouse: High School Architecture and Educational Reform, 1856–2006 (University of Chicago Press, 2011); Amy Weisser, “‘Little Red School House, What Now?’ Two Centuries of American Public School Architecture,” Journal of Planning History 5, No. 3 (August 2006): 196–217; Marta Gutman, “Intermediate School 201: Race, Space, and Modern Architecture in

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

337

Harlem,” in Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, eds. Ansley Erickson and Ernest Morrell (Columbia University Press, 2019). 6. On the relationship between funding and educational quality, see Bruce Baker, Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America’s Students (Harvard University Press, 2018); Peter Schrag, Final Test: The Battle for Adequacy in America’s Schools (New York: The New Press, 2003). On funding for facilities, which has received less attention in the school finance literature than per-pupil current expenditures, see Faith Crampton, David Thompson, and Randall Vesely, “The Forgotten Side of School Finance Equity: The Role of Infrastructure Funding in Student Success,” National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin 88, No. 640 (2004): 29–56; Faith Crampton and David Thompson “Building Minds, Minding Buildings: School Infrastructure Funding Need,” American Federation of Teachers, 2008; Anne Lewis, “Wolves at the Schoolhouse Door: An Investigation of the Condition of Public School Buildings,” Education Writers Association, June 1989; Shirley Hansen, Schoolhouses in the Red: A Guidebook for Cutting Our Losses, American Association of School Administrators, 1992; Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (Crown, 1991), 25, 167. 7. About the significance of high school building architecture in the nineteenth century in urban contexts as a symbol of “growing wealth and civic pride,” see William J. Reese, “Cathedrals of Learning,” in The Origins of the American High School (Yale University Press, 1995), 80–102, 81. 8. On the need for historians to explore not only how public officials have spent school budgets but how they have raised and allocated it, see Tracy Steffes, “Assessment Matters: The Rise and Fall of the Illinois Resource Equalizer Formula,” History of Education Quarterly 60, No. 1 (February 2020): 24–57. For a history of the entanglement of school construction and debt in the suburbs of Long Island, see Michael R. Glass, “Schooling Suburbia: The Politics of School Finance in Postwar Long Island,” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2020. On the history of school finance litigation, see Camille Walsh, Racial Taxation: Schools, Segregation, and Taxpayer Citizenship, 1869–1973 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018); Paul A. Sracic, San Antonio v. Rodriguez and the Pursuit of Equal Education: The Debate over Discrimination and School Funding (Kansas University Press, 2006); Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. and Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, eds., The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity (Harvard Education Press, 2015); James Ryan, Five Miles Away, A

338

E. CYNA

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2010). On school finance litigation in North Carolina, see Robert Tiller. “Litigating Educational Adequacy in North Carolina: A Personal Account of Leandro v. State,” Nebraska Law Review 83, No. 3, Article 11 (2005): 893–900; Anthony Rolle, Eric Houck, and Ann McColl, “And Poor Children Continue to Wait: An Analysis of Horizontal and Vertical Equity Among North Carolina School Districts in the Face of Judicially Mandated Policy Restraints 1996–2006,” Journal of Education Finance 34, No. 1 (Summer 2008): 75–102. North Carolina State Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI), “The History of Education in North Carolina.” Raleigh, 1993, 14; William Duncombe and Wen Wang, “School Facilities Funding and CapitalOutlay Distribution in the States,” Journal of Education Finance 34, No. 3, (2009): 324–350, 334; Fred R. Maiocco, Jr., “Funding Public School Construction in the United States,” Ph.D. dissertation, Washington State University, 2004, 125–126, 163; Charles D. Liner, “Financing North Carolina’s Public Schools,” School Law Bulletin 30, No. 11 (Summer 1987): 401. Halifax Board of County Commissioners Meeting Minutes, January 1, 1982, 262 and August 2, 1982, 324. On deferred maintenance, see Barbara Kent Lawrence, “Save a Penny, Lose a School,” Rural School and Community Trust, 2003; Linda M. Frazier, “Deteriorating School Facilities and Student Learning,” ERIC Digest, Number 82; Hansen, “Schoolhouses in the Red.” Hansen estimated that the price associated with deferring maintenance had quadrupled between 1983 and 1991, from $25 billion to $100 billion. Most of the historical literature on rural schooling has focused on Progressive-Era consolidation movements. On the history of rural schooling, see Tracy L. Steffes, “Solving the ‘Rural School Problem’: New State Aid, Standards, and Supervision of Local Schools, 1900– 1933,” History of Education Quarterly 48, No. 2 (May 2008): 181–220; David R. Reynolds, There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grassroots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa (University of Iowa Press, 1999); David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Harvard University Press, 1974), 13–21. James Hunter and Craig Howley, “Capital Outlay: A Critical Concern in Rural Education” (ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, 1990). The North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center, “North Carolina Rural Profile: Economic and Social Trends Affecting Rural North Carolina,” 1992, 4, box 323, folder: “Paralegal Office Cases, Leandro (16),” American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina

12

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

339

Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University. Barbara Kent Lawrence, Ed.D., “Save a Penny, Lose a School,” Rural School and Community Trust, 2003, 14. Cassandra Rowand, “How Old Are America’s Public Schools?,” Issue Brief, Education Statistics Quarterly, January 1999. N. D. B. Connolly, “The Strange Career of American Liberalism,” in Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century, eds. Brent Cebul, Lily Geismer, and Mason B. Williams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 64–65, 81. James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 156. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 206. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 172. On the abandonment of the resource equalization strategy in educational litigation, see Corsica Smith, “Continued Disparities in School Facilities: Analyzing Brown v. Board of Education’s Singular Approach to Quality Education,” Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice 3, No. 1, Article 3 (2014): 39–66, 53, 65. On equalization lawsuit and the transformation of legal strategies with Brown, see Derrick Bell, “Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation,” Yale Law School Journal 85, No. 4 (1976): 470–516; Vanessa Siddle-Walker, The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools (The New Press, 2018). Philip R. Piccigallo, “Renovating Urban Schools Is Fundamental to Improving Them,” Phi Delta Kappan, January 1989, 402. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the student population of Moore County was 67% white and 33% Black. Office of Education, “Working Together: Case Sutdy of Title I ESEA Programs in Four Desegregated School Districts,” Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1974, 65. “County Commissioners Order Survey, to Make Decision on School Consolidation,” The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC), December 10, 1964, 1; “Proposed School District Merger,” The Pilot, May 14, 1964, 2. “School Capital Outlay Troubles Again,” The Pilot, May 7, 1964, 2. “School Capital Outlay Troubles Again.” “School Capital Outlay Troubles Again.” Dr. David Bruton, interview with author, August 17, 2018 (hereafter “Bruton interview”). Hobbs v. Moore County, 149 S.E.2d 1 (N.C. 1966). Bruton interview.

340

E. CYNA

31. “Pinecrest High School Timeline: The Early Years,” The Pilot, September 7, 2013. 32. Because Moore County was never under court supervision for desegregation, there is a strong sense of exceptionalism in the county. On Moore County as a success story, see Pauline F. Myrick, Treading New Ground: A History of Moore County Schools, 1959–1985 (Moore County Schools, 1985); David Sinclair, “A Work in Progress: The Making of Pinecrest High School,” The Pilot, September 7, 2013. 33. “Fighting Closes School for Second Day in a Row,” The News and Observer, October 23, 1971, 5. 34. UNC Center for Civil Rights, “The State of Exclusion Moore County an In-Depth Analysis of the Legacy of Segregated Communities,” 2014. 35. In 1977, Perquimans County Schools counted 1938 students, 51% Black and 49% white. NCDPI, Statistical Profile, 1979, II-430, II-431. By 1988, there were 1940 students in the district. NCDPI, Statistical Profile, 1990, II-194. 36. “Board of Education Meets,” The Perquimans Weekly (Hertford, NC), February 10, 1977, 1. 37. Kathy Newbern, “Bond Supporters Meet,” The Perquimans Weekly, October 13, 1977, 1; “Readers React to Local & State Issues,” The Perquimans Weekly, November 3, 1977, 6. 38. Newbern, “Bond Supporters Meet.” 39. “Readers React to Local & State Issues,” The Perquimans Weekly, November 3, 1977, 6; “Public Meeting Set on School Bond,” The Perquimans Weekly, October 27, 1977, 1. 40. Laura and Isaac Lowe, “Readers React to Local & State Issues,” The Perquimans Weekly, November 3, 1977, 6; North Carolina County Registers of Deeds. Microfilm. Record Group 048, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N. C. (hereafter SANC).. 41. Kathy Newbern, “Boards Discuss Future of Perquimans High,” The Perquimans Weekly, December 22, 1977, 1. 42. Kathy Newbern, “Proposed Construction-Renovation at PCHS: Board Approves Go Ahead With Funds on Hand,” The Perquimans Weekly, February 16, 1978, 1. 43. Newbern, “Proposed Construction-Renovation at PCHS.” 44. Susan Harris, “Facilities Does Not Meet Requirements: New High School Recommended by State Board,” The Perquimans Weekly, September 22, 1983, 1. 45. “Survey Validates Need for School Facilities,” The Perquimans Weekly, March 8, 1984, 1. 46. Jane Williams, “Board Discusses Plans for New County High School Complex,” The Perquimans Weekly, January 26, 1984, 1.

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

341

47. “School Personnel Say ‘Kids Count,’” The Perquimans Weekly, May 3, 1984, 1. 48. “Survey Validates Need for School Facilities.” 49. “School Personnel Say ‘Kids Count,’” The Perquimans Weekly, May 3, 1984, 1, quote on page 2. 50. Jane Williams, “School Bond Referendum Receives Overwhelming Support,” The Perquimans Weekly, May 10, 1984, 1. 51. Susan Harris, “School Demolition Nears Completion,” The Perquimans Weekly, January 23, 1986, 1. 52. Several scholars have documented decisions about building of high schools for segregation or integration in metropolitan settings. See, for example, in Nashville, Tennessee, Ansley Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Chicago University Press, 2016), 270. 53. Lynette Bishop, “Two School Suits Claim Violations,” The Robesonian, January 4, 1981, 1D. 54. “Federal Lawsuit Calls for One County School System,” The Carolina Indian Voice (Pembroke, NC), May 29, 1980, 1. 55. For a contemporary analysis of school location decisions, see Rebecca Miles, Adesoji Adelaja, and Mark Wyckoff (eds.), School Siting and Healthy Communities: Why Where We Invest in School Facilities Matters (Michigan State University Press, 2011). 56. Bishop, “Two School Suits.” 57. Bishop, “Two School Suits.” Because the 1980 lawsuit against the five school systems delayed the sale of an $8 million school bond that was issued to fund new facilities in the Fairmont, St. Pauls and Red Springs districts, the three city systems filed a lawsuit against plaintiffs. 58. On the history of Robeson County, see Malinda Maynor Lowery, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 59. Virginia Simkins, “Eyeing Education,” The Robesonian, January 17, 1977, 13. 60. “Federal Lawsuit Calls for One County School System,” The Carolina Indian Voice, May 29, 1980, 1. 61. “Robeson County Schools Merge,” The Carolina Indian Voice, March 10, 1988, 1. 62. Malissa Talbert, “Board OKs District Lines for 6 High School Plan,” The Robesonian, February 22, 1989, 1A. 63. “Legals,” The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), April 8, 1990, 2D. 64. On the merger of the Charlotte City and Mecklenburg County school districts in 1959, see Frye Gaillard, The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina (University of South Carolina, 2006), 38 and Ansley T. Erickson,

342

E. CYNA

65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

“Fairness, Commitment, and Civic Capacity: The Varied Desegregation Trajectories of Metropolitan School Districts,” in The Shifting Landscape of the American School District: Race, Class, Geography, and the Perpetual Reform of Local Control, 1935–2015, eds. David A. Gamson and Emily M. Hodge (Peter Lang, 2018), 111–112. Stephen Samuel Smith, “Black Political Marginalization? Regime Change and School Reform in Charlotte, NC,” Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Political Science Association (1995), 9. “Projected Average Daily Membership Per Unit,” NCDPI, Statistical Profile (Raleigh, 1993), I-14. Kevin O’Brien, “Sites for 2 New Schools Complicate Integration,” The Charlotte Observer, October 15, 1993, 20A. Herbert White, “Bond Drive Still Divides Along School Lines,” The Charlotte Post, October 21, 1993, 1A. Kevin O’Brien, “Schools: Bonds an Issue of Catch-Up,” The Charlotte Observer, October 15, 1993, 1A; Kevin O’Brien, “The Price of Education,” The Charlotte Observer, October 15, 1993, 20A. On desegregation in Charlotte, see Stephen Samuel Smith, Boom for Whom? Education, Desegregation, and Development in Charlotte (State University of New York Press, 2004); Grundy, Color and Character; Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton University Press, 2007); Davison Douglas, Reading, Writing, and Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools (University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, Stephen Samuel Smith and Amy Hawn Smith (eds.), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: School Desegregation and Resegregation in Charlotte (Harvard University Press, 2015); Gaillard, The Dream Long Deferred. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, “What Does All That Money in the School Budget Pay For?,” 17, folder: 1997–1998 Budget, box 7, Chris Folk papers, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Arthur Griffin, “No Plan, No Bonds for Mecklenburg Schools,” The Charlotte Post, October 28, 1993, 7A. Smith, “Black Political Marginalization,” 10. For an in-depth study of the history of West Charlotte High School, see Grundy, Color and Character. John Minter, “Minorities Can Get Bond Business,” The Charlotte Post, October 30, 1997, 8A. Minter, “Minorities Can Get Bond Business.” Dr. Gene Riddle, superintendent of Moore County Schools, to Governor Hunt, December 1, 1994, folder: Education Legislation (2), box 27, series: Correspondence, 1995, Governor James B. Hunt, Jr. papers, SANC (hereafter “Hunt papers”); “Moore County Board of Education

12

77. 78.

79.

80.

81. 82. 83.

84.

85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90.

91.

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

343

Resolution,” November 7, 1994, box 27, Correspondence, 1995, Hunt papers. Kay Carroll to Governor Hunt, August 8, 1995, 2, box 29 folder: Education/Problem, Correspondence, 1995, Hunt papers. Richard King and Bettye MacPhail-Wilcox, “Bricks-and-Mortar Reform in North Carolina: The State Assumes a Larger Role in Financing School Construction,” Journal of Education Finance 13, No. 4 (Spring 1988): 374–381. North Carolina General Statutes, Chapter 115C—Elementary and Secondary Education, Article 34A—Critical School Facility Needs Fund, §§115C-489.1—115C-489.4, S.L. 1987–622 House Bill 1155; NCDPI, “North Carolina Biennial Report, 1987–1989,” (Raleigh, 1989), 24. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction conducted two major studies on capital needs: NCDPI, Public School Facility Needs in North Carolina, 1986–87 (Raleigh: NCDPI, March 1987); and North Carolina School Boards Association, “School Facilities Legislative Report,” Legislative Bulletin, September 9, 19. “Legislature Has Tackled School Funding Crisis,” Rocky Mount Telegram, July 22, 1987, 17. “Legislature Solves School Funding Crisis in State with Passage of Bill,” The Perquimans Weekly, July 30, 1987, 1. Susan Schoenberger, “Panel Begins Deciding Where to Spend $96 Million School Fund,” The News and Observer, November 21, 1987, 3C. Janet K. Lloyd to Bob Etheridge, October 12, 1992, NCDPI, Office of the State Superintendent, Citizen’s Correspondence File, 1992–1993, box 1 [unprocessed], sub-folder L, SANC. Tim Simmons, “Advance and Retreat,” The News and Observer, October 24, 1993, 1E, quote on 4E. Simmons, “Advance and Retreat,” 4E. Tim Allen, “Do We Pay Now for Education or Pay Later?,” The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), August 14, 1994, 23A. Revered Tim Allen was the minister at Liberty Vance United Church of Christ. Allen, “Do We Pay Now.” Public School Forum of North Carolina (PSF), “Local School Finance Study,” Public School Forum of North Carolina, 1995, 11. Edwin M. Speas, Jr., Senior Deputy Attorney General to Jay Robinson, chairman of the State Board of Education, “Advisory Opinion: Allocation of Funds under Public School Building Bond Act of 1996; 1995 Sess. Laws ch. 631 (1996),” North Carolina Department of Justice, December 10, 1996. Yadkin County Board of Education Resolution, March 6, 1995, box 27, folder: Education/Legislation (1), Correspondence, 1995, Hunt papers.

344

E. CYNA

92. Craig Phillips, superintendent of Vance County Schools, to Governor Hunt, April 6, 1995, box 27, folder: Education/Legislation (2), Correspondence, 1995, Hunt papers. 93. Yadkin County Board of Commissioners to Governor Hunt, October 11, 1995, box 24, folder: Education/Funds, Correspondence, 1995, Hunt papers. 94. Yadkin County Board of Education to Governor Hunt, March 16, 1995, box 27, folder: Education/Legislation (1), Correspondence, 1995, Hunt papers. 95. Kay Carroll to Governor Hunt, August 8, 1995, 2, box 29 folder: Education/Problem, Correspondence, 1995, Hunt papers. 96. Steven Wrenn, former superintendent of Halifax County Schools, interview with author, August 16, 2018 (hereafter “Wrenn interview”). 97. Affidavit of Willie Gilchrist, superintendent of the Halifax County Schools System, September 20, 1994, Supreme Court records, Leandro v. State, microfiche 2, SANC (hereafter “Leandro papers”), 115 (hereafter “Gilchrist affidavit”). 98. Exhibit 8, microfiche 2, Leandro papers, 116. 99. Steven Wrenn recalled how the strategy worked: “Eventually—you know it builds up—eventually it was part of the effort to fund the case that ended up being Leandro,” Wrenn interview. 100. Attorney Press Release from Robert Spearman May 25, 1994, 2. Governor James B. Hunt, Administrations III–IV, General Counsel, Special Topics Files, Record Center Box 5 [unprocessed], SANC. 101. On school finance litigation about school facilities, see Duncombe and Wang, “School Facilities Funding,” 326; “Unequal and Inadequate: Funding Litigants Eyeing Facilities Issues,” Rural Policy Matters 3, No. 3 (March 2011): 1–4. 102. Attorney Press Release from Robert Spearman May 25, 1994, 2. 103. Affidavit by Kathleen M. Leandro, September 16, 1994, 90, Leandro papers, microfiche 2. 104. Interview with Robert Leandro by Tico A. Almeida, March 14, 2003, quoted in Tico A. Almeida, “Refocusing School Finance Litigation on At-Risk Children: Leandro v. State of North Carolina,” Yale Law & Policy Review 22, No. 2 (2004): 525–569, 531. 105. Justice Robert F. “Bob” Orr interview with author, October 9, 2018. 106. Leandro v. State, 346 N.C. 336, 357 (1997) at 252. 107. PSF, “Local School Finance Study,” 1997, 18, 24. 108. Baker, Educational Inequality and School Finance. 109. Adrienne Ivey, “RRHS Juniors Top State in Math Competency Test,” Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald, December 17, 1980, 1. 110. Tim Cox, “Weldon Officials Take Issue with Test Scoring,” Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald, December 17, 1980, 1.

12

FUNDING THE “HIGH SCHOOL OF TOMORROW” …

345

111. Halifax Board of County Commissioners (HBCC) Meeting Minutes, February 2, 1987, vol. 19, 133. 112. HBCC Meeting Minutes, May 19, 1988, vol. 19, 396. 113. HBCC Meeting Minutes, April 14, 1988, vol. 19, 371–372. 114. HBCC, Public Hearing Minutes, July 5, 1988, vol. 20, 6. 115. HBCC Meeting Minutes, July 6, 1987, vol. 19, 222. 116. HBCC Meeting Minutes, October 3, 1988, vol. 20, 71. 117. Gilchrist affidavit, 115. 118. In 2005, Julius L. Chambers, who had litigated the Charlotte desegregation case Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, unsuccessfully attempted to insert a racial discrimination claim in the lawsuit. “Plaintiff-Intervenors’ Memorandum of Law in Support of their Motion for Limited Intervention,” Hoke County v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and State of North Carolina, 95 CVS 1158, February 2005. 119. Mona Moore, “New Enka High: A Dream Come True,” Asheville Citizen-Times, September 14, 1986, D1. 120. William Reese captured the symbolic significance of school architecture, noting that in the nineteenth century, “[s]chool architecture became one of the clearest expressions of bourgeois social values throughout the nineteenth century. The size, shape, and cost of public facilities revealed dominant attitudes about cultural authority, centralized power, and the special role of high schools in the common system.” Reese, The Origins of the American High School, 82. 121. David Sinclair, “Day 1: From Great Discord, a New Vision for Education,” The Pilot, September 7, 2013. 122. Affidavit of William Harrison, superintendent of Hoke County Schools, September 23, 1994, Leandro papers, microfiche 2, 115. 123. Lewis, “Wolves at the Schoolhouse Door;” Theodore Kowalski, “Chasing the Wolves from the Schoolhouse Door,” The Phi Delta Kappan 76, No. 6 (February 1995): 488–489. 124. Patrick McHugh and Kris Nordstrom, “Make Space for Learning: Current Options to Meet NC’s School Facility Needs Fall Short of Sustainable Solutions,” North Carolina Justice Center, March 5, 2019, 1. 125. McHugh and Nordstrom, “Make Space for Learning,” 2. 126. West Ed, “Sound Basic Education for All: An Action Plan for North Carolina,” December 2019.

CHAPTER 13

Epilogue Kyle P. Steele

In many ways, it seems fitting to reflect on the future of the American high school’s history at a time when the future of the institution is also up for debate. Over the past year, as this book came together, the pandemic shuttered nearly every high school in the country, and thousands of high schoolers were forced to attend classes virtually. Often, the virtual experience was whittled down to the classroom—to curriculum and instruction—signaling that student learning is the most essential element of the high school, the single aspect worth attempting to preserve in a moment of crisis. That is certainly fair enough. But as this volume explores, the high school has, for nearly a century, been as much of a social and cultural institution as an educational one, a reality reflected in recent reporting and research. For some high schoolers and their caregivers, for example, the move to virtual learning or homeschooling has been described as a positive experience, with substantial numbers reporting that they plan to continue

K. P. Steele (B) University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9_13

347

348

K. P. STEELE

on even after schools reopen.1 Statistically, however, the pandemic has been detrimental to the mental health of high schoolers. While specific causal links are difficult for researchers to assess at this point, the isolation resulting from school closures and stay-at-home orders appears to have contributed to a thirty-one percent increase in mental health related emergency admissions for adolescents. According to the Centers for Disease Control, moreover, rates of suicidal thinking and behavior were up twenty-five percent for the age cohort, and the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, the nation’s fifth largest, cited several student suicides in its decision in January 2021 to partially reopen schools.2 Beyond mental health concerns, the pandemic has exacerbated—and revealed in new ways—what many already knew about the race- and classbased inequities that define our systems of education. The most vulnerable of our high schoolers, that is, have been left without the support and resources they needed to access virtual learning in consequential or even minimal ways. Often, the economic fallout from the pandemic has meant that the same students have faced increased levels of food and housing insecurity, and they are more likely than their wealthier peers to have caregivers working in jobs the pandemic has made more dangerous and demanding, the ones we have now labeled “essential.”3 With all of these issues swirling around the high school, what does the future hold? Will the pandemic change the institution in appreciable ways? Or, given its durability since the early decades of the twentieth century, will the high school carry on in some pre-pandemic version of itself? Will there be more or less flexibility in student learning? Will there be more or less time required in the building? Will there be more or less attention devoted to the emotional or material needs of students? If the history of education hopes to inform this conversation in meaningful ways, which it ought to, then the field should continue to evolve to see the institution in more expansive terms, as inexorably bound to communities and, for many, at the center of the adolescent experience. It should continue to seek more complicated answers to the questions I posed in the introduction about how communities have viewed their high school or system of high schools, and how young people have made sense of them, whether they attended, graduated, avoided, or were denied meaningful access to the institution. The field should have even more to say about “the paths not taken” as they relate to both high school policy and practice.4

13

EPILOGUE

349

Thankfully, the field is moving in this direction. As I mentioned in the introduction, there has been some remarkable work within the last ten years that has captured the perspectives of Black high school students, especially those who engaged in activism for access and fair treatment in their schools and, more broadly, for civil rights in their communities. In addition to the titles I noted, as well as V.P. Franklin’s recent book The Young Crusaders (2021), Dara Walker, Alex Hyres, and Jon Hale have a forthcoming collection of essays that focuses on teenagers, Youth in the Movement: High School Student Activism in Postwar America. The volume will undoubtedly expand and complicate an important trend in the literature, notably by exploring Black freedom struggles alongside the work of high schoolers in the Chicano Movement, the New Left, Red Power, and Feminist Movements.5 In that spirit, the field could do more to similarly capture the points of view of other groups of young people who have historically been silenced—both by their high schools and the historical narratives about them. These include Latinx students, Asian American students, Indigenous students, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities, among others. Whether specifically about high schools or other educational spaces, there is existing scholarship that could serve as an example for future work. For example, Darius Echeverría’s Aztlán Arizona (2014), Stephanie Hinnershitz’s A Different Shade of Justice (2017), Meredith McCoy and Matthew Villeneuve’s, “Reconceiving Schooling: Centering Indigenous Experimentation in Indian Education History” (2020), Patrick Dilley’s Gay Liberation to Campus Assimilation (2019), and Jason Ellis’ A Class by Themselves? (2019) all elevate powerful stories and point to future research.6 As I have written elsewhere with Alex Hyres, capturing the diverse perspectives of students (and young people in general) raises its own interesting and important methodological questions, which the field could explore further.7 For example, the most readily available documents created by high school students tend to be yearbooks and student newspapers, which may hold the power to elucidate life inside high schools. At the same time, as Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen points out in this volume, student newspapers, in particular, were relatively standardized and regulated by teachers and administrators just as they were becoming commonplace in the 1920s. Further, scholars ought to explore the degree to which students who wrote for school publications were both self-selective (in that they felt accepted by the school’s culture) and

350

K. P. STEELE

adult-approved (in that they were allowed to write for the school). For those reasons and others, the field should continue to evaluate the voice, agency, and power students had in the production of school-sanctioned documents, as well as consider who exactly those student-writers represented (and who they did not represent). Combining yearbooks and newspapers with other records—including Census data (as in Kitzmiller’s chapter in this volume), diaries and memoir (Stovey’s chapter), or oral history (Coleman-Tempel’s chapter)—may be an important step in triangulating, refuting, or complicating these more easily accessible records and traditional archives. Spatially and temporally, the field appears to be wide open, in large part because high schools, like all schools, can be so significantly altered by local preferences and by the wishes and priorities of students, which shift across time and place. Ansley Erickson has made this point clear in her research of a single New York school, a process she discusses in her essay “How/Should We Generalize?” and in the book (edited with Ernest Morrell), Educating Harlem (2019).8 Likewise, contributors to this volume, Erika Kitzmiller and Barry Goldenberg, have forthcoming books about single high schools—Philadelphia’s Germantown and Harlem Prep, respectively—which should be similarly revealing. As case studies of institutions, they will devote significant attention to students, communities, and life inside the walls of schools. The field, like history in general, will more than likely continue to ebb and flow between calls for intimate “microhistories” and grand syntheses, but for now, there are valuable lessons on capturing student and community voices in the former.9 While the field may be wide open, any survey of the articles and book reviews in the History of Education Quarterly and related journals will reveal that the field has most fully addressed large metropolitan areas (over small cities, towns, and rural areas) on the East and West Coasts (over much of the Midwest, Mountain West, South, Southeast). Moreover, perhaps owing to the availability and unusual depth of school records from the period, the Progressive Era has been studied more than other parts of the century. This is not to the detriment of the field, but it appears there could be more attention given, in particular, to the Great Depression, a point Julie Reuben made during the panel “Histories of Education: What Books Do We Need?” at the History of Education Society’s 2018 Annual Meeting. Reuben’s insight might be particularly salient as it relates to the high school, as school leaders were called on to add more students, classes, and extracurriculars (often with smaller budgets) to keep young

13

EPILOGUE

351

adults out of the labor market during the economic collapse.10 Beyond the Depression, the field could more fully articulate the ways in which economic vicissitudes shaped the lives of high schoolers, both in specific locales and nationally. Across the century, there could be further analyses of private secondary schools, especially in describing how they worked in tandem with (or in opposition to) public high schools in maintaining segregated and inequitable high school systems. Recent works from Matthew Edmonds and Michele Purdy explore the creation of “segregation academies” and the experiences of Black students who desegregated elite schools, principally in the South, but similar studies elsewhere could be fruitful.11 For example, many metropolitan areas outside of the South have substantial numbers of Catholic high schools—St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis, among others—which often boasted even larger enrollments at midcentury, before extensive suburbanization gave white and middle- and upper-class families more options.12 How did schools like these understand their role in meeting diverse constituent needs? How did that role change over time, and how did it play out in smaller towns or rural areas where there were fewer public and private options? A heavier focus on the public–private divide could also be applied to the opening decades of the twentieth century, the period during which public high schools, especially in cities, slowly (but never completely) supplanted academies, trade schools, business schools, and other forms of vocational instruction for young adults. Christina Viviana Groeger’s new book on Boston, The Education Trap (2021), does this work as a meticulous case study, demonstrating that training more young people in secondary schools sometimes had deleterious results, both intended and unintended: it undermined the power of unions, shifted power to management, and unfairly made cumbersome educational credentials prerequisites to economic stability.13 How did this process and debates about high school vocationalism unfold in other parts of the country? More broadly, and as David Labaree pushes us to consider in this volume, has the expansion of access to secondary education always led to more equity, educationally or otherwise? On balance, has the high school allowed privileged people to maintain their privilege, or has it challenged that arrangement?14 Finally, a word on the width of the narrative lens we apply to the history of the high school. While working on this volume, it has become clear that, in some cases, the stories we tell about the institution will

352

K. P. STEELE

continue to be bound up in the most significant and urgent issues we face as a society, namely the processes by which schools have excluded, oppressed, and marginalized students and communities, as well as how those students and communities proved resilient, forged ahead, and fought back. These stories are vital, in large part because studying them is intrinsically good, and elevating them seeks to build a more equitable educational future. The best histories of education pay respect to this truth, and our field serves no higher purpose. In other cases, however, the stories we tell about the high school may, at times, appear to be far more mundane, but the efforts to capture them should be understood as similarly rooted in a commitment to understanding young people and their communities more fully. Because the high school became a mass institution over the course of the century, substantial numbers of teenagers were required to attend them for much of their waking lives. Sometimes, perhaps just to pass the time, they joined clubs, skipped classes, sat in the bleachers at football games, squabbled with friends, and bemoaned the food in the cafeteria. What is more, these two narrative lenses (as attuned to the extraordinary and the more ordinary) need not be dichotomous. In fact, it stands to reason that pursuing the former would lead to more complex and authentic discussions of the latter. I found this time and again in my research on Indianapolis’ high schools. For example, when the city expanded from one public high school (the prestigious North Side Shortridge High) to two (adding the South Side Manual Training High) at the turn of the twentieth century, the decision mirrored the spatial and socioeconomic divisions that had developed over the preceding decades. That said, it was difficult to know exactly what the students thought about the division—how it really mattered to them and their communities— except by documenting the rivalry that developed around sporting events between the two schools. As it turns out, it was football, the quintessence of American masculinity, that held the answer, or at least part of it. When they played each other in the early 1900s, the game regularly ended in riotous fistfights, with fans and community members often joining in the dangerous melees. Fearing an unending escalation in the violence, the school board banned all competitions between the schools in 1907, which it upheld for more than a decade.15 Apart from the actual game and accompanying riots, the student cheering sections also spoke to the class-based animosity that defined the

13

EPILOGUE

353

Shortridge-Manual rivalry. Prior to the ban, the more well-to-do Shortridge students in attendance were known to chant derisively of the many female “cooking” or “sewing” students who proudly sported Manual’s red and white school colors: “Girls in white, girls in red; They’re the gals that make the bread.”16 It was an early iteration of the now-common chant that can be heard when a high school loses to an opponent it deems less privileged: “That’s alright, that’s okay, you’re gonna work for us someday.”17 Indeed, school leaders in the present are regularly called on to address and apologize for their students chanting classist, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic slurs in unison. Recent stories from Cincinnati, Ohio (2018), Spencer, Iowa (2018), Elgin, Illinois (2019), Beachwood, Ohio (2019), and Santa Maria, California (2020) illustrate this point.18 Society writ large surely bears responsibility for the bigotry that fueled these events. Yet in the minds of students, the bigotry became overt in the context of school pride and besting one’s opponents, causing significant and unshakably memorable harm to the targeted students in the process. Of course, there are nearly unlimited other stories to be uncovered, certainly beyond sports.19 But the point stands. Capturing the high school experience in all its complexity will not only lead to richer histories—rooted in the lived experience—but it will also demonstrate a commitment to trying to understand a wider range of historical actors, no matter their age. In my work preparing undergraduates to be teachers, I find myself regularly asking my students to do something similar: to take young people and their cultures, peer groups, and lives away from school seriously. To see them as inherently valuable assets, as building blocks in the construction of knowledge. The history of the high school should continue to do that, too.

Notes 1. “Covid-19 Has Persuaded Some Parents That Home-Schooling Is Better,” The Economist, February 27, 2021. Pew Research reported that seven percent of Americans were “formally home-schooling” children in October 2021, up from three percent the previous spring. Also, many Black caregivers have reported that they find homeschool preferable to public schools that are hostile to Black children. See Eliza Shapiro, Erica L. Green, Juliana Kim, “Missing in School Reopening Plans: Black Families’ Trust,” The New York Times , February 1, 2021; Mahala Dyer Stewart,

354

K. P. STEELE

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

“Pushed or Pulled Out? The Racialization of School Choice in Black and White Mothers’ (Home) Schooling Decisions for Their Children,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 6, No. 2 (April 2020): 254–268. Benedict Carey, “For Some Teens, It’s Been a Year of Anxiety and Trips to the E.R.,” The New York Times , February 23, 2021; Erica L. Green, “Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen,” The New York Times, January 24, 2021. John R. Allen and Darrell M. West, “How To Address Inequality Exposed by the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Brookings, November 4, 2020; Cory Turner, “New Studies Show The Pandemic Highlights Inequality In U.S. Education System,” All Things Considered, December 10, 2020; Amber Joseph, “What One New York Teacher Is Learning in a Pandemic,” The New York Review of Books, April 19, 2020. This last point, on the “paths not taken,” is from Erika Kitzmiller, who mentioned it in a discussion we had about the Epilogue in March of 2021. For work in line with the edited volume Youth in the Movement, see Alex Hyres’ forthcoming essay in Journal of African American History, “The Whole Mess Is American History”: Protest, Pedagogy, and Black Studies at a Desegregated High School in the South, 1967–1974.” Among other, see Darius V. Echeverría, Aztlán Arizona: Mexican American Educational Empowerment, 1968–197 8 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014); Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Meredith L. McCoy and Matthew Villeneuve, “Reconceiving Schooling: Centering Indigenous Experimentation in Indian Education History,” History of Education Quarterly 60, No. 4 (2020): 487–519; Patrick Dilley, Gay Liberation to Campus Assimilation: Early Non-Heterosexual Student Organizing at Midwestern Universities (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); and Jason Ellis, A Class by Themselves? The Origins of Special Education in Toronto and Beyond (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019). In some cases, this work also takes care to explore student intersectionality, which, however theoretical, should be viewed as capturing the student experience in all of its complexity. For discusses of intersectionality in the history of education, see Wayne J. Urban, “The Proper Place of Theory in Educational History?” History of Education Quarterly 51, No. 2 (2011): 229–238. Alex Hyres and Kyle Steele, “Reimagining the High School Experience: The Uses and Limitations of Student-Generated Documents for Understanding the Past and Present,” which is currently under review. Also, see Jack Dougherty, “From Anecdote to Analysis: Oral Interviews and New Scholarship in Educational History,” The Journal of American History 86, No. 2 (September 1999): 712–723 and Kabria Baumgartner, “Searching

13

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

EPILOGUE

355

for Sarah: Black Girlhood, Education, and the Archive,” History of Education Quarterly 60, No. 1 (2020): 73–85. Ansley T. Erickson, “How/Should We Generalize?” History of Education Quarterly 60, No. 1 (February 2020): 86–97; Ansley T. Erickson and Ernest Morrell (eds.), Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). For a discussion of this back-and-forth trend in United States history in the early 2000s, see Thomas Bender, “Strategies of Narrative Synthesis in American History,” The American Historical Review 107, No. 1 (February 2002): 129–153. Jonathan Zimmerman (chair and discussant), Julie Reuben, Derrick Alridge, Nancy Beadie, Adam Nelson, “Histories of American Education: What Books Do We Need?” History of Education Society Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 2, 2018. On the Depression, see David B. Tyack, Robert Lowe, and Elisabeth Hansot, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 189. They write, “Was the depression a watershed? The simplest answer—which needs some qualification—is no. In comparison with the private economy, in which employment and the GNP fluctuated radically, public schooling remained remarkably stable in funding. The depression did not deflect much the long-term trends of institutional expansion from 1920 to 1950.” Future work could evaluate this claim, perhaps looking beyond funding and “institutional expansion.” Matthew C. Edmonds, “The Private School Pivot: The Shrouded Persistence of Massive Resistance in the Black Belt and Beyond,” History of Education Quarterly 60, No. 4 (2020): 455–486. In addition to Purdy’s book Transforming the Elite, see “Blurring Public and Private: The Pragmatic Desegregation Politics of an Elite Private School in Atlanta,” History of Education Quarterly 56, No. 1 (2016): 61–89. I captured this phenomenon to a small degree in Indianapolis, where the Catholic Cathedral High School was “overflowing in the 1950s, but, by the 1970s, chose to become co-educational and to move closer to more affluent suburbs to stay viable. Kyle P. Steele, Making a Mass Institution: Indianapolis and the American High School (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020), 127. Christina Viviana Groeger, The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021). As I mentioned in the introduction, see Herbert Kliebard, Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876–1946 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999); see Harvey Kantor and David Tyack (eds.), Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism

356

15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

K. P. STEELE

in American Education (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1982); Harvey Kantor, Learning to Earn: Work, School, and Vocational Reform in California, 1880–1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Also, see John Rury, Education and Women’s Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). Additionally, see Marie Marmo Mullaney and Rosemary C. Hilbert, “Educating Women for Self-Reliance and Economic Opportunity: The Strategic Entrepreneurialism of the Katharine Gibbs Schools, 1911–1968,” History of Education Quarterly 58, No. 1 (2018): 65–93. Steele, Making a Mass Institution, 27–29. Ibid., 27. This chant, though cited widely, including the cheerleading film Bring It On (2000), is often linked to Harvard. See Heather Pickerell, “Sit Back, Relax, and Enjoy Harvard,” The Harvard Crimson, November 15, 2012. See Kristen Swilley, “Did Elder Stop Racist Chants? Principal Says Yes, St. Xavier Parents Say No,” WCPO Cincinnati, February 12, 2018; Kevin Skiver, “Racist Chants Rain Down on Visiting Iowa High School Basketball Team,” The Des Moines Register, January 26, 2018; Chris Bengel, “Illinois High School Officials Investigating Claims of Racist Chants During Girls Basketball Game,” CBS Sports, December 18, 2019; Evan MacDonald, “Grand Valley Students Disciplined for Racist Chants Toward Beachwood Students at Football Game, Superintendent Says,” Cleveland.com, September 25, 2019; Chuck Schilken, “‘Where’s Your Passport?’ Chant Breaks out at Prep Basketball Game in Santa Maria,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2020. The power of capturing the stakes and essence of the high school through the vehicle of sports have also been demonstrated by journalists and documentarians. See, for example, Hoop Dreams, directed by Steve James (1994; Chicago: Kartemquin Films) and Buzz Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and A Dream (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991).

Index

A Abbeville High School (Louisiana), 249 academic class (versus non-academic), 55 Adams, Selden Carlyle, 151 administrators, high school, 151 adolescence, 36, 39, 121, 122, 145, 168, 211 Advanced Placement (AP) exams, 63. See also testing, standardized advising. See guidance, school to student African American students, 227, 290. See also Black students African studies, 93, 106 Ahdieh, Hussein, 88, 89, 91, 93, 105–107 A.H. Parker High School (Alabama), 220 Alabama Council on Human Relations, 250, 270

Allegheny High School (Pennsylvania), 255, 260 Allen, Belle, 178 American Educational Research Association (AERA), 38 American Friends Service Committee, 250 Americanization, efforts in, 70 American Missionary Association, 208 American Student Union, 217 Amherst College, 65 Anderson, James D., 5, 11, 230, 316, 339 Angus, David, 44, 45, 52 annexes, high school. See buildings, high school Architectural Record, 46 architecture. See buildings, high school assembly halls, 8 Association of American Schools and Departments of Journalism, 161 athletics, high school, 189, 192, 199

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. P. Steele, New Perspectives on the History of the Twentieth-Century American High School, Historical Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79922-9

357

358

INDEX

attendance rates, 73, 207. See also graduation rates Aust, Dennis, 295 Avery Normal Institute (South Carolina), 205, 208, 211, 230 B Back, Adina, 84, 104 Bailey, Beth L., 5, 11 Bailyn, Bernard, 5, 11, 58 Baker, Alice, 162 Baldwin, James, 87 band and music programs, 96 Bangsberg, Roy, 175, 176, 181, 182, 188, 197 Banks, James A., 100, 112 Barbour, Hargo, 211 Barnes, Claude, 243–245 basketball, 5, 154, 172, 173, 183, 185–189, 194, 202. See also athletics, high school Bass, Rev. William, 257 Bayh, Birch, 259, 262 Beach Boys, The, 2 Beasley, Ethel, 175 Berkeley, The. See newspapers, high school student Berkeley Training High School (South Carolina), 227 Berry, Chuck, 2 Bilbo, Theodore, 225, 228 Biondi, Martha, 84, 104, 269 Bishop, Lynnette, 323, 341 Blackboard Jungle, 2 Black, Bruce, 154 Black students, 5, 8, 84, 101, 143, 177, 178, 212, 237, 239, 242, 243, 245–258, 260–262, 284, 287–290, 293, 294, 319, 324, 351 Blanton, Carlos Kevin, 5, 11 Bledstein, Burton J., 20, 21, 27

Bleyer, Willard, 161, 165 Board of Education of Oklahoma v. Dowell (1991), 295 boards of education. See school boards, local bond issues. See funding, school Booksmart , 2 Boston Latin and English, 47 Bowen High School (Illinois), 252 Bower, Frank, 180 Bridge, Henry, 293 Brogden, Julia, 205, 211 Brown, Arnold, 255 Brown, Franklin, 244 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 212, 243, 277, 316 Brown II decision (1955), 285 Brumbaugh, Martin G., 125, 135 Bruton, Dr. David, 318, 319, 339 buildings, high school, 9, 46, 280, 312, 330, 336

C cafeterias, 46, 248, 320, 352 capitalism, 93, 118 Cappas, Alberto, 88, 106 carceral state, 8, 239, 240, 242, 258, 262. See also mass incarceration Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 3, 55, 184, 194 Carpenter, Ann, 83, 89, 91, 95, 98, 109, 111 Carpenter, Casey, 91, 98, 107, 109 Carpenter, Edward F., 82, 85, 88–90, 93, 98, 102, 103, 107, 108 Carrie, 2 Catholic secondary education, 86 Census, US, 271, 280 Center for Homeland Defense and Security, 240, 267 Centers for Disease Control, 348

INDEX

Central Association of Printing Teachers, 140 Central High School of Philadelphia, 11, 13, 27 Central Interscholastic Press Association, 140, 148 Chess, Elport, 208, 210, 211 Chicago Tribune, 192, 269, 271, 272 Cieslik-Miskimen, Caitlin, 8, 349 City College of New York, 217 Civil Rights Act (1964), 243, 254, 289 Civil Rights Movement, 5, 84, 208–212, 220, 231, 236, 266 Civil War, 177 Clark, Dr. Kenneth, 96, 101 Clarke, Dr. Edward H., 119 Clark, Septima P., 208, 228, 230, 236 clubs, high school. See extracurricular activities Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), 7, 40, 53, 54, 60, 71, 74, 79 Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), 71 co-educational high schools, 116, 117, 126 Cohen, David K., 13–15, 21, 27, 30, 33, 35, 43, 52, 71, 76, 77, 79 Cold war, 23, 26, 83, 220, 233 Coleman Report, 59 Coleman-Tempel, Lauren, 8 college. See higher education College of Charleston, 206 Collinwood High School (Ohio), 252, 253 commencement. See graduation Commission on Civil Rights (1946), 206, 210 Commission on Educational Issues (CEI), 70 Committee of Ten, 3, 55, 56, 58, 64, 65, 70

359

Comprehensive high schools, 41, 55, 58 Conant, James Bryant, 70 Confederacy, symbols of the, 250 Congress of Racial Equality, 216 Cook, Ronald, 286, 287 Cooper, Alice, 2 Cooper, Anna Julia, 86, 105 Cooper, Milton C., 127 Cornell University, 272 Council of Federation Organizations, 229 courtship, 5 Craig, Bertha, 178, 199 Crawford, Raymond, 86, 105 credentialism. See diploma, high school Cremin, Lawrence, 5, 11, 32, 99, 111 critical media literacy, 90 culturally relevant pedagogy, 100, 105 curriculum, debates over, 54 custodialism, 45, 46 cutting classes, students, 61

D Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s, The, 196. See also Fass, Paula S. Danns, Dionne, 5, 11, 265, 271, 306, 307 Dartmouth University, 31 dating, high school student, 5. See also courtship Davis, Bob, 324 Dawson, Dorothy, 179 Delmont, Matthew F., 104, 254, 263 democracy, conceptions of, 215 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 339 Depression, The, 351

360

INDEX

desegregation, school, 8, 84, 238, 239, 250, 258, 263, 287, 295, 304 Des Moines Register, 188, 356 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 183, 200 Devil’s Pi. See newspapers, high school student Dewey, John, 53, 146, 172, 196 Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 213 Dilley, Patrick, 349, 354 Dillon, Charles, 149, 166 Dinsmore, Robert Truman, 182, 200 diploma, high school, 4, 10, 18, 132, 176 discipline, school, 260, 261. See also suspensions and expulsions Dobie Gillis , 2 Donara High School (Pennsylvania), 257 Donerson, Naomi, 252 Dorn, Sherman, 5, 11 Double V campaign, 218. See also World War II Douglass, Frederick, 226 dress codes, 61, 63, 158 driver’s education, 44 dropout, high school, 5, 22, 58 Du Bois, Dr. W.E.B., 225, 226, 235 Dudley High School (North Carolina), 242, 251 Duncan v. Louisiana (1966), 247, 269

E Echeverría, Darius V., 349, 354 Editor & Publisher, 142, 168 Edkins, Dan A., 147, 166 Edmonds, Matthew C., 351, 355 Education Week, 41, 80 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), 59, 275

Eliot, Charles, 72 Ellis, Jason, 349, 354 Elmore, Mary Lee, 183 Emdin, Christopher, 101, 112 Englewood High School (Illinois), 252 English Journal, The, 142, 161, 165 Enka High School (North Carolina), 333 Erickson, Ansley T., 84, 104, 105, 264, 306, 337, 341, 350, 355 Esquire, 9, 10, 270 Executive Order 9981, 207, 210 extracurricular activities, 4, 30, 52, 100, 117, 141, 144, 145, 154, 163, 168, 171, 292, 297 F Failed Promise of the American High School, The, 44, 45, 52 Farrar, Eleanor, 30, 71, 76 Fass, Paula S., 5, 8, 11, 164, 165, 168, 170, 171, 196, 230 Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 39 Federal Free and Reduced Lunch Program, 278 female student, 7, 62, 123, 131, 154. See also sexism finance. See funding, school Fisher, Minerva, 173 Fisk University, 218 Flint, L.N., 148, 165, 166 Foner, Eric, 6, 12 football, 65, 187, 291, 352. See also athletics, high school Ford Foundation, 89, 102 Fortney, Alice, 187, 202 Franklin and Marshall College, 31 Franklin Delano Roosevelt Junior High School (Ohio), 255 Franklin, V.P., 5, 12, 265, 349 Fraser, Jim, 48, 50

INDEX

funding, school, 312–314, 316, 320, 324, 327, 330, 331, 335

G Gage Park High School (Illinois), 252 Gallup polling, 37 Gantenbein, Barbara, 176, 198 Garver, Lysta, 179, 180, 195, 197, 199 Gay, Geneva, 86, 105 General Education Board, 213 Germantown High School (Pennsylvania), 7, 115–117, 128, 131, 132 gerrymandering, 253 GI Bill, 23, 26 Giovanni, Nikki, 87 Glee, 2 Glenville High School (Ohio), 253 Goldenberg, Barry M., 7, 102, 103, 112, 113, 350 Gordon, Edmund W., 85, 105 graduation, 5, 30, 37, 57, 66, 68, 69, 146, 172, 175, 312 graduation rates, 3. See also attendance rates Grand Rapids, Michigan, 45 Grant, Gerald, 5, 11, 41, 51 Great Depression, 350 Great Migration, 177, 251 Green, James Earl, 246 Greensboro Association of Poor People, 243 Greensboro High School (North Carolina), 149 Green v. New Kent County (1968), 243, 268 Griffin, Arthur, 325, 342 Grimes, Willie, 242, 246 Groeger, Christina Viviana, 351, 355 Grubbs, Dr. John, 282

361

Grundy, Pamela, 5, 11, 12, 187, 201, 264, 336 guidance, school to student, 148 Gyure, Dale Allen, 44, 46–48, 52, 336

H Hale, Jon N., 5, 8, 11, 84, 104, 230, 231, 251, 265, 269, 349 Hall, G. Stanley, 121, 134 hallways, high school building, 126 Hampel, Robert L., 5, 6, 11, 35, 51, 52, 71, 79 Harlem Preparatory School, 82, 107, 108, 110, 112 Harrell, James “Pat”, 321 Harris High School (Illinois), 169, 170, 172–174, 182–185, 189, 191–193, 195 Harvard University, 11, 12, 50–52, 76, 103, 119, 133, 135, 165, 337, 342, 355 Haskins-Jackson, Bari, 87, 88, 106, 109, 111 Heathers , 46 Henry, Bayard, 128 heteronormativity, 116 higher education, 16, 23–27, 82, 84, 91, 116, 161, 177, 196, 205 Higher Education Opportunity Act, 23 High School Journal, The, 142 High School Musical-The Musical-The Series , 2 Hill, Shirley A., 5, 12, 230, 264, 306 Hinnershitz, Stephanie, 349, 354 Hinton, Elizabeth, 244, 264, 266, 268, 269, 274, 275 Hirsch, Arnold, 260 historiography, high school, 3, 239

362

INDEX

History of Education Quarterly, 104, 133, 134, 164, 201, 236, 307, 337, 338, 350, 354–356 Hofstadter, Richard, 32 Hoke County High School (North Carolina), 330 Holiday, Billie, 97 homecoming, 249 home economics, 44 Horace’s Compromise, 7, 29, 34, 53, 57, 71–73 House Party, 2 housing. See residential patterns Housing and Urban Development Act (1968), 257 How to Publish a School Paper, 150 Huff, Bessie, 146, 150 Hunter College, 217 Hunt, Jr., James B., 325, 329 Hurley, Ruby, 215 Hurston, Zora Neale, 87 Hyde, Grant M., 148, 166 Hyres, Alex, 349, 354

Janken, Kenneth, 246 Japanese American, 5 Jenkins, Esau, 228 Jim Crow, 5, 208, 210, 211, 217, 219, 223, 284 job training. See vocationalism Johnson, Dr. Charles S., 218 Johnson, Lyndon, 59 Johnson, Maxine, 284, 291, 292 Johns, Vernon, 212, 213 Jones, Duane, 87 Jones Senior High School (North Carolina), 247 Jones, Thomas Lloyd, 145, 165 Journalism for High Schools , 147, 150 journalism instruction, 150. See also newspapers, high school student junior high schools, 282, 286, 294 Justice Department, 262 juvenile delinquency, conceptions of, 216 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (1974), 262, 275

I immigrant students, 55 Indiana High School Press Association, 147 informal clubs, 30 interdisciplinary learning, 54 International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, 278, 280 I.Q.tests, 49. See also testing, standardized

K Kafka, Judith, 260, 266 Kahamu, Mwanajua, 87, 106 Kemper, John, 59, 61 Kendi, Ibram X., 246, 269 Kimmons, Larry D., 246 King, Dr. Martin Luther, 213, 252 Kitzmiller, Erika M., 7, 133, 336, 350, 354 Kopp, Ina, 191, 202 Kraemer, Collins, 248 Krug, Edward A., 184, 196

J Jackson, Esther Cooper, 214, 224, 233 Jackson, Juanita, 215 Jackson State University, 246 Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 120

L Labaree, David F., 5, 6, 135, 351 A Laboratory Manual for High School Journalism, 148

INDEX

Ladson-Billings, Gloria, 86, 100 Lanier High School (Mississippi), 210, 211 Laning, Edward, 190 Lassonde, Stephen, 5, 11, 164 Last Little Citadel, The, 6, 29, 40 Latinx students, 101, 349 Law Enforcement Assistance Act (1965), 261 Leandro, Robert, 330, 344 Leandro v. State of North Carolina (1994), 344 Lewis, Owen D., 244 Life Adjustment Movement, 4, 41, 44 Little Rock, Arkansas, 316, 336 Lloyd, Janet K., 327, 343 Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice, 258, 274 Love, Bettina L., 101, 112 Lowe, Isaac, 320 Lowe, Laura, 320, 340 Lucas, Leonard, 211 Lyells, M.J., 211 lynching, 226 Lynd, Helen, 141, 165, 198, 200 Lynd, Robert S., 165, 198, 200

M magnet (test-in) high schools, 8, 278, 279 Mahnke, Harold L., 139, 140, 144, 152, 159, 162, 164, 167, 168 Malcolm X, 87, 105 Mann, Horace, 117 Manpower Development and Training Act, 289 manual training, 18, 123, 125, 352 Marion Township High School (Illinois), 178 mass incarceration, 240, 258

363

McCoy, Meredith L., 349, 354 McCray, John H., 224, 225, 228, 235 McElwain, Max, 188, 202 McGuire, Gaywood, 87 McNeil, May Carr, 178, 199 Mebane, Leon, 238–240, 242 Meier, Deborah, 77, 80 Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, 58 meritocracy, 14, 19 microhistory, 84 middle-class students, 19, 22, 24. See also social (socioeconomic) class Middleton, Delano, 246 Midwest, 8, 169, 171, 172, 176, 177, 196, 241, 278, 281, 290, 350 Milliken v. Bradley (1974), 277 Milner, Richard, 100 Minerva Hall. See assembly halls Mintz, Steven, 49 Mirel, Jeffrey E., 4, 10, 44, 45, 52 misbehavior, student, 63 Mitchell, Steve, 247 Mondale, Sarah, 49 Monessen High School (Pennsylvania), 257 Morrell, Ernest, 105, 107, 112, 337, 350, 355 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 59 multicultural education, 49, 99, 100. See also culturally relevant pedagogy Murakawa, Naomi, 240, 266 N NAACP, 8, 206, 209–216, 218, 220–223, 225, 228, 247–250, 279, 284–286, 304 NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, 250 NAACP Youth Council, 206, 215, 216, 223

364

INDEX

Naismith, James, 186 National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), 70, 71 National Black Theater, 87 National Council of Education, 119 National Council on Teachers of English, 162 National Education Association (NEA), 3, 151 National Guard, 246 National Merit Scholarship Program, 279 National Science Foundation, 289 A Nation At Risk, 30, 55, 72, 335 Native Americans, 323, 324 Nelson Dewey High School (Wisconsin), 143, 152 Nelson, Hubert E., 169, 170, 172– 174, 178, 183, 185, 190–196, 203 Neufield, Barbara, 21 New Haven, Connecticut, 56 newspapers, high school student, 8, 139, 140, 146, 150, 156, 158, 163, 164, 227 New York City Board of Education, 81, 82, 100 New York Times, The, 77, 81, 102, 106, 110, 234, 269, 271, 272, 353, 354 New York University, 31, 217 New York Urban League News , 81 New York Urban League (NYUL), 82 Nieto, Sonia, 100, 112 Nirvana, 2 Nixon, Richard, 259 No Child Left Behind (NCLB), 7, 54, 74 normal schools, 23 Norris Junior High School (Kansas), 294, 296

North Carolina, 9, 149, 237, 242, 244–247, 261, 312–317, 320, 321, 325–327, 329–331, 335 North Carolina A&T University, 244, 246 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI), 321, 343 North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center, 315, 338 Northeast Manual Training High School (Pennsylvania), 123 Northwest Halifax High School (North Carolina), 329 O Obama, Barack, 74 Oberlin College, 218 Oliver High School (Pennsylvania), 260 oral histories, 8, 280, 317, 350 P Pak, Yoon K., 5, 11 Palmer, Alice Freeman, 120 pandemic, COVID-19, 354 Pellicer, Leonard, 311 Pepperdine University, 246 per-pupil spending. See funding, school Perquimans High School (North Carolina), 320, 322 Perry High School (Pennsylvania), 256 Philadelphia, 7, 16–18, 115–118, 122, 123, 125–129, 131, 254, 255, 350 Philadelphia High School for Girls, 123, 129 Philadelphia Trade School, 123 Philbrick, John, 120 Phillips Academy, Andover, 7, 29

INDEX

Phillips, Craig, 328, 344 Phillips Exeter Academy, 64 Phillips, Jr., Samuel, 64 physical education, 4, 44 Pierre, Raymond C., 248, 270 Pinecrest High School (North Carolina), 317–319, 325 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 212 policing in schools, 242 Powell, Arthur, 30, 54, 63 Powell, Jr., Adam Clayton, 225, 235 Princeton University, 59 principals, 40, 71, 72, 151, 250, 255, 261. See also administrators, high school private high schools, 30, 50 Progressive Era, 46–48, 83, 350 property taxes. See funding, school protests, student, 241, 242, 245, 249, 250, 252, 254 Purdy, Michelle A., 5, 11, 104, 266

R Race to the Top, 74 racism, 89, 178, 195, 206, 250, 255, 285, 291, 332 Rankin, John, 225 Raspberry, Naledi, 86, 105 Ravitch, Diane, 49 Reagan, Ronald, 259 Redd, Willie, 213 Reese J., William, 3, 145, 171 Reid, Fred, 213 Reiff, C.K., 148 Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, 57 residential patterns, 62 Reuben, Julie, 350, 355 Revels, Hiram, 226 Richards, Henry deCourcy, 131 Rickford, Russell, 84, 104

365

rivalries, high school, 352 Roanoke Rapids High School (North Carolina), 332 Robeson, Paul, 225, 235 Rodrigo, Olivia, 2, 10 Rolfe, Jean, 176, 177, 198, 199 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 255 Roosevelt Junior High School (Kansas), 296 Roosevelt, Theodore, 134 Rosenwald Fund, 213 Ross, Diana, 97 R.R. Moton High School (Virginia), 213 rules and regulations, school, 34 Rury, John L., 5, 10, 12, 133, 135, 164, 230, 264, 305, 306 Ryan, Patrick, 2, 10

S Salmen High School (Louisiana), 248 Saved by the Bell , 2 Schneider, Jack, 79 Scholastic Editor, 142, 147–149, 160 school boards, local, 227, 228, 295 school-prison-nexus, 8 School Review, The, 142, 166 Schueler, Allegra, 180, 189, 199 secret societies. See informal clubs Section 235. See Housing and Urban Development Act (1968) Sellers High School (North Carolina), 237 sexism, 118, 123, 129 Shepherd, Mark, 284 Shield Spectator. See newspapers, high school student Shopping Mall High School, The, 7, 30, 34, 42, 71 Shortridge Daily Echo. See newspapers, high school student

366

INDEX

Shortridge High School (Indiana), 149 Shortridge, James R., 177, 198 Simone, Nina, 94 Sizer, Nancy, 35, 61, 77–80 Sizer, Theodore “Ted”, 7, 29, 32, 40, 54, 56, 62 smoking cigarettes, students. See misbehavior, student social efficiency, the high school for, 11, 184 social (socioeconomic) class, 19, 65, 177 South Carolina State College, 206 Southeast High School (Kansas), 8, 278, 279, 300, 302, 332 Southern Manual Training School (Pennsylvania), 125 Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), 8, 209, 210, 214, 216–228 sports. See athletics, high school Springsteen, Bruce, 2 Stanford, Jane, 120 Stanford University, 120, 356 Stinney, George J., 219, 233, 234 Stoda, Ada, 187, 188, 202 Stokes, Carl B., 254, 271 Stovey, Patricia, 8 Student Christian Association, 217 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 229, 244 Students for a Democratic Society, 256 A Study of High Schools, 6, 29–32, 50, 71, 79 suburbanization, 351 Superior Central High School (Wisconsin), 143, 150, 152 Superior, Wisconsin, 139, 142, 143, 152, 163 supervision of youth, adult, 8

Supreme Court, 36, 243, 247, 262, 289, 295, 316, 330, 335 suspensions and expulsions, 258 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971), 247, 324 Swift, Taylor, 2

T Teachers College, Columbia University, 85 teachers, high school, 72, 73, 211 Terzian, Sevan, 2, 10 testing, standardized, 40, 54, 56, 74, 75, 295, 327 Texas Southern University (TSU), 246 textbooks, 48, 83, 88, 142, 150, 160, 321, 332 theatre programs, 65 Thompson, Robert Ellis, 127 Thorn, Reginald, 248 Tilden, William T., 130 Time magazine, 59 tracking, 20, 91, 287 Truman, Harry S., 229 Turnbell, Maria, 284 Tyack, David B., 11, 32, 49, 50, 80, 133, 134, 338, 355

U University of Kansas, 161 University of Minnesota, 162 University of Pennsylvania, 17 University of South Carolina, 206, 232, 341 University of Wisconsin, 10, 11, 145, 148, 161, 164–166, 196, 356 Urban League, 82, 279, 288

V vandalism to schools, 61, 259, 261

INDEX

veterans, World War II, 208, 209, 210–212. See also World War II Vietnam War, 61 Villeneuve, Matthew, 349, 354 violence between students, 319 Viroqua High School (Wisconsin), 179, 181, 187, 188 Viroqua, Wisconsin, 173, 176, 179, 181, 187, 188 vocationalism, 351 Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt, 9 voter registration, 220, 221 Voting Rights Act (1965), 243

W Wagner, Kenneth, 255 Waiting for Superman, 75 Walcott, C.B., 248 Walker, Dara, 349 Walter Williams High School (North Carolina), 237 Ward, Regi, 256 War on Drugs, Reagan’s, 259 Wellesley College, 120 West Charlotte High School (North Carolina), 325 Westinghouse High School (Pittsburgh), 255 West Mecklenburg High School (North Carolina), 325 West Philadelphia High School, 123, 131 What’s Happening!!, 2 Wichita East High School (Kansas), 283

367

Wichita, Kansas, 278, 280 Wichita Public Schools (WPS), 278, 279, 281, 283, 289, 290, 293, 298, 301 Wick, Viola, 154 William Penn High School for Girls (Pennsylvania), 126, 129, 130 Williams High School (North Carolina), 237 Williams, Jakobi, 252, 271 Wilmington Ten, 246, 247 Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 151 Woodson, Carter G., 86, 105 working-class students, 22, 24. See also social (socioeconomic) class World War I, 147 World War II, 5, 8, 36 World Youth Congress, 216 Wrenn, Steven L., 329, 331 Wrighten, John, 205, 206, 208, 210, 211 Writing for Print , 151, 166 Y Yale University, 50 yearbooks, high school, 34 Young, John, 256 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 146 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), 146 Z Zeller, E.A., 131