26 “It was not enough”: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam, 1903), 73.
27 Villard fumed in a letter to Washington: The Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 4, 1895–1898, ed. Louis R. Harlan, Stuart B. Kaufman, Barbara S. Kraft, and Raymond W. Smock (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 304.
28 He responded to Villard: Ibid., 311–12.
29 on northern fund-raising expeditions: Norrell, Up from History, 97.
30 “to cope with the white world”: Du Bois, The Education of Black People, 63–66.
31 “Washington stands for Negro submission”: The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, 167.
32 detailed, practical advice: Best articulated in his “Sunday Talk” of April 28, 1895, in The Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 3, 1889–1895, ed. Louis R. Harlan, Stuart B. Kaufman, and Raymond W. Smock (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1974), 549–51.
33 Both men lobbied: The Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 2, 1860–1889, ed. Louis R. Harlan and Peter R. Daniel (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 284–85; and The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 2, 139–40.
34 received significant federal funding: See Donald Roe, “The Dual School System in the District of Columbia, 1862–1954: Origins, Problems, Protests,” Washington History 16, no. 2 (2004): 26–43.
35 “missionary spirit”: The Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 3, 552.
36 “Your real duty”: The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 2, 8–9.
37 “My mother was a slave”: The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, ed. Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998), 331.
38 her application letter to Oberlin president: Leona C. Gabel, From Slavery to the Sorbonne and Beyond: The Life and Writings of Anna J. Cooper (Northampton, MA: Smith College Libraries, 1982), 18.
39 equal-per-pupil spending: Robert A. Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 40, 54.
40 disenfranchised more than half: Helen G. Edmonds, The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894–1901 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951), 211–14.
41 the state amended its constitution: Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 37.
42 Du Bois conducted a survey: Du Bois and Dill, “The Common School and the Negro American,” 32, 50.
43 In 1899, M Street students: Karen A. Johnson, Uplifting the Women and the Race: The Educational Philosophies and Social Activism of Anna Julia Cooper and Nannie Helen Burroughs (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 54.
44 university presidents and judges: Gabel, From Slavery to the Sorbonne and Beyond, 28–29.
45 Félix Klein visited Cooper’s classroom: Félix Klein, In the Land of the Strenuous Life (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1905), 292–96.
46 “the colored woman’s office”: The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, 117.
47 “The earnest well trained Christian”: Ibid., 87.
48 “The Solitude of Self”: DuBois, ed., The Elizabeth Cady Stanton—Susan B. Anthony Reader, 247–48.
49 “ ‘I am my Sister’s keeper!’ ”: The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, 64.
50 “no shirking, no skulking”: Ibid., 132.
51 “sympathetic methods”: Johnson, Uplifting the Women and the Race, 108.
52 “Tuskegee machine”: Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, 252–53.
53 Washington personally intervened: This incident is recounted by Du Bois in his 1968 Autobiography (pp. 252–53) and investigated in depth by two of the men’s biographers: David Levering Lewis, in W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868–1919: Biography of a Race (New York: Owl Books, 1994), 168–70; and Robert Norrell in Up from History (pp. 225–33).
54 campaign of character assassination: The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, 9–13.
CHAPTER FOUR: “SCHOOL MA’AMS AS LOBBYISTS”
1 “jigger carrier”: Kate Rousmaniere, Citizen Teacher: The Life and Leadership of Margaret Haley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 4.
2 Michael Haley believed in the promise: Described in Ibid., 7.
3 “I don’t know Susan B. Anthony”: Margaret A. Haley, Battleground: The Autobiography of Margaret A. Haley, ed. Robert L. Reid (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 13.
4 “dear friend”: The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 6, An Awful Hush, 1895–1906, 239.
5 $35 per month: Haley, Battleground, 20–21.
6 Francis Wayland Parker: Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993), 39–41.
7 $40 per month: Haley, Battleground, 22n.
8 830,000 residents: Andrew Wender Cohen, The Racketeer’s Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 19.
9 “warrants” promising future pay: John McManis, Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co., 1916), 62–63.
10 “fads and frills” and Tribune editorials: Quoted in Herrick, The Chicago Schools: A Social and Political History (Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1971), 73–74.
11 freeze a planned $50 annual raise and his wife’s maid: Haley, Battleground, 35.
12 “The Federation should have a broader outlook”: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 98.
13 “lady labor slugger”: This nickname for Margaret Haley was coined by Chicago mayor William “Big Bill” Thompson, a Republican.
14 “school ma’ams as lobbyists”: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 103.
15 “Does Unionism Make Girls Masculine?” Frank G. Carpenter, “Women Taking Part in Labor Movement,” Atlanta Constitution, May 15, 1904.
16 “you had to fight hard”: Haley, Battleground, 3–4.
17 half the market value: Hannah Belle Clark, The Public Schools of Chicago: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1897), 58–60.
18 $200 million in rent: George S. Counts, School and Society in Chicago (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928), 97.
19 “property … loses its moral value”: “Minutes of Mass Meeting of the Teachers Federation at Central Music Hall, October 29, 1900,” 27, MH/CTF archives.
20 “heroic efforts to stem the tide of plutocracy” and “You make me think of Moses”: Eliza A. Starr and Lucy Fitch Perkins to Margaret Haley, published in “Souvenir Programme” for CTF fund-raiser, January 18, 1901. MH/CTF archives.
21 “the plucky little woman”: Wisconsin Teachers Association Meeting Program, December 1903, MH/CTF archives.
22 “just one human being”: William Hard, “Margaret Haley, Rebel,” The Times Magazine, January 1907: 231–37.
23 Harriet Taylor Upton, a leader and Haley happily did so: Harriet Taylor Upton to Margaret Haley, October 19, 1904. MH/CTF archives.
24 crusading attorney Clarence Darrow: Hard, “Margaret Haley, Rebel,” 234.
25 his campaign to centralize and professionalize: Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA: 1900–1980 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 7–10.
26 On Halloween, she booted a formerly truant student: “Teacher Refuses to Quit,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 1, 1902. This incident opens the indispensible Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 7–10.
27 Andrew Jackson students walked out: Reported in “Board Suspends Woman Teacher,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 1902; and “School Rioters May End Strike,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1902. Also described in Murphy, Blackboard Unions.
28 his client had been targeted in retaliation: “Calls Teacher a Victim of Plot,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 12, 1902.
29 “the dismal burlesque”: “Like Parents, Like Children,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 11, 1902.
30 “Employment means work”: “Enforce the Decision,” Chicago Dai
ly Tribune, November 14, 1902.
31 Liberal magazines like Harper’s Weekly and The Nation: Cohen, The Racketeer’s Progress, 136.
32 “sedition, revolt”: “Teachers of Sedition,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 8, 1905.
33 “teachers are not born”: David Swing Wicker, “The School-Teacher Unionized,” Educational Review, November 1905: 371.
34 “the cardinal principle of unionism”: “The Point of View: A Radical Departure in Unionism,” Scribner’s Magazine, June 1903: 763–64.
35 Helen Todd conducted an informal survey: Helen M. Todd, “Why Children Work,” McClure’s, vol. XL, 1913: 68–80.
36 thirty thousand turn-of-the-century Chicago children: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 86.
37 were so rooted in their ethnic ghettoes: Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890), 183.
38 “our chief defense against the tenement”: Jacob A. Riis, The Children of the Poor (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902 edition), 127.
39 counseling poorly behaved students: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 66.
40 “a constant danger”: Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York: Macmillan Company, 1910), 332.
41 “Gentle Jane”: Haley, Battleground, 103.
42 to keep teachers’ evaluation reports secret: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 105–6.
43 she found city aldermen were protecting them: Ibid., 49.
44 discouraged her teachers from assigning homework: McManis, Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools, 67.
45 she established school baths, and she lowered as many class sizes: Ibid., 92.
46 “melting pot”: Ibid., 60.
47 “How to Teach Parents”: Ella Flagg Young, “How to Teach Parents to Discriminate Between Good and Bad Teaching,” in Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Educational Association (Salem, MA: The Association, 1887), 245–48.
48 Young was “endowed with the keenest intellect”: Haley, Battleground, 23.
49 teachers’ book club: McManis, Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools, 64.
50 including John Dewey and the Harvard philosopher William James: Ibid., 84.
51 “an interplay of thought”: Ella Flagg Young, Isolation in the School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1900), 17.
52 “automatons”: Ibid., 46.
53 “medieval”: John Dewey, The School and Society and The Child and the Curriculum (Minneola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 18–19.
54 “When you think of the thousands”: Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 95.
55 “new education”: Dewey’s preferred term for “progressive education.” Described in Dewey, The School and Society and The Child and the Curriculum, 24.
56 “direct the child’s activities”: Ibid., 25.
57 Lab School project: Ibid., 14–15.
58 Dewey worried that turn-of-the-century urban children: Jay Martin, The Education of John Dewey: A Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 14.
59 she did experience some significant successes: John McManis, Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools.
60 the “Loeb Rule”: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 122–23.
61 “to eliminate men of brain and heart”: “Minutes of Chicago Federation of Labor meeting at the Auditorium, September 8, 1915,” MH/CTF archives.
62 “the Interests, the special interests”: Ibid.
63 After a long legal and political battle: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 135.
64 founded the American Federation of Teachers: Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 83–87.
65 they lobbied the state legislature: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 131–34.
66 The first American teachers to win tenure: For a good short history of teacher tenure see Hess, The Same Thing Over and Over Again, 153–57.
67 In New York, the new three-year probationary period: Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973 (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 118.
68 “I believe that every child”: McManis, Ella Flagg Young and a Half Century of the Chicago Public Schools, 210–11.
69 Frederick Winslow Taylor: Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958 (New York: Routledge, 1995), 78–83.
70 intricate tables for judging teachers’ output: Joseph S. Taylor, “Measurement of Educational Efficiency,” Educational Review 44 (1912): 348–67.
71 A study by education researcher William Lancelot: William Lancelot et al., The Measurement of Teaching Efficiency (New York: Macmillan Company, 1935).
72 According to peer reviewer Helen M. Walker: Ibid., xiii.
73 numeric ratings in largely subjective categories: Taylor, “Measurement of Educational Efficiency.”
74 “walking through the rooms”: William McAndrew, The Public and Its Schools (Yonkers, NY: World Book Company, 1917), 49.
75 “If a principal is unable”: McAndrew’s 1923 report to the Chicago school board, quoted in Counts, School and Society in Chicago, 80.
76 a 1924 “research bulletin”: quoted in Ibid., 186.
77 “a training place for cheap labor”: “Minutes of Chicago Federation of Labor meeting at the Auditorium,” September 8, 1915.
78 “the brand of inferiority”: Counts, School and Society in Chicago, 188.
79 unions were right to push back: On the history of IQ testing, see Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999); Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform (New York: Touchstone, 2000); and Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
80 published a study showing: Julius Metz, “IQs and the Underprivileged,” The New York Teacher 1, no. 4 (1936): 60–63. Tamiment.
81 “antagonizing the bulk of the teaching force”: Herrick, The Chicago Schools, 161.
82 Haley teamed up with a shady character: see Counts, School and Society in Chicago.
83 March 30, 1927, ad: Ibid., 268.
84 Those allegations were false: Ibid., 269–70.
CHAPTER FIVE: “AN ORGY OF INVESTIGATION”
1 Mary McDowell: See “Brief for Mary S. McDowell, Respondent” (In the matter of the charges of conduct unbecoming a teacher preferred against Mary S. McDowell before the Board of Education of the City of New York, 1918); “Teachers Who Are Not Loyal,” The New York Times, November 18, 1917; and “Quaker Teacher’s Case Is Argued,” The New York Times, May 16, 1918.
2 17 percent of Americans completed high school: David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 47–48.
3 “a joke”: “Principals Dislike Teachers’ Ratings,” The New York Times, October 19, 1919.
4 “C or D more accurately reflects”: “Quaker Teacher’s Case Is Argued.”
5 “We, the teachers of the public schools”: “Loyal Teachers Urge Internment of Disloyal,” New York Tribune, December 17, 1917.
6 all but thirty relented: “Teachers Yield on Pledge,” The New York Times, May 10, 1917.
7 McDowell went on “trial”: See “Brief for Mary S. McDowell, Respondent” and “Quaker Teacher’s Case Is Argued.”
8 A jingoistic climate had invaded the public schools: One of McDowell’s colleagues at Manual High School, a German teacher accused of fascist sympathies, was also purged. Across the city from the teens through 1960, language teachers seem to have borne a disproportionate brunt of witch hunts; they were not seen as essential to the social efficiency or vocational curricula.
9 Alexander Fichlander: “Won’t Promote Pacifist,” The New York Times, March 29, 1917; “Principals Dislike Teachers’ Ratings”; and Alexander Fichlander, “Teachers’ Ratings,” Journal of Education 91, no. 2 (1920): 36–37.
/> 10 “a sphere for wider influence”: “Won’t Promote Pacifist.”
11 “The Board of Education should root out”: “Teachers Who Are Not Loyal.”
12 The Legion was influential: Marcus Duffield, King Legion (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1931).
13 “reds and pinks”: Ibid., 286.
14 the Legion partnered with the National Education Association: Ibid., 269–71, 280–87.
15 William Randolph Hearst: Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 96–98, 137–38.
16 “an orgy of investigation”: Quoted in Celia Lewis Zitron, The New York City Teachers’ Union, 1916–1964 (New York: Humanities Press, 1968), 173.
17 Diane Ravitch remembers: Dana Goldstein, “Diane Ravitch, the Anti-Rhee,” Washington City Paper, June 24, 2011.
18 Nelda Davis: Cheryl J. Craig, “Nelda Davis, the McCarthy Era, and School Reform in Houston,” American Educational History Journal 29 (2002): 138–43.
19 The male share of the teaching force increased: Thomas D. Snyder, ed., 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait (National Center for Education Statistics report, U.S. Department of Education, January 1993), 34.
20 In New York City … an oversupply: For the process of becoming a certified New York teacher, see Ruth Jacknow Markowitz, My Daughter, the Teacher: Jewish Teachers in the New York City Schools (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 75–92.
21 many were disturbingly ignorant: Howard K. Beale, A History of Freedom of Teaching in American Schools (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 247–48.
22 Three female New York City teachers participated: Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 58.
23 “the exceptional teacher”: Beale, A History of Freedom of Teaching in American Schools, xii.
24 “social movement unionism”: see Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard.
25 Irving Adler always said that his wife, Ruth: The biographical information is from author interviews with Juliet Relis Bernstein (February 11, 2013), Bruce Bernstein (February 7, 2013), and Ellen Bernstein Murray (February 12, 2013), as well as from Irving Adler’s self-published 2007 memoir, Kicked Upstairs: A Political Biography of a “Blacklisted” Teacher. Tamiment.
The Teacher Wars Page 34
