1 David Jaynes, Gerald and Williams, Robin M. Jr., eds., A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (Washington, D.C., 1989).Google Scholar

2 Nationally, secondary school enrollments grew from 4,800,000 in 1930 to 7,100,000 in 1940 while the fourteen- to seventeen-year-old population increased by only 7 percent. U.S. Office of Education, Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, 1955–56 (Washington, D.C., 1956), 30. In Detroit, high school enrollments rose from 32,317 in 1929, to 44,103 in 1934, and to 52,029 in 1939, an increase of 61 percent over the decade. Detroit Board of Education, Superintendent's Annual Report, 1938–39 (Detroit, 1939) 196.Google Scholar

3 Citation is from Byron J. Rivett, “Curriculum Revision in Detroit High Schools,” North Central Association Quarterly 8 (Apr. 1934): 502. We have analyzed and documented these developments more fully in two previous studies: Jeffrey E. Mirel and David L. Angus, “The Rising Tide of Custodialism: Enrollment Increases and Curriculum Reform in Detroit, 1928–1940,” Issues in Education 4 (Fall 1986): 101–20; and Jeffrey Mirel and David Angus, “Youth, Work, and Schooling in the Great Depression,” Journal of Early Adolescence 5 (Winter 1985): 489–504.Google Scholar

4 Arthur Bernard Moehlman, Public Education in Detroit (Bloomington, Ill., 1925), 220–22, 230; Detroit Public School Staff, Frank Cody: A Realist in Education (New York, 1943), 300; Jeffrey Mirel interview with Walter G. Bergman in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 5 May 1985; Rivett, “Curriculum Revision in Detroit High Schools,” 502; Rachel Stutsman, What of Youth Today? The Responses of 500 Young People in Detroit to the Problems of the Depression Years … (Detroit, 1935), 31.Google Scholar

5 Even as late as the 1960s, nonlaboratory sciences were general biology, physical science, and earth science; science courses with a lab component were biology, chemistry, and physics. Citation on boys’ units is from Byron J. Rivett, “Curriculum Revision in Detroit,” North Central Association Quarterly 11 (Apr. 1937): 455. Citation on girls’ units is from Elsie M. Cameron, “A Personal Standards Course for High School Girls,” Practical Home Economics 18 (July–Aug. 1940): 205–7, but see also Rivett. Detroit Board of Education, Superintendent's Annual Report, 1929–30, 42; Detroit Board of Education, Senior High Schools, Descriptive Leaflet no. 77 (Detroit, 1937); Detroit Board of Education, Vitalizing the Experience of Secondary School Students in Detroit and Nearby Communities (Detroit, 1937), 273.Google Scholar

6 Mirel and Angus, “The Rising Tide of Custodialism.”Google Scholar

7 National Education Association Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, Bureau of Education, bulletin no. 35 (Washington, D.C., 1918); Joel Perlmann, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935 (New York, 1988); Harvey A. Kantor, Learning to Earn: School, Work, and Vocational Reform in California, 1880–1930 (Madison, Wis., 1988); John L. Rury, Education and Women's Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany, N.Y., 1991). For an excellent discussion of the national curriculum reform movement across this period, and especially of the centrality of the concept of “needs of youth,” see Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (New York, 1983), ch. 2. See also Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (London, 1964), 332–41.Google Scholar

8 Hopkins is quoted in Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945 (Philadelphia, 1972), 3; Detroit News, 26 Dec. 1941.Google Scholar

9 Bedell, Earl L. and Gleason, Walter E., “Detroit Public Schools in the War Effort,” Industrial Arts and Vocational Education 32 (Mar. 1943): 86.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.; Detroit Board of Education Proceedings [hereafter DBEP], 1940–41, 276; DBEP, 1942–43, 166–67; DBEP, 1944–45, 2; DBEP, 1945–46, 4; Detroit Board of Education, Detroit Public Schools and the War (Detroit, 1942); Detroit Board of Education, Superintendent's Annual Report, 1943-4 (Detroit, 1944), vi, 2, 6; Detroit Public School Staff, Frank Cody: A Realist in Education, 512–13; Stanley E. Dimond, “Meeting the Threats to Democracy,” Library Journal 66 (1 Feb 1941): 120–21; Eleanor Skimin, “Better Teaching for Better Wartime Service,” Journal of Business Education 18 (Apr. 1943): 7–8.Google Scholar

11 Calculated from annual accreditation reports of Detroit high schools, Bureau of Accreditation and School Improvement Studies Files, University of Michigan. These files are currently in the basement of the School of Education Building but are in the process of being archived at the Bentley Historical Library.Google Scholar

12 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population, 1940, v.2 (Washington, D.C., 1943), 116; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population, 1950, v.2, pt. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1953), 140; Table 4, folder: Detroit Board of Education, Interracial/Inter-cultural Program, 1946–47, box 17, Detroit Commission on Community Relations Papers, Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich.Google Scholar

13 Detroit Public Schools Department of Guidance and Placement, “High School War Service Inventory, November, 1943,” Mayor's Committee on Youth Problems folder, box 3, Detroit Federation of Teachers Papers [hereafter DFT Papers], Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs.Google Scholar

14 Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade, 64–65. A number of historians have described and interpreted the Life Adjustment Movement. Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York, 1961), ch. 9; Robert L. Church and Michael W. Sedlak, Education in the United States: An Interpretive History (New York, 1976), ch. 13; David L. Angus, “The Dropout Problem: An Interpretive History” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1965), ch. 5. On Prosser's views, see Secondary Education and Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), in which Charles Prosser fully developed the “life-adjustment” philosophy six years before it became a national movement. Prosser's “conversion” from the nation's foremost advocate of vocational education before the depression into the preeminent spokesman for a curriculum to meet “adolescent needs” by the end of the depression is emblematic of the main trends of the period.Google Scholar

15 Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism, 344.Google Scholar

16 Church and Sedlak, Education in the United States, chs. 13, 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 The series appeared in Detroit Free Press, 8 Dec. through 14 Dec. 1946.Google Scholar

18 Detroit Free Press, 18 Mar. 1958. The paper argued that the situation was actually even worse than these figures indicated, since they took no account of “the watered-down standards or the damage done by the Detroit school system's policy of automatic promotion,” or of the fact that a grade of “D” once meant that the course had to be repeated, but was now considered a passing grade.Google Scholar

19 The series appeared in Detroit News, 31 Mar.–4 Apr. 1958. The Detroit Board of Education seriously debated a year-round school proposal by two of its staff members later in the spring, because several of the high schools were severely overcrowded. Ibid., 11 and 12 Apr. 1958.Google Scholar

20 Despite their criticisms of educational quality in the city, both newspapers editorially supported the bond issues and millage requests during this period. Editorial, Detroit Free Press, 20 Mar. 1958; Editorials, Detroit News, 10 and 14 Apr. 1958.Google Scholar

21 Detroit News, 3 Apr. 1958.Google Scholar

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23 Around this time, this bureau was in the process of disaccrediting an admittedly excellent academic high school, Holland Christian High School, because its governing parents council refused to add industrial arts and home economics to its curriculum. The irony of this insistence on standards that were popularly perceived to be lower was not lost on the area's editorial writers. Detroit Free Press, 11 and 13 Apr. 1958; Detroit News, 9 and 11 Apr. 1958; Ann Arbor News, 12 Apr. 1958; Michigan Daily, 11 and 12 Feb. and 15 Apr. 1958.Google Scholar

24 Citations are from Kent Leach to Harlan Hatcher, 10 Dec. 1957, folders 9–12, box 19, Hatcher Papers, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. The other subjects mentioned as “slighted” were foreign language, “a diversified program of social studies,” and physical education.Google Scholar

25 During this period, black youth in Detroit were blocked out of the construction trades apprentice programs run by the trade unions. The unions defended the almost total absence of blacks in these programs by citing their low scores on the qualifying exams, a large portion of which were devoted to basic mathematics. Ironically, only the black youths who were in the academic track were likely getting enough mathematics to qualify for skilled trades training. Black youth in the general and vocational tracks were not. See Roy Gene Phillips, “A Study of Equal Opportunity in the Construction Trades Apprenticeship Training Program Sponsored by the Pipefitting Industry of Metropolitan Detroit within the Detroit Public Schools” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1971).Google Scholar

26 U.S. aggregate public and nonpublic high school enrollment peaked at 7,123,009 in 1939–40, then fell to 6,030,617 in 1943–44. U.S. Office of Education, Biennial Survey, 30. Although enrollment rose by more than a half million over the next eight years, the 1940 level was not recovered until the midfifties.Google Scholar

27 Patricia Cayo Sexton, Education and Income: Inequalities of Opportunity in Our Public Schools (New York, 1961), 171–80. The estimates of black enrollment are based on figures from 1946 and 1961. For the 1946 figure, see note 9 above. For the 1961 figure, see Detroit Board of Education, Detroit Public School Statistics, 1975–76, vol. 56, pt. 1 (Detroit, 1976), 2.Google Scholar

28 “Under modern conditions of urbanized life and of our industrialized economic life it is impossible to keep all youths in school for twelve years, but it is better that as many as possible be in school, at least during their 16th and 17th years… . The remedy is to accept the fact that these youths exist and that they should be in school, at work on a program which they can see has some relation to the conditions of their present and immediate future living.” Detroit Board of Education, Citizen's Advisory Commission on School Needs, Consultants’ Report on the Curriculum (Detroit, 1958), 97–100.Google Scholar

29 A 1958 Gallup Poll comparing the attitudes of parents with those of high school principals on a host of questions related to educational quality showed a sharp divergence on the issue of college attendance. “Parents, by a vote of more than 2-1, are against stiffer college entrance requirements… . Everyone should have the right to go to college in the opinion of many parents. Principals, however, tend to feel the tougher college requirements might be a good thing.” Detroit Free Press, 10 Apr. 1958.Google Scholar

30 Michigan Chronicle, 12 Mar. 1958. See also Stephen Scott Williams, “From Polemics to Practice: IQ Testing and Tracking in the Detroit Public Schools and Their Relationship to the National Debate” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1986).Google Scholar

31 Michigan Chronicle, 22 Mar. 1958.Google Scholar

32 DBEP, 1957–58, 215.Google Scholar

33 Michigan Chronicle, 12 Apr. 1958.Google Scholar

34 Wolf, Eleanor P. Trial and Error: The Detroit School Segregation Case (Detroit, 1981), 16–18.Google Scholar

35 The report also noted that in the 1963–64 school year not a single advanced placement test was given at the predominantly black Central, Northern, Northeastern, and Northwestern high schools. Sub-committee on Guidance and Counseling of the Education Committee of the Detroit NAACP, “A Report on Counseling and Guidance to the Board of Education of the City of Detroit, December 1965,” 1–4, folder 1, box 29, pt. 2, ser. 2, Detroit NAACP Papers, Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs. See also DBEP, 1964–65, 645–46, 649–51, 722–24; DBEP, 1965–66, 163–64, 192–93, 324–25; Detroit News, 23 June 1965; Detroit News, 2 Feb. 1965, in clipping folder, box 6, DFT Papers [inventoried 1/7/85]; Michigan Chronicle, 6 and 20 Mar. 1965, 17 Apr. 1965, 22 and 29 May 1965, 3 July 1965, 6 and 13 Nov. 1965, 5 and 12 Feb. 1966, 5, 12, and 19 Mar. 1966; Detroit Teacher (June 1965); Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1989), 44.Google Scholar

36 Gregory, Karl D. “The Walkout: Symptom of Dying Inner City Schools,“ New University Thought 5 (May–June 1967: 29, 40, 48–49, 51. Forty-seven percent of blacks were enrolled in the college prep track at Mumford but that compared to 91 percent of whites. Mumford High School Study Committee, “Final Report, October 1967,” 57, Mumford folder, box 24, Detroit Urban League Papers [hereafter DUL Papers], Michigan Historical Collections; see also Detroit Urban League, A Profile of the Detroit Negro, 1959–67 (Detroit, 1967), 7; 1967 Research Reports, “Profile” folder, box 65, DUL Papers; National Education Association, National Commission on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, Detroit, Michigan: A Study of Barriers to Equal Educational Opportunity in a Large City; Report of an Investigation (Washington, D.C., 1967), 81.Google Scholar

37 Gregory, “The Walkout,“ 29.Google Scholar

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40 The Michigan Chronicle, the leading black newspaper in the city, declared that “the total community should say: Thank God for Sam Brownell.'” By contrast, the Free Press, which totally reversed its stand on the walkout once the issue of firing the principal came to the fore, declared that the decision to remove Carty would leave a “bitter legacy. What the community can't support is the removal of a principal under student pressure.” Michigan Chronicle, 30 Apr. 1966, 7 May 1966; Detroit Free Press, 30 Apr. 1966, 3–5 May 1966 in the Northern High School folder, box 41, ND Papers. See also Detroit Labor News, 4 May 1966; National Education Association, Detroit, Michigan, 79–80; Detroit News, 19 and 20 Apr. 1966, in the Northern High School folder, box 41, ND Papers; Michigan Chronicle, 23 Apr. 1966; Fine, Violence in the Model City, 55. Google Scholar

41 As early as 1964, Cleage had urged African Americans to “think black, vote black and buy black.” In March 1967, he renamed his church the Shrine of the Black Madonna and announced a radical re-interpretation of Christianity based on the premise that “Jesus was the non-white leader of a non-white people struggling for national liberation against the rule of a white nation, Rome.” Robert Conot, American Odyssey (New York, 1974), 685–86; Fine, Violence in the Model City, 25.Google Scholar

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43 Inner City Parents Council, “Inner City Parents Program,” 11. For an excellent discussion of the community control debate in Detroit, see William Grant, “Community Control vs. School Integration—The Case of Detroit,” Public Interest no. 24 (Summer 1972).Google Scholar

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46 Michigan Daily, 12 Feb. 1958.Google Scholar

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