1 Clifford, Geraldine Jonçich “Man/Woman/Teacher: Gender, Family, and Career in American Educational History,“ in American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work ed. Warren, Donald (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 295.Google Scholar

2 Boston Board of Education, Fourth Annual Report [1841]. Quoted in Kathleen Weiler, Country Schoolwomen: Teaching in Rural California (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 13.Google Scholar

3 Robert Doherty offered numerous examples of nineteenth-century inequities in pay between men and women teachers. For example, in 1896, women secondary school teachers in Boston received starting annual salaries of $756, rising $48 per year to a maximum of $1,300. By contrast, men started at $1,380, received yearly raises of $144, and reached a maximum salary of $2,880. So accustomed were women to lower wages that when Boston's women teachers protested the inequity, they asked only for salary increases rather than parity with men. Robert Doherty, “Tempest on the Hudson: The Struggle for ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ in the New York City Public Schools, 1907–1911,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (Winter 1979): 428.Google Scholar

4 Boston Board of Education. Fourth Annual Report [1841], quoted in Weiler, Country Schoolwomen, 13.Google Scholar

5 William Graebner describes the late nineteenth century movement to create pension funds for teachers as part of a broader effort, including teacher tenure, to bring stability to the teaching profession. Not only teachers, but school boards, supported such efforts because better paid, more financially secure teachers were a bulwark against radicalism and they were less attracted to unions. Pensions, no doubt, offered further economic, if not ethical, justification for hiring young teachers and finding ways to dismiss older teachers. Regulations barring married women from teaching were in line with achieving such goals. William Graebner, “Retirement in Education: The Economic and Social Functions of the Teachers’ Pension,” History of Education Quarterly 18 (Winter 1978): 402–403, 408–410.Google Scholar

6 Stinnet, T.M. Turmoil in Teaching: A History of the Organizational Struggle for America's Teachers (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 169; T.M. Stinnet, Professional Problems of Teachers (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 207.Google Scholar

7 New York City provides an interesting exception to bans on married women. In 1903, the Board of Education formally enacted a rule prohibiting married women from teaching. One year after the ban, women teachers and feminists successfully challenged the law. Following this victory, they continued pushing further, overturning New York City's 1911 ban on employing mothers as teachers. The city's women teachers also pushed for equal pay with men, achieving their goal in 1911, and by 1914 the city granted leaves of absence to teachers for childbirth. Doherty credits New York's lively reform environment and women's suffrage movement for such victories. Probably more important was New York City's need to staff a rapidly expanding school system flooded with new students. Facing such pressure, New York could ill afford to alienate anyone from a teaching job. Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical Perspective (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), 18; Doherty, “Tempest on the Hudson,” 428; Ruth Markowitz, My Daughter, The Teacher: Jewish Teachers in New York City Schools (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

8 MacDonald, Victoria-María “The Paradox of Bureaucratization: New Views on Progressive Era Teachers and the Development of a Woman's Profession,“ History of Education Quarterly 39 (Winter 1999): 405; Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900–1980 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 71; Clifford, “Man/Woman/Teacher,” 322–323.Google Scholar

9 Richard Quantz points to the inconsistent outcomes of such thinking when married women living with husbands were fired while young, single women, many of them living at home with middle and upper class fathers who were in no great need of additional support, were hired in their place. Richard Quantz, “The Complex Visions of Female Teachers and the Failure of Unionization in the 1930s: An Oral History,” History of Education Quarterly 25 (Winter 1985): 446.Google Scholar

10 Snedden, David “Personnel Problems in Educational Administration: Married Women as Public School Teachers,“ Teachers College Record 36 (April 1935): 614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Graebner, “Retirement in Education,“ 407; Clifford, “Man/Woman/Teacher,” 322.Google Scholar

12 MacDonald, “The Paradox of Bureaucratization,“ 428. MacDonald also describes the “paradox of bureaucratization.” As schools were becoming hierarchical and teaching was “deskilled,” women carved out professional niches in the lower levels of bureaucracy. Working as critic teachers, teacher educators, and mentors, experienced women teachers not only stayed on the job for substantial periods of time, they also created career paths and contributed to the professionalization of teaching.Google Scholar

13 Kessler-Harris, Alice Out to Work: Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford Press, 1982), 257. The Depression did not create a new trend, however, but accelerated one that was already in place. During the 1930–31 school year, before the Depression's full effect, the percentage of cities hiring married women dropped to 23.4 percent, down from 39 percent three years earlier. The percentage of women who were fired if they married grew to almost half, up from 37 percent during the same time period. These numbers reflect the increased attraction of teaching to men, as salaries for teachers rose steeply during the 1920s to come into line with those of other wage earners. Lois Scharf, To Work and to Wed: Female Employment, Feminism, and the Great Depression (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 67, 76–77.Google Scholar

14 Scharf, To Work and to Wed, 79; See also Markowitz, My Daughter, The Teacher for an excellent analysis of married women teachers in New York City public schools from the 1910s through the 1930s.Google Scholar

15 Peters, David Wilbur The Status of the Married Woman Teacher (New York: Teachers College Press, 1934), 89.Google Scholar

16 Clifford, “Man/Woman/Teacher,“ 309.Google Scholar

17 Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 179.Google Scholar

18 Ellison, Lucile “The Sentence,“ NEA Journal, September, 1946, 294.Google Scholar

19 Simpson, Richard L. and Harper Simpson, Ida, “Women and Bureaucracy in the Semi-Professions,” in The Semi-Professions and Their Organization ed. Etzioni, Amitai (New York: Free Press, 1969), 209.Google Scholar

20 Clifford, “Man/woman/Teacher,“ 309.Google Scholar

21 Hanson, Earl H. “What Does Marriage Do to Teaching?“ NEA Journal, November 1963, 8. For more information on women and the NEA during this period see Wayne J. Urban, ourting the Woman Teacher: The National Education Association, 1917–1970, History of Education Quarterly 41 (Summer 2001): 139–166.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 8, 10.Google Scholar

23 Hall, G. Stanley Adolescence, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton, 1931), 623. For an excellent examination of homophobia and its effects on women's school employment in the twentieth century, see Jackie M. Blount, “Manly Men and Womanly Women: Deviance, Gender Role Polarization, and the Shift in Women's School Employment, 1900–1976,” Harvard Educational Review 66 (Summer 1996): 322.Google Scholar

24 Waller, Willard The Sociology of Teaching (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1931), 149.Google Scholar

25 American Association of School Administrators, Teacher Tenure Ain't the Problem (Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators, 1973), 9.Google Scholar

26 “Senate Passes Tenure for Married Women,” Providence Journal, 31 March 1965.Google Scholar

27 “Rockett Studies Effect of New Teacher Tenure Law on Emergency Teachers,” Providence Journal, 7 May 1946.Google Scholar

28 ”Wartime Teachers Under Tenure Act,” Providence Journal, 17 May 1946.Google Scholar

29 “Criticism Spurned Wed Teachers Tenure Ban Is Kept by Board,” Providence Journal, 15 March 1955.Google Scholar

30 “Teacher Tenure: Public Opinion Could Force a Change,” Providence Journal, 18 March 1955.Google Scholar

31 “Bd. Grants Tenure to Married Teachers,” Providence Journal, 29 March 1955.Google Scholar

32 “State Law Aimed to Remedy Teacher Tenure Mistake,” Providence Journal, 29 March 1955.Google Scholar

33 Ibid.Google Scholar

34 “Tenure for Married Teachers Proposed,” Providence Journal, 28 January 1959.Google Scholar

35 “Pawtucket Stands Almost Alone: Tenure for Married Women Widely Accepted,” Pawtucket Times, 6 March 1965.Google Scholar

36 Ibid.Google Scholar

37 Ibid.Google Scholar

38 “NEA Greeted Tenure Query with Disbelief,” Pawtucket Times, 6 March 1965.Google Scholar

39 “Pawtucket Stands Alone.”Google Scholar

40 Ibid.Google Scholar

41 “We Urge School Board to Change Stand,” Pawtucket Times, 6 March 1965.Google Scholar

42 Simpsons, “Women and Bureaucracy in the Semi-Professions,“ 207.Google Scholar

43 Labaree, David F. “Power, Knowledge, and the Rationalization of Teaching: A Genealogy of the Movement to Professionalize Teaching,“ Harvard Educational Review 62 (Summer 1992): 133; Magali S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977); Amitai Etzioni, ed. The Semi-Professions and Their Organization (New York: Free Press, 1969).Google Scholar

44 Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 182.Google Scholar

45 Urban, Wayne J. “Teacher Activism,“ in American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work ed. Warren, Donald (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 198.Google Scholar

46 Nolte, M. Chester “Teacher Militancy May Be Counterpressure,“ American School Board Journal 151 (October, 1965): 7.Google Scholar

47 Urban, “Teacher Activism,“ 200.Google Scholar

48 Exton, Elaine “Will School Board Members, Like the Indians, Become a Vanishing Tribe?,“ American School Board Journal 151 (November 1965): 65. See also idem., “Will School Boards Be Bypassed in the New Federal-State Relationships?,” American School Board Journal 151 (July 1965): 13–15 and idem., “How Will the School Boards Meet the Growing Federal Challenge to Their Leadership?,” American School Board Journal 151 (August 1965): 5+.Google Scholar

49 Exton, “Will School Boards Be Bypassed?,“ 15.Google Scholar

50 Exton, “How Will the School Boards Meet the Growing Federal Challenge?,“ 6.Google Scholar

51 Wayne Urban notes that urban, industrialized communities, like Pawtucket, were the most likely to see teachers’ strikes in the post-World War II years. Urban, “Teacher Activism,” 194.Google Scholar

52 “5 of School Board Welcome Strike for Court Test,” Pawtucket Times, 10 March 1965.Google Scholar

53 Telephone interview, Teacher A with this author, 10 March 1999. I interviewed or corresponded with three teachers, referred to in these notes as Teachers A, B, and C, who worked in Pawtucket in 1965. All three were strike supporters. These teachers responded to my request, which was published in the Pawtucket Teachers Alliance newsletter, for personal memories of the 1965 strike. They agreed to talk with me on the condition that I not use their names or identifying remarks in any published manuscript. Their desire for anonymity more than thirty years after the strike speaks to its bitterness. As Teacher A said, “No one will ever forget what side people were on.”Google Scholar

54 Telephone interview, Teacher B with this author, 12 March 1999.Google Scholar

55 “5 of School Board.”Google Scholar

56 “We Urge Teachers to Oppose Strike,” Pawtucket Times, 12 March 1965.Google Scholar

57 “Chafee Enters School Crisis; Teachers Delay Strike Vote,” Pawtucket Times, 12 March 1965.Google Scholar

58 “Court Order Blocks Strike,” Pawtucket Times, 13 March 1965, p. 1; “Pawtucket Teachers Drop Strike Threat, Pass on to Next Year's Contract,” Pawtucket Times, 15 March 1965.Google Scholar

59 “Teachers Present Thirty Pleas; Raise Among Cost Items,” Pawtucket Times, 17 March 1965.Google Scholar

60 “‘Teacher, Board Talks Falter Again,” Pawtucket Times, 24 March 1965; “School Board Finds ‘Public’ Hard to Get Along With,” Pawtucket Times, 24 March 1965.Google Scholar

61 “Cascella, Teachers Hail “ Providence Journal, 1 April 1965; “Pawtucket Schools ‘Open,’ Most Teachers Stay Out,” Pawtucket Times, 25 March 1965.Google Scholar

62 “Cascella Says Board ‘Gambled and Lost,”’ Providence Journal, 26 March 1965; “Cascella Says Teachers Will Go to Jail Rather Than Give In,” Providence Journal, 28 March 1965.Google Scholar

63 “Goff Pupil Writes to Editor,” Pawtucket Times, 30 March 1965; “School Budget Hearing Draws 100,” Pawtucket Times, 30 March 1965.Google Scholar

64 “Tenure Plan Passes House,” Providence Journal, 17 March 1965; “Married Women Tenure Goes to Chafee,” Pawtucket Times, 31 March 1965.Google Scholar

65 “Alliance Members Attend ‘TV’ Dinner,” Providence Journal, 9 April 1965.Google Scholar

66 “Tenure Laws Survey Made,” Providence Journal, 28 March, 1965; Minutes of the Pawtucket School Committee, 15 March 1966, Article IV, Section 6, 159.Google Scholar

67 Milkman, Ruth Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women's Labor History (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), xiii.Google Scholar

68 Scharf, To Work and to Wed, 79.Google Scholar

69 Telephone interviews, Teachers A and B. Letter from Teacher C to this author, 20 February 1999.Google Scholar

70 Acker, Sandra Gendered Education: Sociological Reflections on Women, Teaching, and Feminism (Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press, 1994), 120.Google Scholar

71 Interview of Teacher A and letter from Teacher C.Google Scholar