Introduction

During the 1960s, Wadleigh was a co-educational junior high school, and most of the students at the school came from the neighborhood of Harlem.

The exhibit explores past ideas about the future as they appeared in Wadleigh yearbooks through students’ imagination and understanding of the world, as well as adult visions about children’s education – its shape, purpose and meaning in the particular context of Harlem in the 1960s. The concept of “future” is here understood in concrete as well as abstract terms: How did students think about their future careers? How did students imagine the long-term future of Harlem, the United States, and the world? What were the aspects of the 1960s context that influenced and shaped their conceptions of the future?

The exhibit mainly draws from the 1960s issues of The Wadleigh Way, the school’s yearbook, which published many pieces of student writing and drawings. As students stepped into the school, students entered a new period in their lives, one that would shape and sometimes inspire their individual futures.

The Door is Open: Metaphors about Student Futures

The cover of the 1967 Wadleigh Way features a photograph of the entrance gates. The image of an open door often symbolizes a sense of opportunity. Open doors evoke future possibilities, as several references to doors and gates throughout the yearbooks suggest. A collage that features Wadleigh’s doorway, drawn from student art in the 1965 and 1966 yearbooks appears throughout the exhibit as a reminder of this theme.

In the 1964 Wadleigh Way, on the second page, the principal, Perry Spiro, spins that metaphor in his “Message From The Principal” to the graduating students:

Yes, you have heard it said – the door to equal opportunity is being kicked open. We are at the beginning of a new day when the ideals of our nation will match the realities of everyday life.

For you, the future is bright and promising – provided that you are one of the actors and not among the spectators. Your responsibility is clear, you must be ready because the door to opportunity is opening. This means that you must equip yourselves to take your place in society as a skilled, knowing person. This means too that you must take part in the struggle for human rights – for all who are oppressed.

The principal uses a rhetoric that aims to inspire students to seize opportunities. It is important to understand this message in the political context of 1964. During the Civil Rights movements, the movements that were battling discrimination against African Americans mobilized large parts of the population. In New York City, activists were mobilizing in educational institutions. The message cited above points to this rhetoric of activism: “you must take part in the struggle for human rights” is a sentence that bore a deep significance in the context of the time.

The image of an open door applied to the atmosphere at Wadleigh had another meaning also: Edouard Plummer, who used to teach at the school, mentions that classroom doors were always open, which conveyed a strong feeling of warmth. You can listen to the former teacher as he remembers his years of teaching at the school in the following clip:

Learning from Yearbooks

Historical accounts of education often stress academic results, economic facts and figures, political questions as well as education policy changes. The experiences of students are sometimes more difficult to investigate, because written records do not often capture student perspectives. School yearbooks feature student creations, and therefore illuminate certain aspects of the students’ experiences at the school. The yearbooks allow us to catch a glimpse into a past perspective on future possibilities. Through this rich material, you will discover a unique perspective on the hopes and ideas of Wadleigh students, their inspirations, and their creative dreams.

The backdrop of Harlem during the 1960s was a complicated context in which students navigated different messages about the role of education, and what that meant for their individual futures as well as the future of communities of color in Harlem. Students at Wadleigh, who for the majority came from the surrounding neighborhood of Central Harlem, were going to school in a city that was extremely segregated, and the discriminating practices of the New York Board of Education disadvantaged schools located in Harlem. Organizing for racial equality happened in different circles, and with varying degrees of challenge to the existing order, ranging from arguments for vocational education to liberation schools. In some of the Wadleigh yearbook publications, this context contrasts with the meritocratic message of the Wadleigh administration, which tends to depict formal schooling as the primary factor in determining future employment and success.

The Wadleigh yearbooks are fascinating, rich historical sources that present student activities and showcase student talent. Yet this particular type of historical source raises specific questions about interpretation: yearbooks are school publications, and were produced with several layers of oversight. Who is represented in the yearbooks? For what audience were the yearbooks created? This exhibit encourages readers to approach the various yearbook excerpts with a critical eye.

Student contributions to the yearbook illustrate preparation, ambition, and imagination. You will see that those themes very often overlap.

Ambition

A significant amount of student writing in the 1960s yearbooks dealt with students’ ideas about their individual futures. Whether in the form of reflections about the short-term future at Wadleigh, the prospect of going to high school, or possible future careers, students expressed ideas of growth and progress in various, original, and creative ways. Through theater plays, short texts, or personal reflections, some students at Wadleigh left a trace of their visions. The material featured in this exhibit ranges from very concrete considerations to very abstract inquiries about the future, and articulate the relationship between education, employment and success at different levels.

In 1965, the Wadleigh Way described the concrete relationship between vocational training at Wadleigh and future employment opportunities.

The idea that education provided qualifications that led to employment was a message that the administration at Wadleigh strongly reinforced. Yet it was one of the many, sometimes competing perspectives on the role of education that students navigated in Harlem at the time.

Students also pondered the distant future in more notional ways. In the 1967 yearbook, two pages were devoted to short student texts in a section called “Some Letters to God.” In the letters, students asked questions about days to come: “Will I be rich or poor?” “When will the races gain equality?”

This material sheds light on the particular context of the 1960s, with the uncertainty and hopes that surrounded student experiences, with its particular depth in Harlem. As the “Letters to God” highlight, the experiences of racial discrimination during the civil rights movements pervade student writing, in ways that illuminate how students generated ideas about future possibilities, and sought to shape the future of their school, their neighborhood, and world. The rich and vibrant student thinking and writing evidenced in the material presented in this exhibit provides a sharp contrast with the then-dominant perspective of Harlem and its schools in terms of deficit. With varying degrees of direct engagement with the societal reality of discrimination and segregation, student writing at Wadleigh during the 1960s provide insight into the wide array of perspectives on the role of education for students of color in the context of 1960s Harlem.

Steps Toward Graduation

“When a student first enters Wadleigh and is a little bit frightened, he looks forward to three years of growing and developing into a future citizen of our community.” Denise Warner, a 9th-grade student at Wadleigh, who was therefore in the graduating class of 1967, wrote about the journey on which students embark when they enter Wadleigh. The drawing that accompanies the short text emphasizes the sense of progress that characterizes Denise Warner’s interpretation of her time at Wadleigh.

The author highlights the importance of planning one’s future during the last year of the typical Wadleigh Junior High School student experience that she describes: “A grade that he thought would mean fun and excitement now means looking far ahead and making important decisions.”

The piece ends on a reflective note; the author describes the turning point of graduation, when students think back about their years at Wadleigh, and forward to the future: “But there comes a time in every senior’s life either be it the night before graduation or at graduation, receiving a diploma or whenever, that he stops himself and asks whether or not all the toil and trouble were worth it. When he steps into the halls of his high school, or when he applies for a satisfactory job, you may be able to answer such a question. And suddenly, it all makes sense.”

The Future in 1960s Harlem

The national, regional and local context of the 1960s influenced the ways in which students thought about their future. In the 1964 Wadleigh Way, the story “Have Diploma, Will Succeed” (page 12) makes an explicit reference to the Civil Rights struggles of the time:

Right now a great revolution is taking place. It is the Negroes striving for equality. Rev. King and the others are fighting for us, but what can we do? Nothing you say, but there is something that can be done. Get better marks in school.

The awareness of intense social change shaped the vision that young people had about their future lives, especially since most of the student population of Wadleigh Junior High School came from the Harlem community. In the official school publication that this yearbook was, students were thus directed to get good grades as a way to participate in the “great revolution,” which provides historical insights on Wadleigh’s institutional position on the role that education played in the struggle for racial equality. At this time in Harlem, many competing visions of the promises and limits of public schooling surrounded students’ lives.

In Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era, edited by Clarence Taylor and published in 2011, historians of the 20th century analyze various aspects of the Civil Rights movement in New York, and show that several forms and movements of African American activism challenged discrimination and segregation in the city. Youth in Harlem thus went through their junior high school years during a very specific moment of New York City history, in which they navigated various articulations of the importance of education in an oppressive context.

African American mobilization can be traced back to the 1930s, as Civil Rights in New York City shows. Activists protested the acute discrimination that black people faced in multiple areas of daily life, including housing, employment, and education. In 1964, a report by Harlem Youth Opportunities (HARYOU) closely investigated the Harlem community and found compelling evidence of employment discrimination. HARYOU was formed in 1962 under the leadership of Kenneth Clark, a psychologist who was actively involved in Civil Rights battles, and who famously contributed to the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, which declared segregation in schools to be unconstitutional. The sixth chapter of the HARYOU report details the conditions of education in Central Harlem. The chapter begins with a consideration of the role that education plays in increasing employment opportunities:

There can be no doubt that for tomorrow’s world a thorough and comprehensive education is a must. […] Those jobs which are due to expand within the next decade are those which will require mathematical and verbal skills, as well as a broad knowledge of science, literature, history, and social science. Correlatively, jobs requiring few of these skills are rapidly disappearing as machines and automation take over. In large part, present concern about drop-outs stems from the realization that it will be increasingly more difficult for our modern economy to absorb those who are poorly or partially trained.

This particular analysis of the 1960s job market situation is consistently echoed in the yearbooks, especially when we consider how the administration, teaching staff and guidance counselors communicated messages about the importance of schooling to the students at Wadleigh.

What Makes Harry Run?

In February 1965, students from class 8-313 traveled to their future to perform an original play called “What Makes Harry Run?” in front of an audience of fellow Wadleigh students. The play was set during the imaginary class of ‘66 reunion of “Hardley J.H.S.,” and Mamie L. Anderson, the student who tells “The Story Of A Play,” makes it clear that the plot revolved around the Wadleigh student actors, who played their own characters as adults in an undetermined future.

Initially, Ms. Brunson, the official teacher of class 8-313, had asked the students to “give a play about Brotherhood.” Students received this with very little enthusiasm according to Mamie L. Anderson: “Everyone’s heart sank. Certainly Brotherhood is an interesting and essential topic, but it’s ever so common.”

Ms. Brunson then offered the students to choose their own theme. A student committee was created to choose a topic that would be more representative of student interest. Mamie L. Anderson points to general reluctance when students considered focusing on “Negro History”: “The entire class was disappointed. Negro History is just that, history. History consists of facts. No matter what class exhibits them the facts remain the same.” This “let-down” tells us much about how students felt about Black History as they had experienced it: on the one hand, the topic seems to have received important consideration, and was worthy of mention in the yearbook account, but on the other hand students seemed disengaged with a subject that perhaps appeared too academic for a play, and did not give them enough opportunity to express creativity.

Their familiarity with topics in Black History should be understood in the particular context of Wadleigh, as the subject in general was still largely under-taught in New York City schools at this time. Ms. Brunson attached great importance to the teaching of Black history and Black literature in her classes. The correlation between the identity of the teacher and the history material that was taught was the subject of a survey in a study by Harlem Youth Opportunities (HARYOU), published in 1964: according to HARYOU, in Harlem schools, 65% of the teachers who declared that they taught Black history identified as African American. Among the teachers who did not say that they taught Black history, 67% identified as White.

Additional students then joined the committee to brainstorm other themes. During the conversation, an idea emerged: “Let’s give a play about the future. We can demonstrate our future occupations.” This drew the attention of their teacher: “Miss Brunson, who had overheard this remark, confronted us in English with this idea. Soon many suggestions were being made and agreed upon.” Miss Brunson was interested in what students would express about their own lives, and this should be understood in the framework of her teaching mission at Wadleigh: not only did she teach an academic subject, but she cared about the nurturing mission of teachers at Wadleigh.

Although the yearbook does not detail the content of the play, and what the students had imagined for their future occupations, the piece points to their acute interest in the subject. Students were involved in the play not only as actors, but also as decision-makers, and “The Story Of A Play” wonderfully captured this unique moment of motivation and engagement, all the more since it was narrated in a student voice.

Imagination

Several pages in each of the 1960s Wadleigh yearbooks display the creativity of students through fiction writing. Students were encouraged to envision the future by using their imagination, and a significant amount of student writing and student drawings relates to traveling in outer space. The context of the 1960s space race between the Soviet Union and the United States had a tremendous influence on the imaginary worlds of Americans during that time.¹

Below are two examples of student texts about the world of tomorrow. In 1967, eighth-grade student Elizabeth Laguer wrote a beautifully crafted short story about the fictive adventures of an astronaut at a time when mankind had been living on the Moon for two centuries.

In 1974, the Wadleigh Way presented a story by George Johnson, an eighth-grade student, who speculated on the future of Harlem in 2001. You can see how the topics addressed in the yearbooks shifted from space to technology after the decade considered in this exhibit.

Ghost Ship, 2084

The various student texts that revolve around themes of space adventures reveal that some students at Wadleigh were fascinated by outer space. The 1966 yearbook featured a story entitled “Ghost Ship,” by Wadleigh student Casper Show. This fast-paced piece of science fiction describes the “Interplanetary War of 2084.” The number 2084 may perhaps be a reference to George Orwell’s _1984 _ piece of social science fiction, published in 1949.

The emphasis on literary work was a tradition at Wadleigh. Earlier yearbooks from the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when Wadleigh was an all-girls school, are full of short stories and poems by talented students, and that tradition continued throughout the years, which suggests that teachers at Wadleigh attached significant importance to writing, and encouraged students to use their imagination. Yet the themes and topics shifted in relationship to the changing context in which the pieces were produced.

My Trip to the Moon

Traveling to the Moon is a theme that often comes back in _Wadleigh Way _yearbooks during the 1960s. The significance of the Moon during the 1960s has to do with the international context of the time: the United States and the Soviet Union were actively working on making history by sending rockets to the Moon.

Two examples featured below allow us to delve into the imagination of junior high school students at Wadleigh. The first piece is an extract from the 1966 yearbook, and the second one is from the 1967 yearbook. You can take this opportunity to read the stories that Mary Smith and Diane Bishop imagined and skillfully crafted in 1966 and 1967 respectively.

John’s Dreams

In the 1963 Wadleigh Way, a student in eighth grade wrote about “a typical high school boy” named John Fry, and his life aspirations. When John’s dreams fail to realize, he directs his ambition towards new goals. Motivated by the desire to become famous, John successively dreams of becoming a dancer, which is made impossible because of financial difficulties, then to achieve success as a singer, but his changing voice leads him to abandon this path. John then decides to become a poet, but must soon give up because the quality of his writing is insufficient.

This poem is a fascinating example of how Wadleigh students such as Michael Menzies, the author of the story, thought creatively about how young people can approach future possibilities with great determination. Yet the story simultaneously raises questions about the representation of student ideas in yearbooks. What relationship did the author have with the subject matter? Was the author a student who was similar to John Fry, or did the writer jokingly portray one of her or his classmates? The roster in the 1963 yearbook suggests that there was no John Fry at Wadleigh, but the author could have been inspired by one of his classmates.

Moreover, the description of John Fry as the “typical junior high school boy” shows the limitations of yearbooks as historical sources when it comes to representing the student population as a whole. Perhaps some students would have disagreed with the idea that the John Fry story was, in fact, typical. Or perhaps, in the context of the school in 1963, the students could readily understand what the author meant, and to whom he was referring.

As with many other pieces of writing presented in this exhibit, the great imagination of students at Wadleigh and the quality of their writing really stand out. However, the selection process for the yearbook is unclear, and it is difficult to know how students gained the opportunity to see their work published in the yearbooks.

The great imagination of students at Wadleigh, the literary quality and creativity of their writing really show through the adventures that the short stories, poems and texts published in the yearbooks. Yet it should be kept in mind that the yearbooks only presented certain pieces of student writing, and do not speak for the interests and ideas of all students at Wadleigh.

Preparation

Although it focuses primarily on student voices, this exhibit also explores the role of teachers and guidance counselors in preparing students for the future, through the Wadleigh yearbooks as well as through oral history interviews with former teachers. Adult discourse and action spoke about and shaped how students approached their future and the future of their world. This multi-faceted preparation included preparing students for their academic future (via counseling, the ABC program, and more), but also their professional future, and general life trajectory in a society that was rapidly changing, and in which discrimination and segregation still structured many aspects of life. The presentation and representation of various aspects of the preparation at Wadleigh give us some insight into how the school’s mission was articulated in relationship with concepts of present and future.

Messages from teachers and from the administration often emphasize the significance of education amidst contemporary struggles of continued discrimination. Students at Wadleigh had to articulate their conceptions of the future in a very particular context, and the moment in history when the yearbooks were published informs our reflection on preparation at Wadleigh. They had to navigate a racist society that imposed limits on racial groups, and Civil Rights activists were actively challenging those constraints in New York City. In this particular context, students in Harlem navigated many different messages about the role and purpose of schooling. Institutional messages by Wadleigh administrators and teachers, as well as student writing about the importance of education for employment in the yearbook suggest that the school as an institution positioned its work in an argument about the importance of schooling for qualifications and therefore, employment. Other messages about education articulated different ideas. In Harlem, “liberation schools” stressed African American and Puerto Rican self-determination as a way to contest a public education system that often stigmatized children of color and poor children, through curricula and pedagogy that fostered cultural pride.

The importance of African American struggles for equality influenced and shaped the ways in which students at Wadleigh envisioned their futures and the future of their community. There is a profound tension between the context of Harlem in the 1960s, its hypersegregation and the discriminatory policies of the Board of Education towards schools in Harlem, and the meritocratic message that pervades the Wadleigh yearbook. This tension has animated much of the history of Wadleigh High School and Wadleigh Junior High School, sometimes bringing the context of segregation and the promise of education to points of crisis, with heated controversies about the purpose that the school served in Harlem.

In 1963, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his nephew, which he revised and published in 1963 with the title My Dungeon Shook. The passage below provides an insightful and compelling decree on how youth in the 1960s could understand the structural oppression in American society, into which they had been born, in order to “aspire to excellence.”

This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that, for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Where you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do (and _how _you could do it) and where you could live and whom you could marry. I know your countrymen do not agree with me about this, and I hear them saying, ‘You exaggerate.’ They do not know Harlem, and I do. So do you. Take no one’s word for anything, including mine–but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.

“Have Diploma, Will Succeed”

In October of 1963, students of class 8-207 at Wadleigh performed a play called “Have Diploma, Will Succeed.” The play was about two African American students, “Adam Smith and Charlie Jones,” who were looking for a job. The two characters were in very different situations: Charlie was “a high school dropout” while Adam was a “high school and college graduate.” The play emphasizes the contrast between the two different characters, their backgrounds and their families. The tone of the play seems to have been rather comical: the author of the piece, Diane Shelby, who was also in class 8-207, described it as “extremely amusing.”

The description of “Have Diploma, Will Succeed” gives us insight as to how students may have seen themselves amidst the changes that were happening in the United States, especially in relation to race. The term “revolution” shows that Diane Shelby envisioned a future society that would be significantly different from previous times, and perhaps other students shared that vision.

Moreover, the conclusion of Diane Shelby’s text stresses the relationship between schooling and future possibilities, that is to say between getting an education, and becoming a successful adult: “In this highly geared world of today, more and more highly skilled persons are needed. America’s best natural resource is its young people, its only brain supply. So finish high-school, finish college if possible. You’ll be glad you did.” Several pieces in the yearbooks echo this message about the importance of schooling and reinforce this specific interpretation of what schools did in the context of intense segregation and discrimination.

The mention of a “ne’er-do-well” family, which provides a contrast to the “industrious, respectable Negro family” resonates with ideas of respectability, which have a long history in Harlem. The text also raises questions about whose voice we are hearing here–that of students, or students producing an expected institutionally-encouraged message?

The text specifies that Ms. Brunson, an English teacher at that time, was involved in the making of “Have Diploma, Will Succeed.” In fact, Ms. Brunson was concerned with how students were going to choose a career in the future, which was the central theme of the play. The following clip is an extract from an interview conducted in December, 2014, in which Ms. Brunson describes her vision of teaching in retrospect. She gives an example of the type of advice that she communicated to her students: “Don’t take a job just because of the money. You must work at something that moves you, makes you feel happy, makes you feel strong, because you’ll never feel like a person who’s working. You’re enjoying it.”

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Inspiring Young Minds

According to Ms. Brunson, many teachers at Wadleigh shared similar visions about their mission at the school. Ms. Brunson remembers the atmosphere of warmth at Wadleigh, and “the life lessons that teachers communicated to students went beyond the academic content of classes. “I was glad that all of us, all the teachers, made it clear that we wanted our students to reach out for what it was that made them light up inside.” Ms. Brunson aimed to inspire students to follow their passion, and felt that teaching at Wadleigh was her own passion, and in that sense that it was more than a ‘job’ in the traditional sense.

The work that teachers at Wadleigh were doing in the 1960s was partly conditioned by the context in which the school operated. Some teachers addressed issues of discrimination in employment, and of prejudice against African American students in their teaching. Edouard Plummer, who also taught at Wadleigh during the 1960s, expressed his heightened sense of mission: “I saw what was happening to many of our young black children, especially our young black males, and I wanted to do something different. I felt I had to do something to save these young black boys because they are so bright yet so vulnerable. Something within me was awakened. I saw the need for this kind of program. At that point, I felt that teaching just wasn’t enough.”

“Good Luck!”

At the beginning of each yearbook, the principal at Wadleigh wrote a text addressed to the year’s graduates. Mr. Perry Spiro, the principal of Wadleigh at the time, traditionally signed his message to the graduating class with: “Good Luck!”

Because of the symbolic meaning of graduation – a transition towards a new era in one’s life – the texts provide a reflection on the future of Wadleigh students. The principal often uses references to the state of the world, in terms of social changes, politics, and shifting ideas. The purpose of the messages was to inspire graduates to actively participate in the shaping of their future world. You can read excerpts from those opening messages below:

In this message, Mr. Spiro emphasizes the pivotal role that young people play in shaping the future world. The principal stresses his view of the role that education plays in the the realization of a better society.

Each of us can have a part in building tomorrow. It will be a good tomorrow, made ever finer by our understanding of democratic ways of living. It will be a world in which each educated person will do more and have more. And the key to ‘more’ is the education each of us receives. As more people are better educated, we will make greater use of our new ideas to benefit all. We can look forward to a time when all people work together to give each life greater dignity and richer happiness. […] Wadleigh Junior High School has tried to prepare you to enter this changing world. You now have the skills you will need to continue your education. You have learned something of what our country has done and is trying to do. You have had experience in making democratic decisions and in carrying them out.

The message insists on the political situation in 1964, especially in terms of the labor situation in America. The articulation of education and labor was a recurring theme in the 1960s yearbooks.

The ‘Great Society’ of President Johnson envisions an America that is free of poverty, prejudice, of ignorance, and disease. It plans for an elevation of the human spirit through increased educational opportunity, encouragement of the arts and sciences, better use of leisure time, the conservation of our magnificent natural resources, and service to others.

This master plan will not be realized, of course, only by money or by wishing. It will involve the skills of many-among them the engineer, researcher, teacher, technician, artist, forester, builder, city planner, craftsman and a host of others.

Will you in your own way be one of the architects of this brave new world? The answer is yours. You are about to embark upon a great adventure in the high schools of the city of New York. Make the most of the opportunities that are afforded you there. Keep in mind that the decisions you make in the next year or two, may very well direct your destinies for the rest of your lives. Remember too, that you count no matter how populated our city and nation may be, not matter how insignificant we may seem to be in this world of concrete and machinery. Our greatness as a people depends, in the final analysis, on the worth, character, and skill of each of us.

The sin of prejudice by stereotyping can be found among all groups. No one has a monopoly. As young people you have, however, a special opportunity and challenge. Discipline yourselves to recognize the stereotype whether it comes to you via television in the portrayal of gangsters as being of a certain ethnic group or in everyday conversation when “jokes” are made about “dumb –” and “crafty –.” Don’t fall for the bait, no matter how plausible. And, at the same time, demand that your own merits be considered as an individual and never as a member of an ethnic, racial or religious group.

This message about the danger of prejudice contrasts with earlier memories of the principal’s stance on issues related to race. In 1964, three years before this yearbook address, Edouard Plummer, a former teacher at the school, presented his project for a special scholarship program to Perry Spiro. Plummer’s enthusiasm clashed with the principal’s skepticism. Mr. Plummer’s memories point to assumptions about African American and Hispanic students that influenced the principal’s response: “The next day when I asked him what he thought about the program, he said, “You think you can get some of these children in those schools?” I could tell from his reaction that he had no confidence in his staff and worst of all he had no confidence in the students because they’re black and Hispanic.” This memory, which relates to an earlier moment in the principal’s career at Wadleigh, provides a different interpretation regarding the influence of prejudice at the school. Different points of view show that the texts and images featured in the _Wadleigh Way _yearbooks, although they are very rich historical sources, should always be approached critically, as they only present one vision of the school’s past.

“On the Threshold of a New Era”

A special program that prepared students for admission to prep schools opened in the fall of 1964. Founded by Mr. Plummer as well as other teachers at the school, it started as the Wadleigh Scholars Program, and later became the A Better Chance program at Wadleigh Junior High School. In the 1966 Wadleigh Way, a student wrote about the program and declared: “We are on the threshold of a new era. An era of change, opportunity, and advancement. These changes wait for no one. You must be prepared to take advantage when opportunity knocks.” The ABC program aimed to insure that high-achieving students could gain access to prestigious secondary institutions, and to success in their future lives.

In an interview conducted by Dominique Pender in December of 2014, you can hear Mr. Plummer speak about the selection process for the ABC program, as well as his vision for the students who were involved in it. Mr. Plummer considered the students in the program to be pioneers who were fighting for their education, and paving the way for African American students.

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During the interview, Mr. Plummer remembered the faith that he and other teachers at Wadleigh held in the potential of some students, and explains that this belief went against prejudice: “[people had] the preconceived idea that you cannot make it because you’re Black, but I said we did.” Mr. Plummer compares the groundbreaking aspect of the program with other “firsts” in African American history. He draws an analogy with Jackie Robinson, who had become the first African American baseball player in the major leagues in 1947. Students were certainly familiar with Robinson, who had become a national icon, and who was involved in founding large African American businesses in Harlem. Mr. Plummer thus encouraged each of his students in the program to become “the Jackie Robinson of education.” The way in which Mr. Plummer describes the impact that he envisioned for the program is grounded in the struggle for equality of the 1960s. The program was a true form of activism: “Somebody has got to be first […] I’m sending you out there to fight the battle.”

The former teacher uses the imagery of open doors to convey ideas about new opportunities: “You have to open the door for others to come behind you.” Similarly, in the 1965 yearbook, a double page was dedicated to the program, with the headline “Doors of Opportunity Open for Eager Students.” Ideas about open doors were a recurring theme in Wadleigh yearbooks during the 1960s, as noted above.

In 1966 Wadleigh Way was dedicated to Mr. Plummer and his impact at Wadleigh through the ABC program.

Graduates Write to Wadleigh

Teachers were not the only ones to encourage students to study in school in order to fulfill their ambitions. In 1966, students who had graduated the year before, and who had participated in the A Better Chance or ABC academic program at the school, wrote to students at Wadleigh. One of the former students was Mamie L. Anderson, who wrote from her prep school, Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut. Below is an extract from her inspirational message in the 1966 Wadleigh Way. [internal link]

As an alumnae of Wadleigh and one who has lived in Harlem all her life, I believe it’s a good idea to offer you some encouragement in the way of advice. But then, advice is useless unless one heeds it. This, as many things to come, is up to you, and only you.

Recently, Sammy Davis co-authored a book called, Yes, I can. You can too! Strive for the top of whatever you want. The best shouldn’t be good enough for you because there is always something better. You should work to maintain the highest standards in whatever you do. Competition is keen and will be even keener by the time we’re old enough to participate in an adult’s world. Mamie L. Anderson underlined the power that students had over their own futures, and the possibilities to which they could gain access during their time at Wadleigh.

According to Mr. Plummer, who ran the ABC program, Mamie L. Anderson left Westover after a year, because she did not have a good experience there. This fact brings our attention to two crucial aspects of yearbooks as historical sources. First, statements that are published in yearbooks were selected by the school for certain purposes, such as positive representation of the school, humorous remarks directed at fellow students, or, in this case, the promotion of a school program. This student’s writing is therefore not necessarily representative of other experiences.

Secondly, and more generally, it calls our attention to the way in which we interpret the past. Knowing the end of the story can bias our interpretation of subsequent developments, and we tend to read events in the light of what happened next. Yet Mamie L. Anderson’s negative experience at Westover does not change the fact that she was apparently an eager student when she was involved in the ABC program, and thus encourages current students to apply.

Find Your Path: Guidance Counseling at Wadleigh

Guidance counseling was a part of the educational mission of Wadleigh Junior High School during the 1960s. In 1964, the guidance staff appeared on a yearbook picture, with the principal of the school, together with a few messages from the counselors about their visions of the purpose of guidance. Harlan Johnson, a member of the staff, wrote: “Guidance is designed to help young people realize their potentialities. If you achieve in accordance with your abilities, I will be happy to believe that my work with you has met with success. Good Luck!”

This encouraging message takes on added connotations if we consider the context of education policy and discourse about the purpose of schooling in the 1960s. The idea that individuals had various abilities, which should be matched by particular forms of education, was popular in education circles at that time: the idea of compensatory education gained traction at the beginning of the 1960s, when conversations about culture and poverty drew national attention. Compensatory education often targeted African American students, and placed them in special tracks, which often emphasized vocational training, or lower academic expectations.

The 1964 report by Harlem Youth Opportunities (HARYOU) considers issues of career counseling and suggests that students in Harlem, a predominantly African American community, were sometimes discouraged from pursuing ambitious careers. Yet the report also points to the influence of African American teachers in countering prejudice about African American students, and suggests that teachers could have a significant impact on the “self-image” of students. In the context of Wadleigh, with students who largely came from the Harlem community, this type of ethnic discrimination was probably less pronounced than in other schools. Many educators at Wadleigh identified as Black, and emphasized the importance of giving every student equal opportunities to succeed. Yet the messages from the counseling team remind us what type of language was used in educational circles in the 1960s.

Messages About Schooling

Recurring messages about the importance of education appear in the Wadleigh Way throughout the 1960s, and they consistently argue that staying in school will lead to positive outcomes for students when they become adults. In 1964, seventh-grade student Loreen Mathias wrote a story about a girl who quits school and then struggles to find a job. She regrets her life choices, and the story ends with: “It’s too late now.” You can read the story below to see an example of how some students viewed the purpose of their own education. This example also illustrates what visions of the future this official school publication was encouraging.

This story, and the student’s understanding of the purpose of schooling, was probably inspired by the numerous institutional messages (from guidance counselors, teachers, and other figures at the school) about the value of education, and about the importance of having a degree and qualifications in order to obtain a job in the future. In 1965, student Patricia Manning described the intervention of Dr. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, a guest speaker at the school. Hedgeman emphasized the importance of education, and communicated her message in very forceful terms: “She says that unless we stay in school, we will be nothing but the rubbish in the New World because automation is rapidly taking man’s place.” This articulation of present concerns and future consequences characterizes messages about schooling in the yearbooks, which tells us something about the various sources and degrees of influence that came into play when students pondered their future. Interventions such as this one was likely to trigger reflections about life decisions for eighth grade students at Wadleigh, as the conclusion of the short text suggests: “So remember, we are tomorrow’s leaders, and education is the only thing that can make us good ones.”

The administration as therefore actively involved in transmitting this type of life lessons to students. In his opening message, the principal Perry Spiro also evoked the importance of staying in school. In 1966, the principal’s address to the graduating class at Wadleigh read: “The theme of this message, of course, is that you must stay in school not as unwilling captives but as active participants in learning. The next year or two in high school may be challenging, maybe difficult. But you can do it. The path you take at this critical juncture may very well determine your future. Don’t let yourselves, your parents, your country down. Good luck!”

Such messages bring our attention to aspects of schooling that are not directly visible in the yearbooks. Because the purpose of The Wadleigh Way is to portray the school and its community, it represents only certain parts of the lives of youth in Harlem during the 1960s. In fact, some young people did not graduate from high school. According to the 1964 HARYOU report about Harlem schools, which draws on data from the 1959-1960 school year, many students who had completed their junior high school course of study in Harlem eventually dropped out of high school: “53 percent of the students in academic high schools and 61 percent of those in vocational schools dropped out without receiving a diploma.” Yearbook messages about the paramount importance of staying in school to insure future opportunities should therefore be approached through a reflection on absences and silences in historical sources. The full extent of such messages is better understood when considering the context of education in the 1960s.

The discourse around the importance of staying in school offer a specific perspective on the understanding of the relationship between education, employment and success during this period. In 1960s Harlem, students navigated a wide array of messages about the reality of discrimination and segregation in education and in the labor market, and their impact of employment prospects, and on communities. Institutional messages as well as student writing about the importance of education for employment suggest that Wadleigh as an institution specifically positioned its work in an argument about the importance of schooling for qualifications and therefore, employment. Other messages about education articulated different ideas. In Harlem, “liberation schools” stressed African American and Puerto Rican self-determination as a way to contest a public education system that often stigmatized children of color and poor children, through curricula and pedagogy that fostered cultural pride.

High School Perspectives

What were the high school prospects for students at Wadleigh? During the 1960s in New York City, the high schools that students could attend to pursue their education were all located outside of Harlem, according to HARYOU. Their 1964 report, entitled Youth in the Ghetto: a Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness and a Blueprint for Change, states, on page 110: “Within [Harlem’s] boundaries are twenty elementary schools, four junior high schools, but no high schools.” Thus, junior high school students who were used to going to school inside of their community had to undergo tremendous change when they moved onto high school.

In Bad Boy: A Memoir, published in 2001, Walter Dean Myers writes about his childhood in 1940s and 1950s Harlem. Although set prior to the time period explored in this exhibit, Bad Boy illuminates certain difficulties faced by Harlem teenagers when they transitioned into high schools outside of Harlem.

The author attended a predominantly white high school, and encountered numerous challenges to find his place in this new, unfamiliar setting, in which teachers as well as the administration hastily labeled him as a “special needs” student.

The possibilities of high school education were partly determined by the level of academic achievement of students, which was influenced, to some extent, by the junior high school in which they had been studying. The level of academic achievement in Harlem schools, according to the norms set by standard tests, was very low according to the HARYOU study. The 1964 report, when considering the percentages of students below grade level in reading and arithmetic, reads, on page 172: “In no junior high school is the proportion of underachievers less than 70 percent, and in some schools it is over 80 percent.” This observation is then developed into an examination of high school perspectives, and on page 188, the report concludes: “Less than half of Central Harlem’s youth seem destined to complete high school, and of those that do, most will join the ranks of those with no vocational skill, no developed talents and, consequently, little or no future.”

Students at Wadleigh had to navigate their lives as future high school students in a world that presented opportunities, but that was also full of constraints. Several layers of the reality of Harlem in the 1960s, including the challenges that schools in the community were facing, and the lack of a high school to cater to Harlem youth, played out in a multitude of ways.

Reflection

To examine past visions of what the future would be allows us to recapture both the sense of uncertainty as well as the hope that students at Wadleigh expressed in their ideas about days to come. When studying history, the contemporary perspective can sometimes obscure the fact that in the past, the future was still full of possibilities, alternatives, and mystery.

In Visions of the Future: The Distant Past, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Robert Heilbroner develops the idea that conceptions of the future are inherently influenced by visions of the past, as well as ideas about the present. This exhibit addresses the significance of Wadleigh students’ visions of the future in the context of 1960s Harlem.

The ways in which the yearbooks articulate conceptions of the present and future provide a different perspective on education, youth, teaching and schools in 1960s Harlem. Rather than focusing on academics, this exhibit explores the ways in which at particular moments in time, students envisioned the job opportunities that they had, and offered a glimpse of their understanding of the world that surrounded them and how it could possibly be transformed in the future: with the discovery of space, the invention of new technologies, and a improved social landscape.

Resources

“85 Girls Graduate, Other Students Are Transferred,” New York Amsterdam News, June 26, 1954

“Wadleigh School Faces New Status: Institution in Harlem to Be the First Secondary Center to Be Discontinued by City.” The New York Times, June 16, 1953.

Back, Adina. “Exposing the ‘Whole Segregation Myth’: The Harlem Nine and New York City’s School Desegregation Battle,” in Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, eds. Jeanne Theoharris and Komozi Woodard, 65-91.

Baldwin, James. “My Dungeon Shook,” in The Fire Next Time,The Dial Press, 1963, p. 7-8.

Biondi, Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City, Harvard University Press, 2006.

Coleman, James S. “Equality of Educational Opportunity” US Government Printing Office, 1966

Foster, Michele. Black Teachers on Teaching The New Press, 1998, p. 104.

HARYOU, Youth in the Ghetto: a Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness and a Blueprint for Change, HARYOU, 1964.

Heilbroner, Robert L. Visions of the Future: The Distant Past, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Oxford University Press, USA, 1995.

Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 Harvard University Press, 1994.

King, Shannon. Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era, New York University Press, 2015.

Launius, Roger D. Frontiers of Space Exploration. Greenwood Press, 2004.

Myers, Walter Dean. Bad Boy: A Memoir, Harper Collins, 2001.

Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action,” U.S. Department of Labor, 1965.

Perillo, Jonna. Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity, University Of Chicago Press, 2012.

Rickford, Russell. We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2016, Chapter 1.

Taylor, Clarence. Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era, Fordham University Press, 2011.

Tyack, David. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Harvard University Press, 1974.

Credits

This exhibit was created by Esther Cyna when she was a PhD student at Teachers College, Columbia University, in Fall 2015 and revised through open peer review with reviewers Danielle Filipiak, Alexa Rodriguez, and Amato Nocera. It was originally composed in Neatline and has been modified to a new format compatible with Wax.

Starting in 2022, Cyna is a professor of American Studies at University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.