A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia

Four: "Massive Resistance" in the Public Schools

chapter four ‘‘Massive Resistance’’ in the Public Schools In 1953, Hattie Parker, a forty-year-old mother, helped organize a Home and School Association in her South Philadelphia neighborhood . She and her husband had six children, aged five to eleven, and had fallen on hard times. Her husband had lost his job, and although he had recently found a full-time position as a garage attendant, the $36.00 he earned each week did not cover the family’s food, clothing, utilities, and rent. Money had gotten so tight that Mrs. Parker had swallowed her pride and applied for welfare—only to have her application rejected. While dealing with these problems , Mrs. Parker agreed to serve as vice president of her local Home and School Association. She linked her strong commitment to her children’s education to the di≈culties that she had faced growing up in a poor neighborhood without a mother. Mrs. Parker explained to a social worker that her desire to provide a better life for her children ‘‘impels her to work in community organizations ’’ that would help them pursue an education.∞ The public school system that women like Mrs. Parker relied on to educate their children was the most damaging public institution in the city, plagued by a pernicious combination of mismanagement and deliberate racial segregation and academic tracking. By the early 1960s, the massive system, which served 122 ‘‘Massive Resistance’’ in the Public Schools nearly one-quarter of a million students in 280 di√erent schools, had the largest average class size and lowest proportion of permanently certified teachers of the nation’s ten largest cities.≤ While racial discrimination in southern schools came under intense public scrutiny with the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the public schools in northern cities like Philadelphia had deeply ingrained inequalities that proved equally resistant to change. A few Philadelphia schools provided African Americans with a first-rate education , and many teachers strove to deliver excellent instruction. However, by confining African American students to segregated, underfunded, overcrowded , and understa√ed schools, the system as a whole impeded teachers’ e√orts and made it di≈cult for most black students to succeed. A tracking system steered African American students toward vocational degrees, making it di≈cult for them to pursue academic courses successfully. School authorities refused to take responsibility for black students’ struggles, describing them as ‘‘slow learners’’ whose academic problems stemmed from their poverty and their mothers’ lack of interest in their education. Enormous numbers of African American students dropped out of school before high school graduation because they lacked institutional support. The deeply entrenched discrimination in the schools and the labor force meant that even high school graduates rarely achieved significant upward mobility. Working-class African American women refused to abandon their deep and abiding faith in education. Recognizing that the schools were not uniformly deleterious or resistant to change, they tried to find openings in the system that they could use to improve the quality of the education that their children received.≥ Although many teachers and principals viewed low-income black mothers with disdain and mistrust, most women tried to maintain contact with their children’s schools. They met with teachers and principals to discuss their children’s progress and try to resolve classroom di≈culties. Some attempted to transfer their children to better schools in the public or Catholic school system. Mothers viewed the work they performed in their homes and neighborhoods as integrally linked to their children’s success in school. They labored to secure financial resources, clothing, and after-school care for their children, believing that the provision of basic necessities would help their children’s educational pursuits. At home and in their neighborhoods, they tried to prevent problems that impeded their children’s schooling, seeking to stop their daughters from getting pregnant and to help their sons avoid becoming involved in gangs. Some women joined Home and School Associations in which they lobbied city authorities to make their neighborhoods safer for their children. In targeting unsafe streets as well as the classroom, women’s e√orts di√ered significantly from the educational activism engaged in by civil rights leaders and lib- ‘‘Massive Resistance’’ in the Public Schools 123 eral reformers who focused on the school system’s racial segregation. Workingclass African American women connected the challenges their children faced within the schools...