Continuing the Tradition of Racial Exclusion through the Schools, from Manufacturing to Militarization
“The majority of employers are paying for the time spent in school. This leaves a good feeling on the part of the boy and girl toward the school, and encourages them to think that the school is worth-while. It also satisfies the parents who frequently are in need of the scanty earnings of the child.”
— From Edwin G. Cooley, Principal of the continuation schools, to Peter A. Mortenson / superintendent of Schools. Chicago, Illinois. August 2, 1920.
Continuation schools were apprenticeship based programs in Chicago created in 1919 at the end of World War I. Initially there were seven of these institutions including the now infamous Washburne Trade School, located at 31st and Kedzie and by 1958 occupying a 13 building complex. Four more of these schools were established inside of the big four packing-house plants — Armour, Morris, Wilson and Swift.
The above quote was written by Edwin Cooley, the principal of the continuation schools, defending the state regulation that established them. The Continuation School Law required the Chicago Public Schools to provide education to employed minors for at least one-fifth of their working hours. By providing compulsory education to child laborers apprenticeship schools served a dual purpose: they deflected attention away from the criticisms of progressive reformers who lambasted the practice of employing children while simultaneously legitimating the exploitation of a docile workforce for the benefit of the major manufacturers in the city. Powerful elites, represented by the Commercial Club of Chicago also supported the advent of trade schools as a means to provide instruction that helped to stimulate the local economy and provide skills for immediate use to working class youth.
Another World War I era educational innovation was the introduction of R.O.T.C (Reserve Officer Training Corps) programs into the Chicago Public Schools. In May of 1916 the Board of Education began the process of incorporating military training into the curriculum. A Chicago Tribune article from 1935 detailed the first program “the first Chicago high school volunteers were outfitted in 1917 with gray cadet uniforms purchased by funds contributed by business men. In the same year 3,000 rifles were received by the new student cadets and military drill was begun.” It is no mere coincidence that business interests were behind the advent of vocational instruction and military training programs within the schools. Both efforts served to promote the productive apparatus lorded over by Chicago’s industrial interests.
The Tribune went on to describe the exponential growth of the program; “In 1917 the school board made military drill compulsory and increased the corps to 14,500.” Recent controversy over the proliferation of military academies in the schools has brought forth the contention that Chicago is the most militarized school district in the country; the historic record suggests that this has been the case since 1916. (“ROTC, Already Biggest in US, to be doubled.” The Chicago Tribune, 08,26,1935.)
By the late 1980s, Washburne was one of the last remnants of Chicago’s diminishing manufacturing sector. While it once housed as many as 20 skilled trades, by 1986 there were only nine, mostly concentrated in the construction sector. It also came under growing criticism from Civil Rights advocates because of its long practice of excluding minorities from apprenticeship positions. Toward the end of its days in the 1980s, Washburne, a Chicago Public School, was deriving over half of its enrollment from suburban trainees. The Building trades behaved like management in the industrial age, using publicly financed institutions to benefit their narrow interests. As manufacturing dropped precipitously in the city, our public institutions maintained gigantic de-facto subsidies to firms that contributed, and in some respects exacerbated, industrial relocation and white flight.
As early as in the 1940s there were signs of resistance to Washburne’s racially exclusionary policies. During World War II black applicants filed complaints with the Fair Employment Practices Commission for being denied admission to Washburne. On January 19, 1942 Claude H. Ewing, supervisor of curriculum at Washburne, wrote Philip L. McNamee, assistant superintendent of schools, defending their record by claiming that they did not discriminate because “it is necessary that the students enrolled be already employed in the industry for which training is being given. The school has not at any time refused enrollment of any youth, white or colored, meeting the above-stated requirements.”
Ewing felt compelled to support the tradition at of enrolling students already employed in existing trades; overlooking the legacy of racism that excluded blacks from those areas of employment to begin with. He did however give evidence that Washburne offered concrete accommodations for black students noting that an “extremely large number of colored children receiving training in our commercial department. Although we question the possibility of employment for these people, and our placement counselor has had very little success in placing them, the fact that we are continuing to give them training is evidence of a lack of discrimination as far as colored youth is concerned.”(Armour and Company memo, to Elmer W. Henderson, Presidents Committee on Fair Employment Practices, July 28, 1942; Armour and Co. –Chicago; [Region VI]; Records of the Presidents Commission on Fair Employment, Record Group 228; National archives – Great Lakes Region, Chicago.)
In many respects the quality of education and by extension employment opportunities that youth of color receive today from their public schools remains inadequate and unequal.
The current rededication to military options by the Board of Education is yet another instance of municipal and business elites utilizing city resources to service their economic interests at the expense of fairness and equity. In future articles I hope to look at different aspects of Washburne, R.O.T.C. and the advent of magnet schools. Please email me with any thoughts. Jpottery2002@yahoo.com.
