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“The Ladies Want to Bring about Reform in the Public Schools”: Public Education and Women's Rights in the Post-Civil War South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Kathleen C. Berkeley
Kathleen C. Berkeley*
Affiliation:
History Department of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington
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Extract

As the regular monthly meeting of Memphis, Tennessee's Board of Education drew to a close on the evening of February 10, 1873, Judge J. O. Pierce, a new member, rose to his feet. Speaking in behalf of the city's corps of female teachers, the representative from the tenth ward introduced the following resolution:

Resolved, that it is the opinion of this board and will hereafter be its policy, that women employed as teachers in the Memphis city schools, are for the same services and in the same grade, entitled to the same salary as men employed as teachers.

Resolved, that the superintendent be appointed to a committee to prepare and report to this board at its next meeting, a schedule of salaries eq ualized upon the basis of the foregoing resolution for consideration.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Spring 1984 , pp. 45 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis Appeal, February 11, 1873.Google Scholar

2. W. Z. Mitchell was Superintendent of Public Instruction for the 1866–67 and 1868–69 school years. From 1871 to 1874 he represented ward nine of the school board. The following men, all members of the board during the year of the women's protest were board members during Mitchell's tenure as superintendent: Michael Gavin, H. C. Connell, and H. S. Slaughter. See the following annual reports of the Memphis Board of Education: The Fifteenth Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 1866–67 (Memphis, Tennessee, 1867); the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Google Scholar Board of Education for the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 1868–69 (Memphis, Tennessee, 1969); the Twentieth Annual Report of the Board of Education for the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 1871–72 (Memphis, Tennessee, 1872); the Twenty-First Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 1872–73 (Memphis, Tennessee, 1873).Google Scholar

3. Memphis Appeal, December 6, 27, 1872 and February 2, 1873. The women initiated a letter campaign, a program of reform for the management of the city schools, ad even suggested that women be allowed to represent their interests on the school board by seeking public office.Google Scholar

4. See the Memphis Appeal, March 1, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 1873.Google Scholar

5. Memphis Appeal, December 27, 1872. From mid-March to the end of April and then during June and July, letters and editorials poured forth on the “Woman's Question.” At one point the editors of the Memphis Appeal threatened to stop printed letters pertaining to the women's controversey because other topics of community concern were being squeezed out of the available space. Memphis Appeal, March 28, 1873.Google Scholar

6. Memphis Appeal, March 28, 1873.Google Scholar

7. See Ruoff, John Carl “Southern Womanhood, 1865–1920: An Intellectual and Cultural Study.” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1976) for an analysis of cultural attitudes regarding Southern white women.Google Scholar

8. Scott, Anne F., The Southern Lady, From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 (Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar

9. Jones, Bessie, ed., Hospital Sketches, reprint edition (Cambridge, MA, 1960).Google Scholar

10. One aspect of recent feminist scholarship has been the relationship between war and social change. Within this context a controversy rages. On the side of “progress” are those scholars who suggest that wars and/or revolutions have “liberated” women from prevailing patriarchal attitudes which governed appropriate female behavior. Opponents of this thesis argue for a continuity of conventional values concerning women's proper socioeconomic responsibilities rather than a change. Interestingly, both positions take as their linchpin the expansion of the “female sphere” during such crises when manpower shortages and increased production needs are met by women performing tasks previously done by men. The progressive school equates this shift in female responsibilities with a corresponding redistribution of power between men and women, while critics focus on the temporary nature of wartime changes.Google Scholar The following representes a partial list of studies which focus on this issue: Norton, Mary Beth, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston, 1980); Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill 1980); Clinton, Catherine, The Plantation Mistress: Women's World in the Old South (N.Y., 1983); Chafe, William, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Roles, 1920–1970 (New York, 1972); Greenwald, Maurine Weiner, Women, War and Work: the Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States (Westport, Conn., 1980); Anderson, Karen, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II (Westport, Conn. 1982); Lebsock, Suzanne B., “Radical Reconstruction and the Property Rights of Southern Women” Journal of Southern History V. 43 (1977): 195–216 and Scott, , Southern Lady. Google Scholar

11. Scott, , Southern Lady, pp. 81–102; Berkeley, Kathleen “‘Like a Plague of Locusts’: Immigration and Social Change in Memphis, Tennessee, 1850–1880” (Ph.D. University of California, 1980), Chapter 2 “And the War Came.” Google Scholar

12. Scott, , Southern Lady, pp. 81–102; Berkeley, , “‘Like a Plague of Locusts,’” Chapter 2 and Hymowitz, Carol and Weissman, Michaele, A History of Women in America (New York, 1978), Ch. 9, “Homespun Blue and Gray.” Google Scholar

13. See Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1978); Potter, David, Division and the Stress of Reunion, 1845–1876 (Glenview, Ill., 1973); and Degler, Carl N., The Age of Economic Revolution, 1876–1900 (Glenview, Ill., 1967) for information on the social and economic dislocation experienced by the South as a result of the Civil War.Google Scholar Anne Scott argued that the “Civil War created a generation of women without men.” With a quarter of a million men dead, large numbers of women would be left single or widowed. To them would fall the burden of caring for themselves and dependents. According to Scott's research, manuscript sources were “filled with references to young women school teachers. From these sources it seems that half the young women in the post-war South must have taught school at least briefly.” Scott, , Southern Lady pp. 106, 112.Google Scholar

14. Dept. of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, Statistics for Women at Work (Washington, D.C., 1907); Scott, , Southern Lady pp. 106–133; Wilmington, , North Carolina, The Semi-Weekly Messenger, April 13, 1897.Google Scholar

15. Scott, , Southern Lady, p. 123.Google Scholar

16. See the Ninth Census of the United States, Statistics of the Population, V.1 (Washington, D.C., 1872) and the Eleventh Census of the United States, Statistics of the Population, V.1 (Washington, D.C., 1892).Google Scholar

17. These occupation categories appeared most frequently in the census schedules. See the Ninth Census; the Tenth Census of the United States, Statistics of the Population V.1 (Washington, D.C. 1882) and the Eleventh Census. Google Scholar

18. For information on the development of public education in the post-Civil War South see the following: Berkeley, “‘Like a Plague of Locusts’”, Ch. 5, “Education is the First Element of Our Advancement”; Bullock, Henry, A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619 to the Present (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Dabney, Charles W., Universal Education in the South, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, 1936); Knight, Edgar, The Influence of Reconstruction on Education in the South (N.Y., 1913) and Vaughn, William P., Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1830–1877 (Lexington, Ky., 1974).Google Scholar

19. Berkeley, , “‘Like a Plague of Locusts’”, Ch. 5 “Education.” Google Scholar

20. Ibid, and Vaughn, , Schools for All, pp. 50–76. In addition to strained finances Southern opposition to public education turned on a fear of “mixed” schools where white and black children would be taught together.Google Scholar

21. Women teachers consistently earned almost half of what men teachers earned both before and after the Civil War. See the following for more information: Ryan, Mary P., Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present, second edition (N.Y., 1975) p. 94; Faderman, Lillian, Surpassing the Love of Men (N.Y., 1980), p. 184–185; Memphis, Tennessee, Seventheenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1868–69, pp. 65–67. A survey of twenty cities across the country found that men employed in the field of public education generally earned two to three times the amount women teachers earned. The Memphis survey estimated the average yearly wage for male teachers in 1868 at $1,752 as compared to the female's average yearly salary of $535.Google Scholar Also see Robert E. Doherty's article, “Tempest on the Hudson: The Struggle for ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ in the New York City Public Schools, 1907–1911,” in History of Education Quarterly 19:4 (Winter 1979):413–434.Google Scholar

22. In 1900, nine out of every ten adult women engaged in teaching were white women born in the United States. In all states, native-born white women with both parents also native-born, formed the most numerous class of teachers; this group was especially well-represented in the Southern states. See Women at Work, “Teachers” pp. 109–121.Google Scholar

23. Memphis, Tennessee, The Eighteenth Annual Report of the Board of Education for the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 1869–70 (Memphis, Tennessee, 1870).Google Scholar

24. Ibid, p. 14.Google Scholar

25. Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1868–69, pp. 65–66.Google Scholar

26. Ibid, pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

27. Dublin, Thomas, Women At Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860 (N.Y., 1979); Ryan, , Womanhood in America; Fifteenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1866–67, pp. XXXIX and Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1868–69, pp. 64–67.Google Scholar

28. A careful reading of annual reports of the Memphis, Tennessee Board of Education between 1865–1878 indicates that there was an abundance of women presenting credentials for teaching certificates each year.Google Scholar

29. Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1968–69, p. 65.Google Scholar

30. Ibid, p. 67.Google Scholar

31. Ibid, p. 66. Also see Doherty, , “Tempest on the Hudson,” pp. 419–20.Google Scholar

32. The statistics on male employment in the public schools are based on an analysis of the persistence patterns of men hired by the Memphis Board of Education from 1855–1860 and 1965–1875.Google Scholar

33. Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1968–69, p. 67.Google Scholar

34. See Berkeley, , “‘Like a Plague of Locusts’”, ch. 5, “Education” for the effect reconstruction politics had upon the state and local public school system in Tennessee.Google Scholar

35. Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis Avalanche, September 17, 1870 and the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1869–70. Google Scholar

36. See Hilliard, David Moss, “The Development of Public Education in Memphis, Tennessee, 1848–1948” (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1946) and Berkeley, , “‘Like a Plague of Locusts’”, ch. 5, “Education” for the history of public education in Memphis.Google Scholar

37. This data is based on the analysis of the men and women hired by the Memphis Board of Education between 1855–1869.Google Scholar

38. The statistics on female employment in the public schools are based on analyzing the persistence pattern and marital status of women employed by the Memphis Board of Education from 1855–1860.Google Scholar

39. Only one woman, Mrs. Henrietta Hampton, taught both before the war and after. She was employed in the public school system as late as 1878. Her teaching career spanned at least twenty-three consecutive years.Google Scholar

40. The assumption made in the text about the availability of new female recruits is based on a careful reading of the Annual Reports of Superintendents of Memphis Public Schools between 1864 and 1879. See Dublin, , Women at Work and Kessler-Harris, Alice, “Where Are the Organized Women Workers?” Feminist Studies 3 (Fall 1975): 92–100 for discussions of the factors which inhibited and promoted collective female labor protests.Google Scholar

41. See, Statistics for Women at Work, “Teachers” pp. 109–121; Wilmington, Carolina, North, The Semi-Weekly Messenger, April 13, 1897 and the Memphis Appeal, March 28 and 30, 1873.Google Scholar

42. The statistics on the marital status of Memphis female teachers are drawn from an examination of the eighty-eight women hired by the school board between 1865 and 1875.Google Scholar

43. By 1900, nine out of every ten white women teachers were single. While the average age of women teachers ranged between 25–34, the proportion of women over 44 still engaged in teaching was greatest in New England and in the South Atlantic and South Central states. See Statistics for Women at Work p. 117.Google Scholar

44. Of the eighty-eight women employed by the Memphis School Board between 1865–1875, fourteen were married. Six of the married women left teaching after one year (two of those six women had husbands employed in the public schools). One married woman taught for two consecutive years, one for three years, one for five years, and five women for eight successive years.Google Scholar

45. See the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1868–69; the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Board of Education for the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 1870–71 (Memphis, Tennessee, 1871) and the Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Board of Education for the City of Memphis, Tennessee, 1972–73 (Memphis, Tennessee, 1873) for the names of both the female graduates of the Court Street Female High School and the names of women hired as teachers by the board.Google Scholar Miss Jeannie Higbee, the principal of Court Street Female High School issued the following statement in her report on the “success” of the female high school to the superintendent: “In contemplating the work accomplished by our high school, that good work has been done is best proven by the fact that of the eleven graduates of last year, eight were examined in the regular teachers' examination, all receiving a high average and of these, five have been successfully employed as teachers in our graded schools since September making an aggregate of eleven graduates of the female high school now in the employ of your board.” Twenty-Second Annual Report, 1872–73, p. 26. Four Cairnes sisters, two Ennis sisters, two Knunkle sisters, two Belcher sisters, and two Reudelhuber sisters taught in the public schools between 1866 and 1875. Mrs. Henrietta Hampton's daughter, Mary, also taught in the public schools.Google Scholar

46. Memphis Appeal, March 14, 21, 22, 28, 1873.Google Scholar

47. See the Memphis Appeal, February 2, March 1, 7, 10, 18, 21, 22, and April 11, 1873.Google Scholar

48. See Elizabeth Avery Meriwether's letter in the Memphis Appeal, February 2, 1873.Google Scholar

49. Memphis Appeal, April 15, 1873.Google Scholar

50. Ibid. Google Scholar

51. The private meeting in which two women teachers were fired was held on April 21, 1873 and reported in the Memphis Appeal on the twenty-second of April and the tenth of June, 1873. Also see Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Anthony, Susan B. and Gage, Matilda Joslyn, eds. The History of Woman Suffrage Vol. 3, 1876–1875 (N.Y., 1970), p. 882.Google Scholar On the sixth of June, Judge Pierce presented a resolution to the board urging that the two dismissed teachers be given an additional month's salary because they did not receive any prior notice before they were dismissed. The resolution failed; only Pierce supported it. See the Memphis Appeal, June 10, 1873.Google Scholar

52. Memphis Appeal, July 3, 1873.Google Scholar

53. Memphis Appeal, July 8, 1873.Google Scholar

54. See Berkeley, , “‘Like a Plague of Locusts’”, ch. 6, “‘By Eschewing All Personal Politics or Sectional Needs’: Redemption Politics and Urban Reform in the Bluff City, 1865–1879,” pp. 298–373.Google Scholar

55. Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City of Memphis, For The Scholastic Year 1878–79. (Memphis, 1880), pp. 56, 77–78. Principals earned $100.00 per month; high school teachers, $75.00 per month; primary and grammar and supernumerary teachers earned $60.00 per month. An additional category of special teachers earned $30.00 per month.Google Scholar

56. In 1877, the Memphis city school system employed six principals (four men and two women) and thirty-nine teachers (two men and thirty-seven women). The two male instructor taught at the high school. Dr. C. J. Hunter earned $125 per month while the two women instructors earned $100 per month. Professor E. Westzman, who taught only the French and German classes, earned $36 per month.Google Scholar The previous year, in addition to Hunter and Westzman, there was a third male teacher employed at Market Street school. He earned $115 a month, while the six female teachers at the school earned $72 a month. The principal of Market Street school, Miss Clara Conway, earned $120 per month; five dollars more than the male teacher on her staff and five dollars less than what Hunter, the high school instructor earned.Google Scholar In 1878, after the revised salary schedule reduced the principal's pay to $100 per month, Clara Conway tendered her resignation and opened her own private school for girls. Four years earlier, (1874), the city school system had lost another long-time employee. Miss Jeannie Higbee, principal of the female high school since 1871, resigned her position one year after the women teachers' protest failed. Jeannie Higbee taught at a private church school for a few years and then she too opened her own high school. By 1881 Miss Higbee's High School employed seven women teachers. See the Memphis City Directory for the years 1871–1881.Google Scholar

57. Twenty-Seventh Annual Report pp. 14, 78–79. In this report, the superintenent proposed awarding two positions in the white schools each year to “members of the graduating high school class as a prize for the best average in scholarship, attendance and deportment during the three years' course in the High School” (p. 21).Google Scholar By 1878, the black public schools were staffed by blacks only. For the 1878–79 school year, fourteen full-time members were employed in the black schools (four men and ten women). Three of the men were teachers, while the fourth was the principal of the entire black school system. Seven of the women teachers were married while the remaining three were single. Unlike white Southern women who married, black married women tended to persist in the paid labor force. According to the data compiled in Statistics for Women at Work, the marital condition of black women teachers was significantly higher than for white women teachers. See Statistics for Women at Work, p. 118, also see Berkeley, “‘Like a Plague of Locusts’”, ch. 5 “Education”, for an analysis of the evolution of the black public school system in Memphis.Google Scholar

58. Scott, , Southern Lady, pp. 165–183. Woman Suffrage in Tennessee (N.Y., 1950) by Elizabeth Taylor is but one of the many studies published by Taylor on the Woman Suffrage Movement in the South.Google Scholar

59. Memphis Appeal, January 25, and March 10, 1873; Stanton, , et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3, pp. 20, 27, 153–154, 180–81, 183, 192–193, 197, 822, 955–956; Meriwether, Elizabeth Avery, Recollections of 92 Years (Nashville, Tennessee, 1958).Google Scholar

60. Memphis Appeal, May 2–6, 1873; Meriwether, , Recollections; Stanton, , et. al. History of Woman Suffrage and Willard, Francis Elizabeth and Livermore, Mary A., eds., A Woman of the Century (N.Y., 1893), pp. 498–499.Google Scholar

61. Scott, , Southern Lady, p. 176.Google Scholar

62. See Eleanor Flexner's discussion of how Tennessee's crucial vote put the pro-suffrage forces “over the top” on August 18, 1920. Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, (N.Y., 1974) pp. 320–324.Google Scholar