1nceIebrationofthe12~th JournaloftheHunterCollegeArchives Anniversary of Hunter College LAURASTRUMINGHER SCHOR 2 Introduction Prouost and Kcc Pnsidmtfor Acadnnic Affairs The Early Years KATHERINAKROO GRUNFELD 5 Behold The People's College: 1870-1895 LINDAM. PERKINS 17 African-American Women and Hunter College: 1873-1945 BARBARAL. MILLER 26 High School Remembered The 1930s BEL KAUFMAN33 A Different World PAULI MURRAY38 A Working Student MILDRED KUNER 41 Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis JOY DAVID~~AN45 Apostate Special Collections oi the Hunter College Archives - THOMASPNIEU'SKI 50 The Hunter College Concert Bureau in 1945: A Photo Essay ELIZABETHISRAELS PERRY 61 The Women's City Club of New York Tbc monbtrr of tbc Alpha Gamma and Pbilomnthcan soctfics. wbo jointly publiskd Tb( poscd in front of fbc Collr9c in (896. Thefirst Connnmcmmt Exmists of the Noml College took place on Tuesday, July 12. 1870 at the Academy of Music. Ajtm t 873, Commmcemmts wen bdd in the Cbaptl planned by Prnidcnt Thomas Hunt" as part of bis daignfor tbr Colltgt building. The Cbaptl UMS usedjor assmblia and student plays until $936 wbm afi~ datroyrd tln old building. With the founding of Hunter College 725 years ago, New York offered the women of the city an unparalleled opportunity for intellectual advancement. Free, inclusive, rigorous, The Normal College, as it was originally called, t. ? graduated a steady stream of well-educated women: some entered professions just beginning to open up to women, but most became teachers. All, how- ever, affirmed the college's underlying doctrine that a literate population is the truest safeguard of democracy. The following article examines the early ; years of Hunter when it was New York's unique college for women. I Behold the People's College: Katberina Kroo Grunfeld URlNC THE DECADES AFTER THE need of new instructors. Although a large Civil War, industrialization, urban- number of the graduates of the city's all-male Free ization and immigration consti- Academy (the precursor of City College) became tuted basic challenges through teachers, most men considered teaching, at best, a which American society was trans- way-stop toward another career, and the absolute formed. In the resulting "search for order," new numbers of male teachers remained small. In 1874, social forms and processes appeared while existing for example, of the 2,300 teachers employed by the ones were altered.' Education, both elementary and Board of Education, all but 200 were women. higher,- public and private, came to assume a role Once appointed.. teachers attended one of three equally unprecedented in the daily life of young- normal (teacher-training) classes maintained by the sters and in the vocational opportunities of adults. Board of Education: one on Saturday mornings for Not only did institutions of education extend women, another on Wednesday afternoons for men, On opming day, Lydia Wadleigb their influence vertically, into more and more age, or a third for all 'colored' teachers. At this time, the lead 300 young ladirsJrom groups, they also grew horizontally by drawing city schools were beginning their precipitous Girls School No.i7 to tbc ever-increasing segments of the population into growth - expanding from 100,000 students in the temporary quartrn oJ the Normal the system. They thereby simultaneously opened common schools in 1869, with more than 2.500 Collrgr on Broadway in a Ion9 new opportunities for some while restricting teachers, to double that number of students in 1897. column. exhorting them to walk access to others. Women formed one group for As'this arrangement "was totally inadequate to meet briskly and to ignorr tbr stam of whom secondary, vocational, and higher education the wants of a great system of common schools on yoxttg mm along thr u,ay. 1 became available. which was expended in 1869 about $3,000,000... it In the years after the Civil War, New York City became an act of necessity as well as economy to maintained a decentralized system of schooling. procure, at any reasonabjqsost, the-se.rvices of Each ward or polltical district was placed in the trained and accomplished teachers."2 hands of an unpaid superintendent and of a board of On November 17, 1869, a newly appointed trustees responsible for the hiring, supervision and Board of Education of the City of New York training of teachen. The trustees resisted.any move (Manhattan and the Bronx) voted to establish a to centralize teacher training in a school under the Normal and High School for females. In doing so, aegis of the Board of Education. the Board based its actions upon seventy-five vcars For most children, education ended after e~ght of state support for public and higher education. In Years of primary and grammar school. There were 1834. New York State had authorized suhsidics for no public high schools, although 'supplcmentary eight acadcm~cr,one in each senatorial ciistrict. "for classes' in several of the ..nirls' ..mammar schools the hettcr cducat~onof tcachcr~."~Scvcral vcars helped prcparc young women to teach. Rarely more later, in 1847. thc State appropriated puhlic funds than th~sgrammar school cducat~onwas reqwred, and authorized the Citv of New York to cstahlish an unt~lIatc In the ccntuw, to tcach In the publ~c institution of highcr education for rnalc graduatcs of schools Tcarhen could move Into and out of school the puhlic gramrnar schools. The lcgislaturc con- positions with caw and. since most women taught firmed the contlnuancc of the Frcc Acadcmv in only until marrlaNe, thc schools wcrc in constant 1854, and prov~tlctitor the fountling of a slm~lar institution for females. It took until 1870 before the ass female equivalent was brought into existence. tht The girls' school was, in fact, neither mirror nor be twin to the boys' school which became the College tht of the City of New York in 1866. Although the als female school found itself renamed the Normal to College of the City of New York within a year of its founding, this was, as its president remarked, "a mis- of nomer, since the school granted no degrees."4 The tht Normal College was a high school, and from its inception maintained a clearly utilitarian purpose. Unlike the graduates of City College, who received tic a Bachelor of Arts degree and a diploma, the gradu- tht ates of the Normal College earned a certificate and tin a license to teach. Like other normal schools in the tht United States, the Normal College taught the Or 'norms' of pedagogy and was, in essence, a profes- sional teacher-training institution. Normal schools were common in many areas of the countty and functioned much like today's community colleges; they brought educational opportunities and practi- na cal instruction to local communities and were often Te called "the people's college^."^ leg By its twmty-fifth annivmry, In New York, the establishment of the Normal thc th Collrgr was becoming a College and its complement, the City College, cre- riage shop, and the Female Normal and High be librral arts institution, ojfering ated an educational ladder that eventually offered School was opened for the admission of the 'sup- titi a BA drgm in addition to the free, excellent education from kindergarten through plementary classes' of the grammar schools "on an itaching licma. Although graduate studies to the children and citizens of the February 14 (of all the days in the year, St. on Pmidmt Hunter initially dis- city. Organized at a time of increasing immigration Valentine's Day), 1870....[ Nlotices must have been so1 approved ofrxfra-cunicular and industrialization, the city's system of public sent out in some way, for there was quite a large lor aciivitiafor his studmtr, k education sewed both as a means of acculturation assembly of notables."7Miss Wadleigh brought 300 tht allomd them toJom tux, liter- for millions of new Americans and as an incubator young ladies from the supplementary classes of No. thi ary rocietin. As tb scbool of intellectual and professional talent which repaid 47; they formed the real core of the school. Another hil movcd lo coflrgiab status afirr the largesse of the taxpayers many times over. 400 students came from other city schools. Hunter pl; fsss, Thr Alpha Beta Gamma Constructed to "enable the laboring class of our fel- formed six grades or half-year classes. re# and Philomathcan sociciics low citizens [to] have the opportunity of giving to From the beginning, the president and the Board alc jointly publislxd &&&, tbr their children an education that will more effective- intended to offer both high school and normal hain- be studmt magazinr, and in 1898 ly fit them for the various departments of labor and ing. Convinced of the necessity of grounding all di\ Iaudrd a decade ofcditon. toil by which they will earn their bread,"6 the two theoretical and practical pedagogical instruction in be public colleges have supplied the city and state with a thorough academic foundation Hunter argued va. an abundance of skills and resources beyond the that eight years of grammar school education were on dreams of their founders. insufficient for the intellectual preparation of well- im Thomas Hunter was appointed President of the trained teachers. Thus, despite opposition from of newly formed normal school. The popular principal those families who wished for a short, utilitarian ti\ of Grammar School No. 35, the largest and one of course to allow their daughters to begin earning as ex the most prestigious grammar schools for boys, quickly as possible, a three-year program was creat- m; Hunter was a former president of the Principals' ed. The first two years were purely academic, albeit sti Association and the successful organizer and princi- not classtcal: a compromise allowed Latin.