Providence, Rhode Island
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GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 20TH-CENTURY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND “So long as the past and present are outside one another, knowledge of the past is not of much use in the problems of the present. But suppose the past lives on in the present: suppose, though encapsulated in it, and at first sight hidden beneath the present’s contradictory and more prominent features, it is still alive and active; then the historian may very well be related to the non-historian as the trained woodsman is to the ignorant traveller.” — R.G. Collingwood, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939, page 100 “I go the way that Providence dictates with all the assurance of a sleepwalker.” —Adolf Hitler, 1936, München PROVIDENCE AT THE BEGINNING HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1900 August 10, Friday: A message reached the Peking legations that the relief force was on its way. A team of Harvard College students defeated an invited team of British tennis players in a challenge match at Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. The victors’ cup was donated by, and therefore named after, one of the Harvard students, Dwight Filley Davis. In Providence, Rhode Island at 11AM Milton S. Hershey sold his Lancaster Caramel Company for the round sum of $1,000,000.00 (this bought-out entity would go on to become the Hershey Company of Derry Church, Pennsylvania, largest chocolate manufacturer in America). 1901 Theodora Goujand DeWolf Coltin died in Bristol in her 81st year. Gypsy moth infestations were discovered in Rhode Island. William Hannaway relocated his blacksmith operation from a lean-to at the west side of the mill at Saylesville into a nearby carriage house. 1392 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1902 The Quaker Yearly Meeting School in Providence, Rhode Island went into debt in order to erect Hawes Gymnasium at a cost of more than $30,000 (the debt would be eliminated later when a bequest would be received from Sarah J. Hall). Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates was offered a cocoa plantation on San Thome (a West African island) but saw an advertisement on which its workers had been listed as assets, at so much a head, so Cadbury instead looked to the Gold Coast (Ghana) where the quality of cocoa was at the time perceived as poor. At the Cadbury facility in England, Men’s and Women’s Suggestions Committees were set up, formalizing a process that had already begun (in 1893 women had voted in favour of starting work later than 6AM and working later each day). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1393 HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1903 Quakers had in this year, as always, a grand reputation, more or less warranted, for probity and solidity, tending mildly in the direction of obesity: It is evident, however, that there was in this year some doubt, among the general public, about allowing these Quakers of probity and solidity and stick-to-your-ribs substance to educate the next generation of your family. What sort of weird ideas would your kiddies try to bring home, from a Quaker school? –Would they try to bring home, for instance, the Quaker Peace Testimony? In this year the Friends Yearly Meeting School of the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Providence, Rhode Island under Principal Augustine Jones (“principal” means that he was pocketing one half of the annual excess income) took out an advertisement, which it printed among other places in the “Who’s Who,” in which it offered among its many advantages as a school the fact that although it was admittedly “under the management of the Society of Friends,” what it was engaged in nevertheless amounted to nothing other than “the most complete preparation for the best American colleges and universities, and for the highest walks of business or professional life.” One need not be afraid of the influence of this Friend Moses Brown, since he also helped found Brown University (and you know that Brown University isn’t weird). You can feel free to send your child to this “unsectarian” 1394 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM school, since we can reassure you that in point of fact most of the students are non-Quakers and therefore non- problematic, and since we can reassure you that in point of fact most of the teachers also are non-Quakers and therefore non-problematic! Don’t worry, the actual Quakers are in a minority and can be handled. (This actual advertisement is pictured on a following screen — so that you can judge for yourself whether these extrapolations from its implicit argument are appropriate or inappropriate.) In the absence of any policy of racial inclusiveness it goes without saying that this advertisement by Principal Augustine Jones of the “Friends School” was aimed only at acceptably white matriculants. Despite the school’s need to attract a wider clientele, and despite Quakerism, any applicant of color would have been turned away: Quakers had created schools for free people of African descent and newly freed African Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but, well into the twentieth century, they showed little interest in educating students of color in the schools they had created for their own children. This disinclination was, in part, a function of the Quakerism of earlier centuries when Friends founded schools to retain the purity and the distinctiveness (or sometimes their own branch) of their religious society. Quaker children, Friends maintained, required a “guarded” education where teachers could instill religious values and limit the influence of the secular culture. As the Quaker population began to decrease, Friends faced the choice of opening schools to non-Quaker students or closing for lack of adequate income. Most schools chose the former, but they typically admitted the children of parents attracted to the particular teachings and quality of Quaker education, who – without concerted efforts to attract a diverse student body– were virtually always of European descent.1 1. Page 319 in Donna McDaniel’s and Vanessa Julye’s FIT FOR FREEDOM, NOT FOR FRIENDSHIP: QUAKERS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND THE MYTH OF RACIAL JUSTICE (Philadelphia: Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, 2009). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1395 HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1396 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1904 As the Augustine Jones administration ended and the administration of Dr. Seth Kelley Gifford began at the Yearly Meeting School of the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Providence, Rhode Island, the Lower School building was constructed at a cost of $20,000 and the school formally changed its name to the Moses Brown School.2 There were 172 students. The overt objective of the new headmaster would be to convert this old Quaker school into a college-preparatory academy. Here is how this new administration at the school would be described in Friend Eric Kristensen’s “An Outline of Moses Brown School’s History,” prepared for the Ad Hoc Subcommittee of the Permanent Board on Financing Moses Brown School Renovations: 1904-1924: rising academic standards to compete with public high schools; Upper School (Forms I-V [grades 8-12]) curriculum reorganized as a college preparatory course, yet with a broad scope to satisfy those who may not go on to college (more than 90% of students in this period did go on to college); admission standards become stricter (number of non-college preparatory students rapidly declines); last herd of School’s farm animals sold; day student enrollment greatly increased, and a lower school (grades 1-7) built to accommodate younger students; total enrollment regularly more than 300 students; number of girls continues to decline and co-education seen as a problem needing to be solved; numerous surpluses allowed the school to invest more than $75,000 in physical plant; playing fields extended, tennis courts built, trees, shrubs and lawns planted, memorial gates erected and a fence installed along Lloyd Ave., heating and lighting systems extended and renovated, and Middle House remodeled. (page 8) Here is how Friend Eric Kristensen had described the previous “Augustine Jones Administration” which was ending: 1879-1904: Music and art invade the school in great profusion. Student life flourishes with clubs, athletic associations and teams, and various society forms. Girls and boys mix in classes and in many extracurricular events. Elizabeth Fry fund established by Ella J. Wheeler with a gift of $30,000 for scholarships; Stephen T. Olney bequeaths $43,000 for the permanent fund of the school; other gifts and bequests by Sarah Slade, Timothy Earle, Philip Tripp, Eleanor Cattell and others 2. The school had been taking out advertisements in which it termed itself “Friends School,” but in these advertisements it attempted to distance itself from the Friends, pointing out for instance that they were in a minority. Would not changing the school’s name ease this problem of feeling a need to apologize for the Quaker influence? The suggestion to make this change had originated with Charles Sisson, a member of the School Committee. The timing of the name change obviously was inspired by the fact that the College of Rhode Island had changed its name to Brown University exactly one century earlier, in 1804. However, there is something to be said about this other than the mere timing of it.