I the HISTORY of HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS' SPORT in the CITY AND

THE HISTORY OF HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS’ SPORT IN THE CITY AND SUBURBS OF PHILADELPHIA 1890-1990 ________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board ________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ________________________________________________________________ By Catherine D’Ignazio January 2010 Examining Committee: William Cutler, Urban Education and History Marc Hill, Urban Education Christine Woyshner, Curriculum and Instruction Erin Horvat, Urban Education Rebecca Alpert, Religion and Women’s Studies i ABSTRACT THE HISTORY OF HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS’ SPORT IN THE CITY AND SUBURBS OF PHILADELPHIA 1890-1990 Catherine D’Ignazio Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2010 Major Advisor: William Cutler This study is an investigation of the development and one hundred year history of high school girls’ sport in the city and suburbs of Philadelphia. Its focus is on how and why, over time, the experiences of schoolgirl athletes in the city of Philadelphia were different from the experiences of schoolgirl athletes in the sur- rounding suburbs. Using place, gender and race critical perspectives, high school yearbooks, augmented by oral histories, were used as primary resources to determine the origins of sport programs in public high schools throughout the region, the uneven impact of national professional standards on city and suburban schoolgirl sport programs, the creation of a unique city sport culture, the changes in school sport as a result of the suburbanization in the region and fi- nally, the impact of suburban school district reorganizations. Along with an examination of newspapers and other secondary sources this study suggests that suburban schoolgirl experiences emerged as the normative expression of schoolgirl sport. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................. ii LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 THE CITY EXPERIENCE, 1890-1945 ............................1 CHAPTER 2 THE CULTURE OF SCHOOLGIRL SPORT IN THE PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS, 1904-1945.....................................................................71 CHAPTER 3 THE SUBURBS 1891-1945: THE INTERSCHOLASTIC MODEL – UNINTERRUPTED.....................................141 CHAPTER 4 CHAMPIONSHIPS AND EQUITY AND CITY AND SUBURBAN HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS’ SPORT, 1945-1990...................................................................207 CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF SUBURBAN SCHOOL DISTRICT REORGANIZATION ON THE PARTICIPATION OF BLACK SCHOOLGIRL ATHLETES ............................... 281 FINAL CONCLUSION: IT LOOKS SO NATURAL ...................................368 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................379 BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY........................................................................390 APPENDIX OF IMAGES .........................................................................398 iii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 5A. FIELD HOCKEY AT MEDIA AND PENNCREST ......................328 5B. BASKETBALL AT MEDIA AND PENNCREST..........................330 5C. 1982 POPULATION BY RACE IN WM PENN DISTRICT .........339 5D. PARTICIPATION BY RACE IN WM PENN DISTRICT .............343 5E. PENNWOOD BEFORE AND AFTER REORGANIZATION.......350 iv THE HISTORY OF HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS’ SPORT IN THE CITY AND SUBURBS OF PHILADELPHIA 1890-1990 INTRODUCTION “Education, over the last two hundred years, has profoundly changed the contours of women’s lives in America,“ claimed Barbara Solomon in her book In The Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America.1 But significant social change has not been confined to higher education. Secondary education has “profoundly changed the contours“ of girls’ lives, too. Historian Jane Hunter in How Young Ladies Became Girls chronicled the important role of early high schools in the history of girlhood in the US.2 This dissertation, a history of schoolgirl sport from 1890 to 1990, uses schoolgirl sport as a lens through which to examine girls’ experiences and the subsequent century of public high school education. In particular, it uses sport as a lens through which to examine the vexing disparity between city and suburban schoolgirl ex- 1Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), xvii. 2Jane H. Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls, Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). v periences that developed over that century. An examination of schoolgirl sport reveals how national, state and school policies intersected with gender, place, class and race. Conceived originally as a corrective to the dominant male narrative of high school sport, this dissertation identifies the ways schoolgirl sport history differs from the schoolboy narrative with regard to origins and development. Most sig- nificantly, participation in high school sport is redefined to include intramural athletics. Interscholastic competition, the model of competition preferred by and for schoolboys since the 1870s, has dominated the historical conceptualization of high school sport. For historians writing exclusively about high school girls, interscholastic sport has been assumed to be the model for sport played by girls.3 However, for most of the first half of the twentieth century when the majority of schoolgirls attended city high schools, inter-class and intramural competitions dominated much of schoolgirl sport in the Philadelphia region. A broader defini- tion of high school sport reclaims developments that were unique to the history of schoolgirl sport. In addition, this dissertation focuses upon the role of place, pre- viously under examined in the dominant school sport narrative. No programmatic differences existed in city and suburban schoolboy sport; but this was not the case for schoolgirl sport. The focus on place in the history of schoolgirl sport is vi especially useful when examining Title IX because in both quantifiable and quali- tative ways, it disproportionately favored white suburban schoolgirls. Beyond the original intent to correct and include girls in the history of high school sport, this dissertation examines the cultural history of Philadelphia public high school girls’ sport in the first part of the twentieth century. A female identified sports culture marked in part by rambunctious cheering, unique clothing and delimited competition distinguished schoolgirl sport from schoolboy sport and had a liberating effect on high school girls. The unique foundations of early schoolgirl sport also appealed to both the women Physical Education (PE) professionals and the new girl. The political economy of secondary education ensured that further developments in schoolgirl sport would not be the same in the city and suburban schools. The political economy of education generally refers to the impact of politics on the distribution of economic resources, but it largely ignores gender. In a gendered political economy males and females are not treated the same. For example, the separatist philosophy underpinning a policy against girls’ interscholastic sport refashioned the meaning of sport for schoolgirls and boys. In the city schools interscholastic sport increased its hegemony as it became more 3For two examples of historical analysis that assume schoolgirls played sport interscholastically, when they likely did not, see Paula S Fass, Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education (U.S.: Oxford University Press, 1989), 82 and Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls, Victorian Origins of American Girlhood, 234. vii closely identified with masculinity; however, that left athletics a poor fit with femi- ninity in a dichotomous gendered paradigm. Therefore, athletic accomplish- ments, like championships, became the exclusive domain of male athletes. In the Philadelphia region, city male athletics and the city championship was consid- ered the apex of the sport hierarchy. So when city girls eventually gained access to the championship structure, they were sequestered in a league that bestowed prestige on boys, but did not offer the same prestige for schoolgirl champions. In the suburbs on the other hand, the national effort to suppress girls’ interscholastic games was not effective. When championships became officially available, suburban schoolgirls stepped onto a statewide ladder of athletic accomplish- ments that began with league championships and potentially continued to district and state accolades. These kinds of athletic opportunities proved to be instru- mental in assisting suburban schoolgirl athletes make the transition to college programs, and as a result, they were in a better position to reap the benefits of Title IX decades earlier than their peers in urban highs schools. This dissertation looks at events that began almost a century before Title IX in order to identify the foundation upon which later attempts at equity were based. A redefinition of participation to include intramural competition pulls early twentieth century schoolgirl sporting culture from obscurity and misunderstanding to the center of historical analysis.

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