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- [Snapshots Documenting a Boston Public School Crisis with Association to a National Book Award Winner]
[Snapshots Documenting a Boston Public School Crisis with Association to a National Book Award Winner]
[Snapshots Documenting a Boston Public School Crisis with Association to a National Book Award Winner]
[African-Americana] : [Education]
[Dorchester, Massachusetts]: (1968)
16 black and white snapshot photographs. Drugstore prints, each approximately 5" x 3 1/2." 11 loosely fit into corners of hand-made thin card mounts with pencil dates and notations on the cards. Five prints loose with discrete pencil dates to versos. Loose prints with some moderate curling. Scattered spots of discolor to card mounts. Overall group about very good. [WITH] A copy of DEATH AT AN EARLY AGE inscribed by author, Jonathan Kozol: "WITH WARM REGARDS / TO THE MOTHER OF A FINE YOUNG HUMAN / BEING WITH KIND / WARMTH AND COURAGE. / JONATHAN KOZOL / 1967."
A series of black and white snapshot photographs documenting the chaotic scenes around Christopher Gibson Elementary School in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood amidst the particularly tense 1968 chapter of an extended race crisis initially touched off when a young teacher named Jonathan Kozol was fired for teaching the Langston Hughes poem "The Ballad of the Landlord" to his fourth grade class.
Parents of the majority-Black school protested, demanding curriculum changes, increased Black representation, and community control in school administration, etc... eventually forming their own alternative schools they dubbed "Liberation Schools" during the time period captured here (and where Kozol would be tapped to resume his teaching). Their efforts siphoned off roughly half of Gibson's student body causing a panic among administrators who established a police presence, further inflaming tensions, increasing the boycott effort and protests. The scenes here are from this time period and dated May, June, September, and November 1968.
The events received generous contemporary news coverage and Kozol's own account of his experience at Gibson was published by Houghton Mifflin as DEATH AT AN EARLY AGE: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools. The book sold over 2 million copies, won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1968, and is credited for refocusing national attention on continued institutional racial discrimination in public education in Boston and beyond, 15 years on from the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation ruling in Brown.
The scenes are dated but lack much further notation apart from a few scattered names which we locate in contemporary news reports tying these scenes to Gibson, including "Vaughan & McAuliffe" which match up to school superintendent Thomas McAuliffe and associate superintendent Mary Vaughan. The photographs were acquired by us from a Boston-area book and ephemera seller along with a first printing of DEATH.... warmly inscribed to “THE MOTHER OF A FINE HUMAN....” suggesting to us these anonymous photographs were captured by a Gibson parent
[African-Americana] : [Education]
[Dorchester, Massachusetts]: (1968)
16 black and white snapshot photographs. Drugstore prints, each approximately 5" x 3 1/2." 11 loosely fit into corners of hand-made thin card mounts with pencil dates and notations on the cards. Five prints loose with discrete pencil dates to versos. Loose prints with some moderate curling. Scattered spots of discolor to card mounts. Overall group about very good. [WITH] A copy of DEATH AT AN EARLY AGE inscribed by author, Jonathan Kozol: "WITH WARM REGARDS / TO THE MOTHER OF A FINE YOUNG HUMAN / BEING WITH KIND / WARMTH AND COURAGE. / JONATHAN KOZOL / 1967."
A series of black and white snapshot photographs documenting the chaotic scenes around Christopher Gibson Elementary School in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood amidst the particularly tense 1968 chapter of an extended race crisis initially touched off when a young teacher named Jonathan Kozol was fired for teaching the Langston Hughes poem "The Ballad of the Landlord" to his fourth grade class.
Parents of the majority-Black school protested, demanding curriculum changes, increased Black representation, and community control in school administration, etc... eventually forming their own alternative schools they dubbed "Liberation Schools" during the time period captured here (and where Kozol would be tapped to resume his teaching). Their efforts siphoned off roughly half of Gibson's student body causing a panic among administrators who established a police presence, further inflaming tensions, increasing the boycott effort and protests. The scenes here are from this time period and dated May, June, September, and November 1968.
The events received generous contemporary news coverage and Kozol's own account of his experience at Gibson was published by Houghton Mifflin as DEATH AT AN EARLY AGE: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools. The book sold over 2 million copies, won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1968, and is credited for refocusing national attention on continued institutional racial discrimination in public education in Boston and beyond, 15 years on from the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation ruling in Brown.
The scenes are dated but lack much further notation apart from a few scattered names which we locate in contemporary news reports tying these scenes to Gibson, including "Vaughan & McAuliffe" which match up to school superintendent Thomas McAuliffe and associate superintendent Mary Vaughan. The photographs were acquired by us from a Boston-area book and ephemera seller along with a first printing of DEATH.... warmly inscribed to “THE MOTHER OF A FINE HUMAN....” suggesting to us these anonymous photographs were captured by a Gibson parent