Lessons & Resources – Page 2

New York History: Colored School No. 4

New York History: Colored School No. 4

Tom Miller

(Reprinted with permission from “The Daytonian in Manhattan”)

The first Blacks arrived in New Amsterdam in 1626, imported from Africa as slaves by the Dutch West India Company. During the British occupation of New York City in 1776 the population soared after the Crown promised freedom to slaves who deserted their rebel masters. It resulted in thousands of runaway slaves flocking into the city. By 1780, there were more than 10,000 Blacks living in New York. Finally, in 1827, slavery was abolished in New York. But freedom did not necessarily translate into improvement in the lives of Black citizens.

The city, of course, was tasked with the education of all children; but integrated classrooms was not conceivable. “Colored schools” were established, staffed by Blacks. They were an offshoot of the first African Free School, established in 1787 on Mulberry Street. Seven Colored Schools were organized in 1834.

In 1853 Primary Schools No. 27 and 29 shared the new 25-foot wide building at No. 98 West 17th Street (renumbered 128 in 1868). Three stories tall and faced in brick, it had two entrances–one for boys and the other for girls–as expected in Victorian school buildings. In the basement was a small living space for the janitress, Mary Sallie.

There were four teachers in each school, all unmarried women. Their wages in 1855 ranged from $400, earned by H. A. McCormick (about $12,200 a year today), to the $100 salaries earned by Abbie M. Saunders and Eliza Ideson. How the women survived on the equivalent of $3,000 a year in today’s money is remarkable.

The street address was not the only thing about the school building that would change. By 1861 it was renumbered Primary School No. 14 (H. A. McCormick was still teaching here at the time), and within two years it became Colored School No. 7. That year it was staffed by seven teachers–four teachers in the Boys’ Department and three in the Primary Department.

By 1866 the name was changed yet again, now known as Colored Grammar School No. 4. Schools across the city staged a yearly exhibition of the children’s work and this one was no exception. On May 30 that year, the New York Herald reported “The exhibition of Colored Grammar School No. 4 took place last evening at the Cooper Institute. The audience was quite large, and included a few white persons, both male and female, and was well pleased with the exercises embraced in the programme.” The newspaper was careful to point out that the school was “formerly No. 7.”

Rather surprisingly, two specialized teachers were added to the staff in 1868. William Appo, a renowned Black musician, taught music and S. Anna Burroughs taught drawing.

Graduating from grammar school was an important milestone, especially for Black children who were often pulled from school in order to work and help their families financially. On March 5, 1869 The Sun reported “In Colored Grammar School No. 4, in Seventeenth street, Mrs. Sarah J. S. Thompkins, the principal, treated her pupils to an inauguration celebration. Remarks were made by the Rev. Charles B. Ray, Fred Sill, C. E. Blake, Jacob Thomas, and William F. Busler.”

The position of music teacher was taken by Joan Imogen Howard, who came from Boston, Massachusetts. Like William Appo, she was recognized as an accomplished musician. She was as well an ardent worker for integration and racial rights. On October 30, 1892 The World reported “Miss J. Imogen Howard, the only colored woman on the Board of Lady Managers of the [Chicago] World’s Fair, is busily engaged in gathering statistics concerning colored women in New York State.

Reflecting the innate racism of the time, the reporter asked Howard if it was possible for a Black woman to become a member of “the learned professions here.” Her reaction was visible. “Miss Howard looked surprised,” said the article. She replied “I know of a great many. In Brooklyn there are three doctors, each of them enjoying a large practice and doing well…I am personally acquainted with one colored woman who graduated from law school with honors…Miss Ida B. Wells, a young colored girl, is assistant editor of the New York Age, a weekly paper devoted to the interests of the colored people.” She went on to list a number of other successful professional women.

In 1873 the attendance of Colored School No. 4 was 120 pupils. The school building was showing the effects of two decades of use. An inspection by the School Board that year found in part: “ceilings cracked through and need repairing; ventilation by windows; water closets of wood, in poor condition; heated by seven wood stoves, properly shielded with tin.”

The tin-lined flues of the cast iron stoves would cause problems at least twice. On January 6, 1879 The New York Evening Express entitled an article “Scared Colored School-Children” and reported “A defective flue caused a fire this morning in Colored School No. 4, at 128 West Seventeenth street. The fire occurred just before the assembling of the school, and a panic was thus averted, although the children collected around the building were considerably frightened.”

It may have been that incident that prompted Principal Sarah J. S. Garnet to routinely instruct the pupils on how to react to a fire. (Sarah Garnet was the widow of the Rev. Dr. Henry Highland Garnet, the former Minister to Liberia.) It proved to be worthwhile instruction. On February 14, 1883 The Sun reported that another flue fire had broken out.

At around 10:30 that morning children on the second floor noticed wisps of smoke “and became restless.” Mrs. Garnet told a reporter “I had frequently told the children that if fire broke out they would have sufficient warning from me to enable them to walk safely out of the school building. Their faith in me is what saved them from a panic.”

There was a total of 150 children in the building. Garnet instructed a teacher to arrange the pupils on the second floor in straight lines, while she went upstairs to do the same with the youngest children. “At a signal the pupils marched down the narrow, wooden stairways and stood quietly in the inner court yard.” One child ran three blocks to the nearest fire station. The fire was quickly extinguished and the pupils were marched back to their desks. “They were as busy in the afternoon as though nothing had happened,” said The Sun.

In 1884, Joshua S. Lawrence published an article in Ballou’s Monthly Magazine entitled “The Negroes of New York.” He praised racial advances, beginning, “What a contrast between now and twenty years ago! Then they were vassals, now they are clamoring for the offices and other perquisites of a free government.” His out-of-touch assessment was highly biased and he insisted “The negro in this city is not debarred or hindered in any way…Their children are allowed to enter public schools all over the city, besides having separate ones, taught by their own teachers.”

The article pointed out that integration was slowly coming about. “In order to show that the color line is breaking in this regard, an idea encouraged by the Board of Education, is not to take notice of complaints when two or more negro children happen to be near the offspring of some fastidious parent.” Lawrence mentioned Colored School No. 4, saying it combined “both primary and grammar,” levels.

At the time of the article the prospects for the school were dim. The Board of Education had already proposed closing the school. The minutes of the Board of Education on March 5, 1884 documented the receipt of a petition “From the Teachers of Colored Grammar School No. 4, asking that said school be continued for a longer period than that assigned by the action of the Board in 1883.” The petition was forwarded to the Committee of Colored Schools. Its decision was no doubt disheartening.

The teachers were permitted to continue to teach “in other premises than the school building, but without incurring any expense on the part of the Board.” In other words, if the teachers wanted to continue the school, they were responsible for all aspects of it, including funding.

But there was obviously a change of heart. The facility continued, now known as Grammar School No. 81. Sarah J. S. Garnet was still principal, and Joan Imogen Howard was still teaching here in 1892. Another inspection that year reflected the poor sanitary conditions. It said “the sinks are defective and cannot be cleaned and flushed regularly. The closets [i.e. toilet rooms] are not ventilated, but are filled with sewer gas and foul air.”

The push to discontinue the school in the 17th Street property continued. In December 1894, Mayor William L. Strong received a resolution from the Board of Education “requesting the sale of property No. 128 West Seventeenth street.” By the following year, the building was unoccupied.

Finally, on March 24, 1896 the City signed a deal with the Civil War veterans of the 73rd Regiment to lease the ground floor as its clubhouse. Four months later renovations had been completed and on July 6, 1896 the New-York Daily Tribune reported “The members of the Veteran Association of the 73d New-York Volunteers-2d Fire Zouaves–held a celebration in honor of the opening of their new headquarters, No. 128 West Seventeenth Street–the old schoolhouse.” Among the entertainment that night was John J. Moloney, who “gave his bone solo, which elicited much applause.”

The club rooms were decorated with war relics, perhaps the most significant of which was the first Confederate war flag captured by the North. On March 11, 1907 The Yonkers Statesman explained that it had been taken by Corporal Daniel Boone on May 2, 1862 at Yorktown, Virginia. Interestingly, the city retained possession of the old school house property. On January 19, 1921 The City Record announced that renovations would be made “to properly place the premises…in a state of occupancy for the Veteran Fire Association.” The 73rd Regiment Veterans remained in the ground floor while $5,000 was spent in renovations on the upper floors for the Veteran Fire Association.

The new residents renamed their portion of the building Firemen’s Hall. Like its downstairs neighbor, it was a social club. On February 17, 1923, for instance, The Brooklyn Standard Union reported “The Veteran Firemen’s Association held its annual banquet last Saturday night, at Firemen’s Hall, 128 West 17th Street, Manhattan. There were 300 members and their guests present, and it was a most unique affair.” The two organizations remained in the building at least into the 1930’s. A renovation in 1931 made “general repairs to the toilets, urinals and all the fixtures.” The building was later acquired by the New York City Department of Sanitation, which utilizes it today. At some point a veneer of yellow brick was applied. Remarkably, the small paned windows survive. The little building with its remarkable history is easily passed by today with little notice.

Thinking and Teaching the Implications of Federalist Paper #10

Thinking and Teaching the Implications of Federalist #10 for Democracy

Jeff Schneider

When I picked up my copy of Federalist #10 to begin writing this article, I was stunned by the subtitle: “The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection.” Despite my 30 years of teaching this document, the emotions that welled up in me upon reading “Insurrection” were a shock. These are hard times. That the present shapes our understanding of the history we study was brought home to me with new force.

Knowing that Shays’ Rebellion was a cause of the calling for and high attendance at the Constitutional Convention, and the prominence of the phrase “to insure Domestic Tranquility” in the preamble, helps explain what the framers thought was at stake in 1787. As a high school teacher, I always spent 10 or 15 minutes parsing the meanings of the preamble, but even though I taught the Constitution more than 150 times over the years, I never felt the depth of those words as I do at this time. The January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol by followers of Donald Trump puts us in a situation James Madison would recognize. Donald Trump and his followers have been frightening us every day for years now. It is time to analyze the most famous of Madison’s Constitutional commentaries: Federalist #10. This essay is addressed to teachers.

This article is in two major parts: An analysis of Madison’s Federalist #10 on his terms in the first section, which is a pared down student-led lesson, and a second section which builds on the first to critique #10. Usually historians and political scientists refer to the electoral college as the major anti-democratic feature of the Constitution, but in Federalist #10 Madison, as you will see, had fundamentally no respect for the will of the of the people. He baked this idea into his theory of the republic.

That final section takes on the chimerical idea of the (single) public good and Madison’s outright rejection of “the people themselves” to protect the government from dangerous majorities. In 2022 the white supremacist Republican Party has ditched democracy and gerrymandered Madison’s constitutional structure. We are on the brink of a fascist takeover. These contradictions could not be compromised away in 1787 and cannot be smoothed over in 2022. “The Miracle in Philadelphia” nearly failed as a system on January 6, 2021. Democracy cannot be defended by depending on a group of men of “wisdom” to lead us to control “the mischiefs of faction.” Instead we need majority rule.

Part I: Federalist #10 taken on Madison’s terms

When I assigned Federalist #10 I asked the students to download and read the document. They were required to choose two sentences from the beginning, three from the middle, and two from the end of the document. As I have explained in detail in “The Tarzan Theory of Reading,” on my Substack site, the students were to single out sentences with which they agreed or disagreed strongly or those that they thought were important and explain why. The students will lead the discussion with their questions, comments, and the sentences they choose which they will read out loud to the class. In addition, I asked them to identify the sentence that was at the logical center of the argument in Federalist #10, which has an elegant architecture.

When I began the class, I asked for questions or comments. Students often made comments on the definitions of faction or insurrection, which is now a term many students will encounter in the news. The definition of faction is “a majority or minority… opposed to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” The students will come up with the common term “special interest,” but how can that be a majority? This is key problem with Federalist #10, since Madison’s understanding of the term faction is not intuitive. The students may object that the Constitution describes a democracy: does not the majority rule? You should put that idea in a separate list on the board and leave it until the end of the discussion (we will discuss that separate list of ideas in depth in the Part II critique). The students know that Shays’ Rebellion (1786 – 87) was an insurrection, an attempt at the violent overthrow of a government.

Majority faction is itself a contradiction that can be addressed by working through Madison’s series of subtopics: the climate of disorder in the country, his diagnosis of factions the proposals to eliminate them, or to control them, and a critique of his solution. Although the discussion will jump around the document, as the students volunteer their sentences those subtopics will organize the notes as we go along.

Disorder in the country

Shays’ Rebellion was a major factor in Madison’s concerns. The students will know that indebted farmers in western Massachusetts denounced unaffordable taxes and complained that they were losing their mortgages to foreclosure. Daniel Shays was a Revolutionary War captain who led his followers to attempt to close the courts to prevent the foreclosures. In addition, they demanded representation equal to the proportional per capita representation in the east close to Boston. After the rebellion was quashed, Shaysites were elected to the Massachusetts legislature. Another problem was that the rebellion was a protest against unfair taxation reminiscent of the protests in the 1760s and 70s. It reminded many leaders in Massachusetts of the lead-up to 1776 (similarly, some of the insurrectionists in 2022 used 1776 as a threatening slogan). This armed insurrection was a major cause of the convening of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, because the Articles Congress had no power to raise an army directly: the state had to defend itself along with any allies it could muster.

Madison describes how, in his view, the public good was being ignored. “The friend of popular governments” opposes the “violence of faction” which causes “instability, injustice and confusion.” There are “overbearing” majorities that cause “ governments” to be “too unstable” because they do not respect the “rights of the minority,” and governments controlled by “specious (unsupportable) arguments” causing “mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.” Madison blames the “factious spirit that has tainted our public administrations.”

Madison’s definition of faction

“By faction I understand a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole who are united and actuated by some common impulse or passion or of interest adversed (sic) to the rights of other citizens or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” If a student chooses this sentence, you have to be careful to explain each part of the definition. I ask, “How do you explain this definition?”. Eventually the students come to realize that Madison expected that the people would support particular conclusions (how else could he call it a majority faction?). How could a leader find “the permanent and aggregate interests of the community,” I ask. This should also go in the Critique section for discussion. The rest of Federalist #10 discusses how to eliminate factions or how to control them.

Eliminating factions

This is the first of the methods to secure the government against the “mischief of faction.” There are two methods to eliminate factions: destroying liberty or giving everyone the same opinions. The students will then come to the conclusion that restricting liberty is not possible in a democratic government because we depend on freedom of thought and action to maintain democracy.

The second method, giving “everyone the same opinions,” is also an impossible solution because “as long as man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” I ask, “How do you understand that?” Here, students might note Madison’s identification of opinions based on “self-love,” the diagnosis that “reason is connected to passion” and the observation that “Diversity in the faculties of man” were factors in the differences of political opinions.

The rights of property and the ownership of different kinds of property and the faculties to obtain those kinds of property all cause divisions. “Faculties” seems to mean “abilities,” students will likely conclude. So, Madison describes it thus: “(t)he latent (underlying) causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.” It soon becomes clear that Madison was not making an argument for the change in distribution or the control of production or property or goods in the U.S. — Madison was not a Marxist! Instead, the students will conclude that Madison was attempting to find ways to manage the political effects of that inequality or those differences. But in whose interest did he want to manage those inequalities: was it to be a country of the enslaved, the ordinary people, or did he favor his class of the southern gentry?

Controlling the effects of faction

“The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought in controlling its EFFECTS.” In the ensuing discussion students will come to the conclusion that this sentence begins the second half of the argument. It is the sentence at the logical center of the argument. Here Madison turns to the idea of controlling the effects of factions instead of eliminating them, and eventually introduces the republic as a solution.

“If the faction consists of less than a majority” voting, the “republican principle” is the remedy. There might be disagreements, but majority rule does offer a solution. Therefore, what to do about a majority faction is the most intractable problem. Someone is likely to pick the sentence: “To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a (majority) faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.” The ensuing discussion can conclude that it is a thesis sentence pointing to the chief point of the whole article.

The “existence of the same passion in the factional majority” must be prevented or “the majority must be rendered unable to concert. When people “concert” they work together. Madison is actually opposing the rule of the majority here. A pure (direct) democracy in which the citizens are the legislature “can admit of no cure” for “the mischiefs of faction” because “the common passion or interest will in almost every case be felt by a majority of the whole and there is nothing to check… an obnoxious individual” or group from influencing everyone.

In a republic as envisioned by Madison, however, “the representatives refine and enlarge the public views by passing through a medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country (my italics).” He added, “the public voice pronounced by the representatives of the people might be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.” Here Madison added the idea of making the republic cover larger areas. He suggests that by “(e)xtend(ing) the sphere — you take in a greater variety of parties and interests (and) you make it less possible they will concert….” The conclusion of this part of the argument can lead to a choice of more famous and experienced statesmen who possess the “wisdom” referred to above, because the a large number of voters would be participating in a larger district, the chances if a more famous or experienced person (i.e. of wisdom) would be greater.

Finally, “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular states, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states.” He uses religious sects, a rage for paper money, and abolition of debt as examples that are more likely to “taint a particular county or district than an entire State.” These are some of Madison’s most famous statements. The students will see that the purpose of representation and extending the area of the republic was to elect men of wisdom. The factions may cancel each other out or the men of wisdom will convince the other legislators to follow the “true ideas” of the public good because ordinary people cannot end the controversy. Madison and his fellow leaders will decide for them.

Madison’s essay seems clear as a the ringing of two groups of bells: There are two groups of opposing solutions: Eliminating Factions or Controlling its Effects. Each has two methods of solution: He moves through the ideas with alacrity going from one solution to another. The logic is stunning and elegant, like a mathematical proof.

Part II: A critique of Madison’s argument

Now we have to confront the sentences we have put aside or left without exploring thoroughly, in particular the idea of the majority faction: “By faction I understand a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole who are united and actuated by some common impulse or passion or of interest adversed (sic) to the rights of other citizens or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Eventually, the students will conclude that a majority vote is not what Madison is seeking as a solution to the problem of the majority faction. Somehow the government must override the majority.

Another example of Madison’s majority problem: The “public voice pronounced by the representatives of the people” might be more consonant “to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.” The students will determine that Madison is counter-posing the representatives to “the people themselves.” Representatives certainly do not have to vote by taking instructions from their constituents, but it is clear that Madison is trying to circumvent the majority. Why would a legitimate republic be so designed? When we discuss this idea the students reach the conclusion that he does not trust the people to make the right decisions. It is obvious from the sentences that are there for the choosing.

Another of Madison’s sentences expresses the same contradictory view: “To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a (majority) faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.” What, students may ask, is the “public good” other than the will of a majority? If you have not yet discussed “public good,” it is an opportunity to discuss the major contradiction. When the students analyze this, discussion is not done until students understand that although Madison seems to be arguing the solutions benefit all the people, he is claiming the right of the elite to decide for the majority, which citizens are going to benefit.

Eventually the students reach the conclusion that everyone does not have the same interests in society or that the public good may change. It is not clear how to determine the public good, or that the public good can be expressed as a singular rather than a series of public goods. Madison believed, however that the public good was not only attainable, but a key factor in overcoming the mischiefs of the majority faction. Do we really think that the Constitution has been a success for all the people as Madison designed it and the conventional wisdom in the US has always assumed?

Now we have entered a realm of ambiguity and contradiction. Madison’s elegant proof, which seemed so clear, becomes murky, and most importantly, unreachable by the majority of ordinary men — or women! I ask, “How do you understand this “public good” now?” The students will determine that not all people under the Constitution have the same interests as propertied white men. There are women and Black people and the poor and wealthy. In 1787 these individuals were not all formally part of the political community. The First Peoples, “not taxed,” were excluded from representation by the clause on taxing and the 3/5th clause. The Black underclass in the U.S. has been living without the protection of the law for the vast majority of American History; much of white America seemed to only discover the true level of relentless and widespread violence against Black people on May 25, 2020 — the day of George Floyd’s murder. Madison had been fine with slavery and its terrible consequences; violence against Black men and women was not a new development.

The interracial uprising that resulted was unique. They were the largest multiracial demonstrations ever in the US. The violence against Blacks has been a dark undercurrent in the US since the ratification of the Constitution. What is the public good? Do you think now that Madison was protecting the whole people as he implied in paragraph after paragraph by calling his goal the public good?

Now we come to the final sentence in the statements we have put aside for critique. When Madison brought up the danger of Shays’ Rebellion, he blamed the eastern leaders of Massachusetts for the unequal taxation, which caused the rebellion. The western farmers rebelled against the unfair taxation as they had in the 1760s and 70s. Madison commented: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” i.e. elected to office.

These men on whom Madison depended must convince the other representatives and the senators that they know the public good better than the people themselves. Are these people philosopher kings who see the reality in Plato’s cave? Or are they advocating legislation based on the general will in the theory of Rousseau? The general will is discerned outside of debate, and expresses the “true will” of the people. This ability is a “faculty” of enlightened statesmen. It depends not on majority vote but on “the permanent aggregate interests of the community” or the “public good,” determined by the men “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country” in Madison’s phrase. These men of the “better sort” must convince other legislators to follow their lead. What in Madison’s argument places these statesmen in power, I ask. The students eventually identify the layering that takes the decisions out of the hands of the direct voters who have elected men of deeper perception or who represent more conservative interests that protect the government from the “vexed,” the poor or the enslaved, in other words, the factions born of ambition race, and class. These men can find the public good for the benefit of the permanent aggregate interests of their countrymen. But as I stated at the outset such a belief is a chimera.

How can we call the history of the US a long story of a developing public good for all the people when the 3/5^th Compromise was in effect until it was repealed by the 14^th Amendment in 1868, when the large white population of the North overwhelmed the slaveholders’ advantages, and up until the Civil War the small population states controlled the Senate with the help of the “dough-faced” northerners who voted with the South in the Senate and the House? These all acted together to repress democratic solutions to slavery and keep women, the poor and the First Peoples in literal and virtual shackles and chains.

When the slave power was overthrown and the Reconstruction Amendments were passed after the Civil War, there was a brief period from 1866 to 1877 when a fragile interracial democracy existed in the South, which for a time kept the Republican reformers in power. But then violent mobs attacked and killed Black Republican voters, overturned that hard won peace between the races, and Blacks lost suffrage in nearly the whole South. White supremacy ruled again until the Civil Rights Revolution capped by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 produced a second period of Black and minority participation.

Now we are in a different era in which our political life has also been commandeered by white supremacy in the form of Republican re-districting in the states so, despite the large populations in the Democratic-controlled states, the Democrats have only bare majorities in the House and only the tie-breaking vote of the vice president in a 50-50 Senate. Democratic senators represent 41.5 million more Americans than the Republicans. These are problems quite different from Madison’s majority factions. It is minority rule that the majority cannot use the “republican principle” to “cure.” It is a deadlock caused by the filibuster and the small population states, which have controlled the Senate since they were born in the Great Compromise. Madison’s “Machine that Would Go of Itself” has been rejiggered. There is a fascist threat to democracy led by the followers of the former President. Madison’s governmental structure has been under threat by these insurrectionists and the democratic traditions have been undermined to the breaking point. It is unclear whether democracy shall survive the next election, let alone the ones after.

The call in Federalist #10 for the protection of the public good and for the permanent and aggregate interests of the community was based on the will and experience of a minority Madison called the “enlightened statesmen,” who protected slavery for the white majority. The white majority in the country is now disappearing and the movements to defend the “historical white republic” are threatening the lives of workers, women and all minorities. This is our problem now, and it is rooted in the ideal of the public good which Madison believed he and other enlightened statesmen could conjure up to protect the true interests of the “whole” community. He fought to maintain the rule of people like himself. There was no working compromise between the interests of slavery and freedom, or today between the evangelical radicals opposed to abortion and advocates of women’s rights, or between the refusal of the rights of the poor to health care and advocates of Medicare for all, or finally, the interests threatening the rights to clean air, water, food, and jobs and the movement for a Green New Deal. The Electoral College and the unrepresentative Senate must not control our politics. We are at a crossroads.

The myth of the “divinely inspired” Constitution has sustained Madison’s reputation of infallibility, but the flaws in his reasoning, as we have pointed out, have come to haunt us and brought us to the brink of losing our democracy. What, after all, is the public good if it does not represent a clear majority of the US population? As the students realized in their analysis there is no single or public good. We are a country of classes, races and genders. We should not be controlled by rich white men or their MAGA insurrectionists. We are still being ruled by the magical thinking of former centuries, from ancient Greece to the early modern concepts of the virtue of the white landed aristocracy. All this is embodied the persons of senators from states with populations smaller than assembly districts in New York or the city of Washington DC. These modern-day conservatives talk about the Constitution as a document describing a republic, not a democracy. They believe that the proper leaders of this republic are the whites: the real Americans. This idea brings us back to the earlier argument concerning the dangers of reaching for the single public good or the “permanent aggregate interests of the community.” The chimera of the public good turns out to be a smokescreen for white supremacy — as it always was. No amount of leisure or learning can motivate the white supremacists to discern the true interests of our country; they are in it for themselves.

The Hanoi Train Station: Perspectives and Empathy in Social Studies Education

The Hanoi Train Station: Perspectives and Empathy in Social Studies Education

Jonathan Lee Lancaster

The picture above is “Hanoi station,” which is one of the main train stations in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. The train station has keenly unique features; it is centered with a modern, cement block-style design, which is flanked by stunningly ornate yellow wings.

Having conducted research in Vietnam for a few months earlier in the year, I had walked by the Hanoi train station dozens of times without taking much notice; the train station was simply just another building that I passed on my way to my favorite cafe. It wasn’t until I was sitting on the back of a motorbike with a Vietnamese friend while passing the train station that I inquired further about the building. My friend told me that the building was originally built by the French in the early 1900s during France’s colonization of the country; it was then bombed during the war with the United States in the early 1970s; then, it was reconstructed with the help of the Soviet Union later in the 1970s. All of these foreign influences throughout the course of Vietnamese history have given the Hanoi train station its unique look, with its French-style wings and cold, Soviet-looking center. I was baffled at this revelation. For months, I had naively walked by this building without an ounce of knowledge of its origin, supremely oblivious to the historical factors that created it, and – despite being a social studies teacher – ignorant to ask about it earlier.

The Hanoi train station became a symbol to me. It symbolized all of the history that I, as an American, had the privilege to be unaware of. I did not have to live the realities of the Vietnam War’s destruction of Vietnam or its legacies, even if my father’s generation were the ones who perpetrated it. I could simply walk by that history and move on with my day, while the Vietnamese people truly lived in the reality of the wake of the war. Though this was simply a building that embodied the legacies of the war, it symbolized the ongoing Agent Orange effects from the Vietnam War – which continue to produce birth defects – and the thousands of unexploded ordinances (UXOs) that continue to kill people yearly in Southeast Asia. These were the realities that I lived outside, never having to confront.

A few months later, after finishing my research and returning home to New Jersey, I met with some social studies colleagues who were planning their classes for the upcoming year. The overarching topic of discussion was making our social studies classes engaging and interesting for students. While our conversation ebbed and flowed between how to teach colonial American history, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and more, the topic of the Vietnam War emerged.

One colleague was passionately lobbying others to implement an engaging game that he had developed for students last year, in which students were to attempt to create the best strategy for Americans in Vietnam. Students would be put into groups and earn points depending on the evidence and argument for their strategy. The conversation continued, with sprinkled remarks from the other teachers about how they had overheard students talking about the game the previous year, and how students were so engaged. While the discussion continued, my mind started to stray back to one thing in particular: the Hanoi train station.

While American students have the luxury to make a game – no matter the intent or effectiveness – out of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese people do not. While American students can, in their groups, pitch their argument for the best war strategy for 4 points and then proceed to hurry off to biology class, completely forgetting about the Vietnam War until the 41-minute block the next day, the Vietnamese people do not. While American students can “walk by” the realities of the war and move on with their days, as I had done, the Vietnamese people must live the reality of a post-war torn nation.

This is not a story of Vietnamese pain, nor an attempt to highlight the struggle for recovery of Vietnam after the war. This is about how we, as educators, frame and conceptualize history for our students. It seems that, especially with the passage of time, our empathetic sense weakens; educators are more prone to create seemingly harmless simulations and games in the name of “engagement” out of truly devastating historical events. When we, as educators, have students conduct a “World War II Twitter Project” where student groups embody different nations that fought in the war that must post “comments” to each other, or when students must engage in a simulation in which they are meant to see what it feels like to be {insert some group from history here}, or when we create games for students out of history, we are communicating that the history isn’t reality – it is entertainment. We are, in fact, hurting students’ abilities to empathize with others, as it promotes a dissociative outlook on history where the people described in their textbooks (which hopefully we have moved away from already) or readings are nothing more than mere ink blots on a page. It blends the line between reality and fiction, leading students to believe that it is appropriate to be ignorant of historical processes and products.

Though this is focused mostly on international events, the same applies with domestic history. The sad reality is that if you search for news articles regarding social studies teachers in New Jersey attempting simulations, a number of incredibly grotesque articles will appear of teachers having students do a “simulation” of a slave auction or having students lay on the ground to “simulate” being whipped after picking cotton.

For example, in March of 2017, a Maplewood, NJ teacher held a mock slave auction. Moreover, in the same year, a teacher in South Orange, NJ had students create slave auction posters. More recently, a Toms River teacher had students “pick cotton” and simulate being whipped through sounds of cracking whips. Though these selection of stories are from my home state of New Jersey, this phenomenon is occurring nationwide.

These examples are products of our distorted view of “engagement” in social studies education. It is simply not possible for students to “feel” what it was like to be in any historical event in which a peoples suffer, and it is problematic to attempt to do so. Our attempts to “engage” students seemingly to trick them into learning history while doing so hurts our students’ formulation of their worldview.

While making sure students have “fun” is an important element of a successful classroom, we must ensure that “fun” does not come at the expense of empathy. Unfortunately, the topics that are in humanities’ curricula are seldomly “fun.” It is not easy teaching about wars, plagues, racism, and more; however, social studies provides educators with the ability to leverage those underbellies of our societies and histories to promote cultural competencies, perspective-taking, and contextualization.

While I am not claiming that every simulation or game in social studies is inherently bad, I am saying we have to be very, very careful about what we are doing when we incorporate them. Is the point of the simulation or game merely engagement? If so, it could be extremely problematic. If the point of the simulation or game is towards genuine understanding and empathy, then it may be a sound pedagogical choice.

Nonetheless, bear in mind that history is real, tangible, and has consequences – even if those consequences aren’t felt by you, your students, or in your nation. Just because an event happened long ago or in some other area of the world does not mean we should feel tempted to take it less seriously. Truly reflect on if that game or simulation is presenting history as it should be: a tool to build empathy, analyze the past, and understand our contemporary realities.

So, I urge you to think of the Hanoi train station. What history are you possibly “walking by”? What history are you tempted to represent through a game, simulation, or creative project and what is it truly communicating to students? To what extent can we have “fun” in social studies classrooms while also staying true to fostering the cultural competencies and perspective-taking elements we are striving for? And how can we teach social studies in a manner that promotes global empathy?

Teaching Asian American History

Teaching Asian American History

Alan Singer

This article was originally published in History News Network https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183088

Corporal George Bushy holds the youngest child of Shigeho Kitamoto as she and her children are forced to leave Bainbridge Island, Washington. In 1942, the Kitamoto family was sent to an internment camp. (LOC)

The focus of Critical Race Theory has been on the treatment of people of African ancestry as the United States has been pressed to come to terms with its racist past and lingering racism today. It also should include the long history of anti-Asian violence and discrimination in this country. Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May is a time for teachers and students to highlight the contributions and influence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans on the history, culture, and achievements of the United States.

Ex-President Donald Trump exacerbated anti-Asian hostilit y in this country with specious statements blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic and the calling it the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” for the COVID-19 pandemic. The Republican Party has tried to divide potential Democratic Party voters by arguing that affirmative action programs and school reforms addressing past discrimination against African Americans and Latinos are anti-Asian.

Recent deadly attacks on Asian Americans, in San Francisco, New York City, and one in Atlanta where six women were murdered, have been committed by very disturbed people who were agitated by a climate that allows anti-Asian stereotypes to go largely unchallenged. An article in the journal Education Week calls on schools to play a larger role in combatting the stereotypes and anti-Asian racism by making Asian immigrants and their experience more prominent in the United States history curriculum. This would be an important corrective.

On the 2020 Federal Census, people who identified as Asian or of Asian ancestry made up approximately 6% of the U.S. population or almost 20 million people. The Asian American populatio n grew by 35.5% between 2010 and 2020. Another 4 million Americans identified as mixed ancestry with a partial Asian heritage. The three largest groups were Chinese, about 5.4 million people, South Asians from India, 4.6 million, and Filipinos, 4.2 million. Chinese are the second largest immigrant group in the country. In 2019, California had the largest Asian American population, about of 6.7 million people followed by New York (1.9 million), Texas (1.6 million), and New Jersey (958,000)

The first large influx of people from Asia into territories that would become the United States occurred during the California gold rush starting in 1849. Chinese contract workers were brought to the United States to take low paying, dangerous jobs in mining and railroad construction. Most were male and planned to return home after earning enough money to buy land and start a family. In 1850, the Chinese population of the United States was only 3,227 people. It increased to 35,000 in 1860, a little over 60,000 in 1870, and just over 100,000 in 1880, when anti-Asian laws blocked new Chinese arrivals. In 1857, Harper’s Weekly reported, “The immigration of Chinese into California has attracted the attention of Congress. It appears that the Chinese immigrants, on settling there, persist in maintaining their allegiance to China; and under these circumstances the Senate voted on a resolution, December 19, making inquiry into the propriety of discouraging such emigration.”

From the 1850s through the 1870s, the California state government systematically discriminated against Chinese. Among other actions, it required special licenses for Chinese owned businesses and Chinese were not permitted to testify in court against a white person. In 1875, Congress passed and President Grant signed the Page Act, the first federal immigration law. It prohibited immigrants considered “undesirable” including any individual from Asia who was coming to the United States as a contract laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act suspending the immigration of Chinese laborers for a period of 10 years. It was the first law in American history to place broad restrictions on immigration and the first law to ban a specific ethnic group. The law remained in effect until 1943.

Japanese Americans are a small immigrant group that has had a major role in United States history. In 1870, there were only 55 Japanese in the United States, not counting Hawaii which was not yet an American colony. In 1900, there were still only 24,000 Japanese in the continental United States, but Japanese were the largest ethnic group in Hawaii. By 1960, when Hawaii was admitted as a state, there were 464,000 Japanese in the United States. In 2019, under 1.5 million Americans claimed partial or full Japanese ancestry, less than 1/2 of a percent of the US population. The largest Japanese American communities are in California and Hawaii.

In Hawaii, Japanese immigrants labored on sugar and pineapple plantations where they were subject to harsh rules and exploitation by armed European American overseers. On the plantation, Japanese workers had three to five year binding contracts and were jailed if they tried to leave. Those who eventually migrated to the mainland were subject to discriminatory laws and practices. California passed a law in 1913 banning Japanese from purchasing land.

Under the notorious Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 between the United States and Japan, Japanese officials stopped issuing passports for new laborers. Federal legislation in 1924 completely banned any immigration from Japan.

The situation worsened with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and U.S. involvement in World War II. Dr. Seuss posted racist caricatures of Japanese and Japanese Americans as part of wartime propaganda and Executive Order 9066 which eliminated all civil rights for Japanese immigrants and their families living on the West Coast. An estimated 120,000 people were branded as risks and forced to abandon homes and businesses and relocate to concentration camps, mostly in inhospitable areas of the Rocky Mountains. This action was taken despite the fact that there was not a single case of espionage ever established against Japanese Americans or Japanese immigrants living in the United States. Over two-thirds of those forced into concentration camps were American born citizens. The fenced in camps were located in harsh terrain and patrolled by armed guards. Ironically, Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not imprisoned because they were needed to rebuild areas destroyed by the attacks. Young Japanese American men were permitted to leave the concentration camps if they enlisted in the U.S. military. Japanese American soldiers served in a segregated unit, the 442nd, stationed in Italy and France. It was the most decorated American combat unit during World War II.

In 1944, in Korematsu vs. United States, the Supreme Court ruled by 6-3 that the detention of Japanese Americans was a “military necessity” and not based on race. In a dissent, Justice Robert Jackson called the exclusion order “the legalization of racism” and a violation of the 14th amendment. Fred Korematsu, who challenged the evacuation order and forced internment, was “convicted of an act not commonly thought a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.” In 1983, a federal judge overturned Korematsu’s conviction and in 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act compensating more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in the World War II concentration camps.

Since 1965, the United States has large immigrant populations from Korea, the Philippines, Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Each group has its own history in the United States, however all have faced stereotypes and discrimination and been stereotyped. South Asian Americans, often identified as Moslems even when they are not, were targeted after the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. A case involving an immigrant from India in the 1920s, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, established that people from the Indian sub-continent could not become naturalized citizens of the United States because they were not a “white person” in the sense intended in the Naturalization Act of 1790.

One of the most important constitutional decisions about citizenship was a Supreme Court ruling in the case of the United States vs. Wong Kim A rk was a Chinese American born in San Francisco, California in 1873. His parents were Chinese immigrants who returned to China about 1890. In 1894, Wong Kim Ark traveled to China to visit them and was not allowed to reenter to the United States because officials at the arrival center claimed he was not a citizen. In 1898, the Supreme Court in a 6-2 decision ruled that he was a citizen of the United States because he was born in this country.

Despite decades of prejudice, Asian Americans have made major contributions to life in the United States. They include Vice-President Kamala Harris whose mother was an immigrant from India, Eric S. Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, Steven Chen, co-founder of YouTube, Nobel Prize winning scientists Chen Ning Yang and T. D. Lee, physicistChien-Shiung Wu who worked on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb,U.S. Senators Daniel Inouye (Dem-HI) and Tammy Duckworth (Dem-Ill), film director Ang Lee, astronaut Kalpana Chawla, architect I. M. Pei, authors Maxine Hong Kingston, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Amy Tan, athletes Tiger Woods, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Michelle Kwan, musician Yo-Yo Ma, and actors Sandra Oh, Lucy Liu, Haing Somnang Ngor, George Takei (Mr. Sulu), and Bruce Lee.

Slavery in New Jersey: Teaching Hard History Through Primary Sources

Slavery in New Jersey: Teaching Hard History Through Primary Sources

by Dana Howell

For nearly a century, the Monmouth County Historical Association (MCHA) has told the story of the Taylor family at Marlpit Hall, the c. 1760 historic house museum in Middletown, NJ. It is a fascinating story indeed, and speaks to the strife between Patriots and Loyalists in Monmouth County, a hotbed of activity during the Revolutionary War. Until recently, however, a chapter of the house’s history had gone untold. In October of 2021, MCHA unveiled the exhibit

Beneath the Floorboards: Whispers of the Enslaved at Marlpit Hall to include this forgotten chapter. This award-winning exhibit was the culmination of two years of extensive research done by curators Bernadette Rogoff and Joe Zemla to interpret the home to include the long-silenced voices of the enslaved who lived there.

Primary source documentation and discoveries of material culture were the foundations of the research done to uncover the lives of seven of the twelve known enslaved individuals at Marlpit. Birth, death and census records, wills, runaway ads, inventories, bills of sale, and manumissions (or freedom papers) shed light on the experiences of Tom, York, Ephraim, Clarisse, Hannah, Elizabeth, and William. In 2020, Joe Zemla discovered secret caches of artifacts hidden beneath the floorboards of the kitchen loft living quarters that spoke to their religion and protective rituals, while archaeological digs supervised by Dr. Rich Veit of Monmouth University provided further evidence to piece together what life may have looked like for the enslaved. Throughout the house, mannequins dressed in

historically accurate reproduction clothing bring each individual to life, supplemented by their carefully researched biographical panels. The artifacts they left behind are now on display; there is no longer a need for them to be hidden from view.

One of the most prevalent comments made by visitors is that they were unaware that slavery existed in New Jersey. For many years, our educational system had been complacent with the general notion that the northern states were free, while the South had enslaved labor. New Jersey has been referred to as the “most southern of the northern states,” second only to New York in the number of enslaved persons and the very last to legally abolish the institution on January 23rd, 1866.

Comparatively, little has been written about slavery in the North. We can read about
the facts of the matter, but the personal stories in the Floorboards exhibit make an impact that no textbook or blog can. The enslaved are presented without any form of politicization, but rather from an evidence-based and humanized lens. Students are able to connect with them, particularly with Elizabeth and William, who were born in the home and are represented as children – another sad fact of slavery that often goes overlooked. It is a unique opportunity to be able to mentally place these individuals in surroundings which are familiar to the student, albeit long ago. The students learn that we can make educated guesses about what life was like during the time in which the enslaved lived and explore the spaces they inhabited, but we can never truly understand their experiences as enslaved human beings. The only thing we can do is try to imagine it, using historical evidence from primary sources as our guide.

There is a sad deficit in age-appropiate classroom resources to teach slavery, and almost none that cover slavery in the North. This deficit creates roadblocks for public school teachers who are mandated to teach these topics as required by the NJ Department of Education’s 2020 Student Learning Standards, incorporating the 2002 Amistad Law.

While nothing can compare to the experience of actually visiting Marlpit Hall, the opportunity to do so poses challenges for many school districts. In order to make the fascinating information in the exhibit as accessible as possible to students, MCHA has created two NJ standards-based digital education resources adapted for the elementary and middle/high school levels. Created under the advisorship of respected professionals in the fields of education and African American history, both age-appropriate resources provide background on the system of slavery in New Jersey with a focus on the enslaved at Marlpit Hall. In it, they will be introduced to each individual, along with the primary sources that helped to build their stories. Dr. Wendy Morales, Assistant Superintendent of the Monmouth Ocean Educational Services Commission, notes “The questions and activities included in this resource are standards-aligned and cross-curricular. This means students will not only learn historical facts, but will be challenged to think like historians, analyzing primary sources and making connections between historical eras.” Creative writing, art, music, and civics are all explored.

The section on the origins of slavery in New Jersey stress that the enslaved came here not as slaves, but as individuals who were taken from a homeland that had its own culture and civilization. Two videos, courtesy of slavevoyages.org, make a powerful impact. Students will get to view a timelapse of the paths of over 35,000 slave ship voyages, plotted in an animated graph. This visual representation helps students visually process the magnitude of the forced migration of the enslaved, while a 3-D modeling of an actual slave ship offers a uniquely realistic view of these vessels.

Time lapse of plotted slave ships Video featuring 3-D model of slave ship

Both grade level resources come with downloadable worksheets that can be customized to accommodate differentiated learning strategies, and submitted through Google Classroom. Teacher answer keys are provided for guidance as well. MCHA is proud to provide these resources free of charge to aid educators in their responsibility to teach slavery. The resources offer a guided approach to help educators navigate this sensitive and often difficult topic in the classroom. The new mandates are an excellent start to correcting the record on New Jersey’s history of enslavement, but it is truly New Jersey’s educators who will place their personal marks on bringing relevance and reverence to the topic in the classroom.

These resources can be found under the education tab at monmouthhistory.org/education-homepage. MCHA welcomes all questions and comments to dhowell@monmouthhistory.org.

New Jersey Local History: Stephen Smith House and Underground Railroad at Cape May

New Jersey Local History: Stephen Smith House and Underground Railroad at Cape May

*Source: https://stephensmithhouse.org/*

Stephen Smith was the original owner and builder of a summerhouse in Cape May, New Jersey.

Although born in the late eighteenth century, Smith was a nineteenth century philanthropist. During his lifetime, he was said to be the wealthiest Black American in the nation. He established the first home in the United States for aged and indigent Colored people. This home is still in existence today.

An energetic businessman, Mr. Smith had a coal mine, stone quarry and lumber yards in Philadelphia and Columbia, Pennsylvania. His business activities led to many real estate holdings. He established Smith, Whipple & Co. with his cousin William Whipper. Stephen Smith was a devoted church and family man; married to Harriet Lee, they lived in a stone mansion on Lombard Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The vacation house was built by him in Cape May, New Jersey using material from his lumber yard. This house is still standing except for the carriage house, kitchen and fireplace room once visible in the rear of the building. Not having children of his own, he welcomed the offspring of his wife’s secretary and friends; namely the Bascoms and Harlans. His secretary Anna Vidal, wife of Ulysses B. Vidal, brought their three children, Etienne, Marie and Anna Clorise to Cape May. Etienne engraved his name in a small glass windowpane with his diamond ring at this house. In later years Marie would point out the pane and recall the prank, for Etienne had long since emigrated to France. Stephen Smith was called “Daddy” Smith by the children and he relished the time consuming carriage ride to Cape May with them. Portraits of Stephen and Harriet were painted by the noted Black artist Edward Stridom and are today the property of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. An avid abolitionist and agent in the Underground Railroad, Mr. Smith was active in politics and church affairs. Records of the AME church attest to his generosity.

Stephen Smith was born October 13, 1795 in Columbia, PA. At the age of nine he was purchased by an officer who was a Revolutionary War general named Thomas Boude. His mother escaped from her owner, found her son, and was taken in by Boudes. Weeks later her mistress (owner) followed and demanded her property. The Boudes’ refused and were supported by the townspeople who believed in aiding a fugitive. Raised by the General Thomas Boude, in time, Stephen purchased his freedom. Before the general died, he set Stephen up in the lumber business. Stephen earned the respect and confidence of the people of Columbia, PA and they supported his endeavors. At age 21, he was inspired by the eminent minister, Richard Allen, founder of the AME church, and at age 31 became licensed to preach. He was a Teller in the election of every Bishop since Richard Allen until his death in 1873. Smith built a public hall in Philadelphia for the use of the “People of Color”; but this was destroyed by fire in the riots of 1842. Stephen Smith was one of the Signers of Frederick Douglas’ Men of Color to Arms appeal during the early part of the Civil War calling on Black Americans to join the Union Army.

New York Survived the 1832 Cholera Epidemic

New York Survived the 1832 Cholera Epidemic

Daniel S. Levy

(originally published in History News Network)

After sweeping through Asia and killing hundreds of thousands in Europe, cholera neared New York in the spring of 1832. The city had long been afflicted by diseases like yellow fever, smallpox, diphtheria, Scarlet Fever and measles, but this ungodly pandemic would be like none it had ever experienced. New Yorkers tried to prepare as this new sickness spread south from Canada and fanned across the United States, with Thomas Wharton noting in his diary on June 19 how citizens kept busy “cleaning the streets and alleys, strewing the gutters with Chlorine of Lime, and After sweeping through Asia and killing hundreds of thousands in Europe, cholera neared New York in the spring of 1832. The city had long been afflicted by diseases like yellow fever, smallpox, diphtheria, Scarlet Fever and measles, but this ungodly pandemic would be like none it had ever experienced. New Yorkers tried to prepare as this new sickness spread south from Canada and fanned across the United States, with Thomas Wharton noting in his diary on June 19 how citizens kept busy “cleaning the streets and alleys, strewing the gutters with Chlorine of Lime, and the druggists busily occupied in … specifies and prescriptions.” Little, though, could slow its advance, and six days later a Mr. Fitzgerald who lived on Cherry St. became ill. While he recovered, his wife, Mary, and children, Margaret and Jeremiah, soon died. The disease progressed quickly. When Dr. John Stearns jotted down his observations on his visit with John Coldwell on Maiden Lane, he noted how the patient reported that “The attack was sudden & violent—his impression was that ‘he fell as if knocked down with an ax.’”

Churches, offices, warehouse and shops shuttered as 100,000 residents, half the city’s population, fled. Departing carts, carriages and people jammed the streets. Passengers packed ferries, and the Evening Post wrote on July 3 how “Almost every steamboat which left New York yesterday was crowded with a dense mass of fugitives flying in alarm from the imaginary pestilence.” But what they ran away from proved to be far from chimerical. Those who remained cowered at home. James Riker Jr. wrote that his family “scarcely ventured farther than the apothecary’s opposite to obtain drugs, or examine the daily report of deaths by cholera.” Like others, the Rikers didn’t know what to do. Then his grandmother took sick on July 15. “As the day passed on she grew worse notwithstanding the efforts of a number of physicians to check the disease, and died in the night.” Riker’s uncle also perished “that gloomy night,” and the family “packed furniture enough to serve us… closed the house, and left the city in several wagons.”

Many believed cholera sprang from moral faults, drinking, depravity and filthy living. A report by hospital physicians noted how, “The disease fell in a very remarkable degree upon the dissolute and the intemperate.” The New York Mercury blamed places of “infamy,” commenting on a prostitute on Mott St. “who was decking herself before the glass at 1 o’clock yesterday, was carried away in a hearse at half past 3 o’clock.” And yet, pillars of society—doctors, alderman, clergymen and businessmen, along with Magdalen Astor Bristed, the eldest child of John Jacob Astor, the richest man in America—also died. Playwright William Dunlap wrote how “we begin to be reconciled to being killed.”

Ministers preached throughout that only the righteous would be saved, with Episcopal Bishop Benjamin Onderdonk imploring citizens to pray “in a truly devout and Christian frame of mind, with deep repentance for your sins.” While their congregations scattered, many religious figures stayed, with those like Father Félix Varela and the Sisters of Charity caring for the physical and spiritual needs of their flocks.

People had no concept of cholera’s origins or how to treat such a plague. Most did sense the existence of a link between filth and sickness. Yet unbeknownst to the most learned doctors and scientists of the time, a microscopic comma-shaped bacterium called Vibrio cholerae caused the malady. The devastating sickness spreads through water tainted by human waste and brings on nausea, vomiting, leg cramps and diarrhea. The victim’s blood pressure drops, their eyes assume a hollow, sunken look and their skin wrinkles. Subsequent dehydration bestows on the flesh a bluish hue, thus earning cholera the name the “Blue Death.”

Even though they lacked real knowledge of what to do, doctors did their best. The Board of Health set up hospitals, while physicians searched for treatments. Most proved brutal. The evangelist Rev. Charles Grandison Finney recalled how “the means used for my recovery, gave my system a terrible shock.” The most widely attempted remedy was calomel, a chalky mercury-chloride compound, and when doctors saw their patients developing pus on the gums—a sign of mercury poisoning—they believed that their treatment had worked. Physicians also did bloodletting, applied mustard poultices, immersed patients in icy water, administered powdered camphor and had patients inhale nitrous oxide and drink brandy.

Homemade cures circulated around town. The Evening Post recommended that their readers drink strained gruel, sago or tapioca. Some businesses offered disinfecting solutions, and the chemist Lewis Feuchtwanger sold cholera lamps to purify rooms by spreading “Perfumes, Scents, Essences, Aromatic Vinegar, Chloride of Soda and Lime.” And while physicians and pharmacists tried to save people, E.T. Coke commented on how quacks “flocked into the city from all quarters.”

Unfortunately, little that doctors, citizens or hucksters tried had positive effects. Death came painfully, often in just two days to a week. The minister Henry Dana Ward wrote of a friend named Maynard who “took the cholera bad.” Ward’s wife Abigail was “very attentive to him. And we were able to soothe the last moments of an invaluable life.” Yet “in the morning we buried him cold in the grave.” As painter John Casilear would note, “There is no business doing here if I except those done by Cholera, Doctors, Undertakers, Coffin makers.” Cemeteries became overwhelmed. So many bodies filled the areas that grave diggers found it easier to simply dig large trenches. In untended parts of the city, corpses lay in gutters. By the time the cholera had run its course in late August, the city of more than 200,000 residents saw the death of 3,513.

It would take years before doctors and researchers understood the cause of the disease. In 1854 Dr. John Snow studied the pattern of deaths during a cholera outbreak in London. By mapping out the location of the stricken, he showed that the disease originated from a specific polluted street water pump. When officials closed the source, cases dropped. At the same time, the Italian microbiologist Filippo Pacini first identified the cholera bacterium, and in 1885 the Spanish physician Jaime Ferrán created the first vaccine. Yet despite newer and more effective vaccines, the sickness still takes the lives of some 120,000 people around the world each year.

While cholera continued to visit New York into the late 19^th century—in 1849 it killed 5,071 citizens—New York always recovered. On August 25, 1832 merchant John Pintard wrote of his relief that the disease had finally quit the city. “The stores are all open, foot walks lined with bales & Boxes & streets crowded with carts & porters cars… Now all life & bustle, smiling faces, clerks busy in making out Bills, porters in unpacking & repacking Boxes, joy & animation in every countenance.”

Soldiers of Peace in Wartime: A Lesson from World War I

Soldiers of Peace in Wartime: A Lesson from World War I

Charles F. Howlett

*American Friends Service Committee Bulletin Detailing the First Year of War Relief Service, 1917-1918. Available online.*

Humanitarian relief efforts in time of war have their own important message to tell. While so much attention is devoted to soldiers in combat, campaigns, and military victories, students of history are entitled to know more about the other side of the story: heroes who risked their own lives within earshot of cannons to save and assist innocent victims of the horrors of war. It is the other side of history most know little about, but should. Even in the throes of war’s damnation there are humans out there willing to demonstrate why peace should be valued above all else.

Human civilization’s first total war began in 1914 and ended in 1918, barely one hundred and four years ago. That war traversed the globe, ravaged the European landscape, tumbled dynastic empires, and brought death and destruction to millions of people. Some 8.5 million combatants were killed alone, and nearly twice as many casualties. The civilian death toll was even more staggering as disease and starvation, let alone the bombing of cities, sucked the lifeblood from those caught in the crossfire of opposing armies. At that time no one could even imagine such an outcome. But while the war was raging on in the fields and valleys of northern Europe, the Middle East, and on the high seas, the Religious Society of Friends in America (or Quakers as they are more popularly referred to) teamed up with the Red Cross to provide aid and comfort to those directly impacted by the war. American Friends decided to take a more active role by performing noncombatant service in the theater of war. They truly risked their lives in the name of peace.

The establishment of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was inspired by a similar organization in Great Britain, the British Friends Service Committee. The British committee was already performing relief work since the war in Europe had been raging almost three years prior to U.S. military involvement. What is most impressive about the American Friends overseas adventure is how quickly they mobilized their efforts and logistically carried out in impressive fashion their own relief efforts.

During the war the Committee sent many young men and women to feed and care for refugees, build maternity hospitals, and repair and even rebuild destroyed homes. Reconstruction and medical care highlighted a major part of the Committee’s relief efforts. As religious pacifists many draft-eligible Quaker men refused induction into the military, but were willing to perform alternative civilian service, including dangerous humanitarian work in war zones. Similarly, Quaker women volunteers, although not subject to conscription (draft), willingly enlisted in overseas relief and reconstruction work. In France, in particular, these noncombatant volunteers drove ambulances, rebuilt damaged homes, roadways, and villages; they also were instrumental in assisting refugees fleeing from war zones as well as providing funds to staff and supply maternity hospitals and relief stations.

*AFSC Volunteers in France, 1917, AFSC Archives, Philadelphia*

All told, close to six hundred, mostly male, volunteers worked endlessly in France where most of the fighting took place within the shadow of aerial bombing and roaring cannons. Even when the war ended the Committee extended its work in Russia where relief workers helped fight famine and disease; in Serbia and Poland where they assisted in agricultural development and constructed orphanages; and, finally, into Austria and Germany where they fed hungry children.

In the spirit of Florence Nightengale, the subject of many biographies for her courage and training of nurses during the Crimean War in the nineteenth century, these relief workers in World War I became notable crusaders for humanitarianism. They worked in combat zones with courage, conviction, and compassion. As soldiers of peace their equipment was first aid kits, shovels, buckets, hammers, and nails.

At the same time, the actions of AFSC highlight as very important distinction between an antiwar movement and a peace movement—a distinction students and scholars should understand. An antiwar movement is a short-lived crusade aimed specifically at ending military hostilities and lasts only as long as the conflict endures. A peace movement, however, is continuous and extends well beyond simply ending the conflict—it seeks social justice and reform as well as calling for war to be abolished. That is why it is ever present and has existed in the United States as an organized endeavor since the early nineteenth century—in fact the first established peace society in world history was founded in New York City in 1815 by the merchant, David Low Dodge. Indeed, AFSC, is an excellent example of what a peace movement is because its work continued long after the “guns of August” were silenced at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month of 1918.

The following excerpts from the letters and accounts written by Friends can be used by teachers for Document Based Questions explaining the other side of war. They help demonstrate how humanitarian relief work plays a vital role in restoring the lives and stability of those directly impacted by the horrors and costs of war.

Document 1: Letters from Katherine W. Elkington to Parents (August-September 1917)

[Katherine W. Elkington grew up in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She worked at the hospital at Chalons-sur-Marne, in the Champagne-Ardenne region and wrote these letters from the Mission de la Société des Amis in Chalons-sur-Marne]

August 10, 1917: American nerve should count for something, and as I am the only one in all the town as far as I can make out, and there are 40,000 people here—I will have some responsibility. There are about thirteen workers all together here, counting those in the Maternity Ward, those in the creche, and those with older children. Just at present my work lies with the babies whose mothers are here, or who are refugees or something of that stripe. The oldest is three and the youngest a few months, and so as there are about thirty in between, you can see we have some job to keep all fed and clean….Not far away is a factory that tourns out machine guns, and every hour you can hear the pop, pop, pop of the new ones being tested. Besides this there is the never ending trial of soldiers and camions [trucks] going to the front, so one feels quite in the atmosphere of la guerre.

August 17, 1917: This morning…for just as we were feeding the kids their dinner we heard the anti-air guns in the field next to us go pop, pop, pop, and as this is the signal to rush the children under cover we were all on the run. As soon as they were safe we flew out…and there way up above the clouds was our “Boche” foiled of his prey, and turned homeward by the quick work of the gunners. The smoke from the bursting shells hung in the air like little white puff-balls, perfectly still, five in a row. This, I am assured, is only a teaser and nothing to what they have had.

August 27, 1917: You can’t imagine the ruin, which after three years is still almost untouched. The little church has been patched up and we struck the 1^st Mass held there since the catastrophe in 1914. We took several pictures of the wreck, and one of an old woman standing in the door of a new little shanty that has been raised over the cellar of the old home….{W]e stopped to photo one of the numerous wayside crosses that mark the last resting place of some fleeing Germans, and found near it a hastily dug grave apparently abandoned before their man could be interred. It is a gruesome reminder of the shadow that lies over these bright and sunny fields, and one cannot help but feel suddenly shivery as one turns away.

September 20, 1917: For the past few nights there has been a never ending grumble of cannon just out of sight over the hills, and all night long from the windows. I could see the flashes of light that preceded the boom. Also the star bombs were much in evidence, shooting up to consort with their brothers in the sky….

Boom! There the guns are beginning again—big fellows this time whose reverberations shake these walls fifteen miles away….

Source: American Friends Service Committee Records, Box General Administration 1917: Foreign Country—France, American Friends Service Committee Archives, Philadelphia.

Questions:

How does Elkington contrast her work in the maternity ward with a nearby factory making guns for the war?
What does she mean by feeling “quite in the atmosphere of las guerre”?
What do you think her feelings were when coming upon a makeshift grave of German soldiers?
How many miles away were the big guns, which rattled her windows?
Do you think she was proud of the work she was doing and did she feel that her contributions would further the cause of peace?
Who did she refer to as “Boche” and what new weapon of war was first introduced during this conflict?

Document 2: Joseph H. Haines, Letter to his Father (April 6, 1918)

[Joseph Haines, like Elkington was a member of the Germantown Monthly Meeting (Quaker Meeting House) and a graduate of Haverford College in 1898. He served in a Reconstruction Unit at Gruny (Somme), France, where he built and repaired houses and schools and assisted local citizens]

When night came we were naturally tired; so tired that I can hardly remember who was there or what we did. All this time others were securing the country side with automobiles to evacuate threatened villages, and they were often under shell fire. We had to load the trains with old people women and children, decrepit, sick or dying….

I could not think of the loss of our material work that has come but only of the tremendous gain we have made in friendship and goodwill among a people to whom we cannot even yet speak plainly. There is one thought ingrained in every one of us, and that is that we must go back to help them set their homes in order and begin life anew as soon as we can. If the people back of us in America give us half a chance, we can, when we do so, accomplish, I think twice the good that we have in the past….

We found the town we were to help clear up entirely deserted—I mean this literally. There were perhaps half a dozen civilians left and the Red Cross was in possession of the Hotel which they were running for themselves. I set to the next morning—after the town had been shelled and we had all taken refuge in the wine cellar down fifty steps and cut out of solid rock where most of the hotel (it was full of Red Cross workers) slept. But I went back to bed after having helped fit up a camion as ambulance to carry the dead and wounded from the shelling….

Source: American Friends Service Committee Records, Box General Administration 1918: Foreign Service Country—France Individuals: Joseph Haines to L. Ralston, American Friends Service Committee Archives, Philadelphia.

Questions:

How did Haines demonstrate his courage under fire? As a noncombatant did he see himself as a brave soldier without arms?
Did he believe that his example would inspire Americans critical of those who were conscientious objectors to reconsider their opinion?
Why did he want the people back in America to give him half a chance when it came to accomplishing good over evil?
What was the one thought ingrained in each and every one of these volunteers?

Document 3: Edward C.M. Richards, “Reminiscences of Wartime Relief Work in Persia [n.d.]

[During World War I Richards performed missionary and relief work in Persia (now Iran). In 1923, he published a longer account of his experiences; this excerpt is from his unpublished reflections]

At that time, April 1917, many sincere men believed that the most Christian thing to do was to give their lives in the front trenches, believing that in that way they were helping to do away with the evil of war. To hold my position honestly, and meet such men face to face, it was necessary for me to be willing to do something at least as disagreeable and dangerous, and to do it with the motive of keeping people alive, of bringing reconciliation and good will between hostile factions, and to do it using only methods which were uplifting and helpful and beneficial to everybody concerned. I had to be willing to get killed, but to do so living everybody and trying to help everybody, including the Germans and the Turks, and all other people….

At that time, 1917, there was in West Persia a combination of war, racial antipathies and religious fanaticism which had come down through hundreds of years. That area had been the fighting ground of the Turkish and Russian armies since the beginning of the war. Massacres and flights of people had taken place, and were liable to occur at any time….There were only a few hospitals run by American missionary doctors, and most of the worst diseases were continually present: smallpox, cholera, typhoid, typhus, malaria, etc…

In July I arrived in Urumia (now Rezaiah) West Persia, where I was made secretary of the Relief Committee. During the summer , autumn, and early winter, I was busy riding from village to village over the plains, visiting, classifying, and arranging for feeding, clothing, and general care of the 500 odd orphans scattered through this stricken area. I organized some of the refugee Assyrians into a cloth-industry, giving several hundred women work weaving the native cloth which for countless generations had been an important material for men’s clothing in the high mountains of Kurdistan….

Later on, I took charge of cleaning up the streets of the city of Urumia. This included one very unpleasant task; namely, the collecting and reburying of bodies dug up by the dogs in the graveyards, and partly eaten. The cleaning-up and keeping clean…of the yards filled with refugees also fell on my shoulders, as did the care of the relief-transportation equipment of autos, horses, carts, harness, and the rest….

Source: American Friends Service Committee, Collected Records, CDG-A, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA.

Questions:

What position did Richards take that he believed was honest and “unpleasant”?
Why were the Turks fighting the Russians when most of the battles took place in northern Europe?
What do you think was Richards’ most difficult assignment?
In terms of history, did Richards’ work also highlight the tragedy associated with the Armenian genocide that occurred as a result of World War I?

Document 4: Ruth Rose Hoffman, “Report to the Friends Committee of the Year’s Work Done in Siberia under the American Red Cross {July 1919]

[During the Russian Civil War Siberia was a battle zone between Bolshevik and anti-Red forces. The United States, Japan, and several European nations sent troops to support the anti-Bolshevik forces. Hoffman , a nurse working with the American Red Cross, apparently with Friends Committee support, reported on her work in public health and with refugees in the Siberian port city of Vladivostok]

As there were no available doctors in the unit at that time for giving medical assistance, I began to visit these barracks, August 15, 1918; I had done as much as I could in the way of making the lives of these refugees healthier, mostly first aid treatment and taking the very sick into the hospitals….

My work was very difficult but most interesting….All the temporary lodging houses and prisons had to be investigated periodically. We had the most sick cases in the poorest Russian, Chinese and Korean sections of the city….

From January 1^st up to July 26 I had located and admitted to the hospital five hundred (500) patient of whom two hundred and seventy-six (276) were Typhus fever cases. Nine hundred and seventy-five visits were made, mostly with the ambulance; six hundred (600) were instructed in the prevention and isolation of disease; four hundred and sixty-seven (467) patients were sent to clinics; clothing given to one hundred and fifty-five (155) bedridden patients, the other being referred to the city office. Medications, eggs and milk were taken to the home of one hundred and seventy-six (176). I also visited many city institutions, which asked for help and made recommendations as to what they really needed.

As I did not have a physician in my work I had to diagnose and treat some quite serious patients.

In the Spring epidemic of measles, I had a small isolation war of eight (8) beds with a Russian girl in charge of it, whom I trained for the work. We had about thirty (30) cases of measles. The Russian girl proved to be very good along this line and she obtained work after the clinic was closed in the American Red Cross Hospital. Right along in my work I tried to teach child Hygiene to the Russian mothers, who listened to me eagerly but in their everyday struggle for existence they could not remember it very long….

Source: American Friends Service Committee Records, Box General Administration 1919: Foreign Service Country—Germany to Russia, American Friends Service Committee Archives, Philadelphia]

Questions:

How did Hoffman feel about her work in Russia?
How difficult was it for her to communicate with so many patients speaking different languages?
Did she mind assuming the role of physician under most difficult circumstance and why was she willing to do so?
Why did she feel so compelled to try to teach Russian mothers the importance of child hygiene?
What happened to cause Russia to leave the war and how did this impact the Allied war effort against the Central Powers.

Document 5: Carlton McDowell, Motives of Humanitarian Service (1918)

[McDowell, a Quaker zoologist and relief worker explains his reasons why he and his companions sought to promote understanding, reconciliation, and peace through humanitarian service]

We went to mend houses; but the reason we wanted to mend houses was that it would give us a chance to try to mend hearts. Much of our work on houses has been lost; but I do not believe that any amount of cannonading will break down whatever influence we had on these people’s hearts. We cannot say how much cheerfulness, hope and love we brought them—surely some reached them. I believe it possible that even now, when their troubles are keener than ever, their experience with us boys may somehow be giving them a little mental comfort. However that may be, the whole perplexing question of our coming will remain in the back of their minds. From time to time it will claim attention until finally a light dawns, until they finally realize why we came—why we crossed the ocean voluntarily, why we worked without pay, why in order to do this we were willing to leave our homes and our professionals and take up jobs we never tried before. And when this answer comes to them it will never be forgotten; in the intimate traditions of these families will be handed down the account of the little group of men who worked for strangers because of their belief in the Great Brotherhood.

Source: Rufus Jones, A Service of Love in War Time: American Friends Relief Work in Europe, 1917-1919. New York: Macmillan Co., 1920, p. 226

Questions

What did McDowell consider the greater good to civilization?
What did he hope his service without pay would eventually accomplish?
What did he mean by the Great Brotherhood?
What legacy did McDowell wish to convey to those who question his true motivations?

Essay Question

Based on your knowledge of history and events surrounding World War I, what lessons can be learned from the role that noncombatant humanitarian relief workers played when assessing the consequences of war on innocent civilians? How important is humanitarian relief efforts in times of war? Cite specific examples from the documents above where heroes of peace risked their lives to help others.

Further Reading

Bennett, S.H. and Howlett, C.F.(2014). Antiwar dissent and peace activism in World War 1 America: A documentary reader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

Chatfield, C. For peace and justice: Pacifism in America, 1914-1941. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971.

Hirst, M. E. (1923). The Quakers in peace and war. London: The Swarthmore Press.

Jones, M. H. (1937). Swords into ploughshares: An account of the American Friends Service Committee, 1917-1937. New York: Macmillan & Co.

Jones, R.(1920). A service of love in war time: American Friends relief work in Europe, 1917-1919. New York: Macmillan Co.

New York State’s Birthday and First Constitution

New York State’s Birthday and First Constitution

Bruce W. Dearstyne

Social studies and history teachers routinely cover the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in their courses. But every state also has a “birthday” (the day it got started as a state) and its own state constitution. The origins of states and their first constitutions can be very useful teaching tools, adding a new dimension to students’ historical insight and understanding.

New York State is an outstanding example. April 20 is New York’s Birthday! That was the date in 1777 when the Convention of Representatives of the State of New York, an ad hoc group elected the previous year to guide New York’s Revolutionary War efforts and develop its first constitution, finished work on that document.

The story of New York’s first state constitution is a dramatic one. New York had moved from steadfast loyalty to Britain to reluctant rebelling colony to a full-scale push for independence through the actions of three Provincial Congresses, the first elected in 1775, to guide New York in the growing alienation from Britain. The “Convention of Representatives” had been elected the year before as New York’s fourth Provincial Congress. Meeting initially in White Plains, they authorized New York’s representatives to the Continental Congress to approve the Declaration of Independence in early July, then, to keep out of reach of British forces, fled north to Fishkill and finally to Kingston where they completed their work. Along the way, they changed their name from Provincial Congress to Convention of Representatives of the State of New York.

When they began their work it wasn’t entirely clear just what a “state” was. People knew about colonies/provinces (New York had been one), and nations or nation-states as they were sometimes called (such as Britain). There were few precedents of models to draw on. Other colonies-becoming-states were writing their own first constitutions. The Articles of Confederation, which would link the new states together, was not completed until November 1777. The U.S. Constitution was a decade in the future. The creative New York drafters drew on their own experience in colonial government, their knowledge of European writers on the concepts of natural rights and representative government, and a few American leading-edge advocates such as Massachusetts’ John Adams. But mostly they drew on their own creativity and improvisation.

The delegates worked in haste and approved the final draft of their document, which still had strikeouts and marginal notes when they signed it. There was no time to make a clean copy before sending the document to the printer. They took a day off but the next day, April 22, the convention’s secretary mounted a flour barrel outside the court house where the group had worked and read it aloud to Kingston citizens.

New York State had in effect proclaimed itself into existence.

The document began by quoting the Declaration of Independence. This connected New York with the other colonies asserting their independence. It stated that the convention acting “in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State doth ordain, determine, and declare that no authority shall on any pretense whatever shall be exercised over the people or members of this State, but such as shall be derived from and granted by them.” In 1777, a document purporting to represent the consensus and will of the people, and their right to govern themselves, was a startling, radical departure from the past.

The original copy of the first constitution is preserved in the State Archives. The Archives has provided a scanned version at https://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/objects/10485.You can read it online in typed form at the Y ale Law School Avalon Project. William A. Polf’s 1777: The Political Revolution and New York’s First Constitution, also available online, provides a good introduction. It is also described in Peter Galie, Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York and in my book, The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State’s History.

The 1777 constitution is just over 5000 words in length, It outlined the structure and purposes of state government but did not provide much detail.

It created a two-house legislature — one house, the Assembly, to be more numerous and more broadly representative of the people, and the other, the Senate, to be smaller and more attuned to the interests and property. That basic structure is still in place today.

It declared that “the supreme executive power and authority of this State shall be vested in a governor” who “shall take care that the laws are faithfully executed.” That wording is similar to what exists in the current State Constitution. But the 1777 writers had had enough experience with the King of England and some colonial governors who had over-asserted their power that they hedged the authority of New York State’s governor. Instead of giving the governor veto power over bills passed by the legislature, they created a “Council of Revision” consisting of the governor, chancellor, and judges of the supreme court with veto power. Rather than giving the governor sole appointment power, they vested that in a “Council of Appointment,” consisting of the governor and four senators chosen annually by the Assembly, to approve all appointments.

The document made only a brief reference the courts; fleshing that out later would require legislative action. Voting rights were restricted to men who met certain property-holding or other requirements.

The Constitution was not very long but it was a sound beginning. Hastily-organized elections were held in the spring and summer. The first legislature assembled in Kingston in September and got to work. The newly-elected governor, General George Clinton, had to await a lull in the fighting to come to Kingston, take the oath office, make the first gubernatorial address, and then hurry back to lead troops again.

The fledgling government did not have tranquility for long. It had to flee as British troops arrived and assaulted and burned Kingston on October 16. The legislature soon re-assembled in Poughkeepsie and resumed work. By then, patriot forces had defeated British incursions from the west (at Oriskany, August 6), the east (at Bennington, on August 16) and the north (at Saratoga, October 17, a major victory that became the turning point of the Revolution).

1777 turned out to be something of a “miracle year.” New York State was here to stay. The new constitution endured without major changes until 1821.

There are many ways of approaching the use of the first State Constitution in social studies and history courses. Some possibilities:

*It is an inspiring, against-the-odds story. It is a story of people determined to control their own collective affairs through representative government. At the beginning of 1777, the odds of New York’s success did not seem great. By the end of the year, New had written a constitution, established a government, held elections, fended off invasions from three directions, and survived invasion and destruction of its capital.

*It represented compromise and consensus. The writers had a number of disagreements and varying viewpoints and perspectives going into the process. But along the way they put aside their differences, compromised, and came together to develop a consensus document. That process is worthy of study now, when too often it seems difficult to reach agreement on divisive political issues.

*It was successful, flexible, and enduring. The first constitution proved to be a viable framework for years when New York grew remarkably fast. Even when the first major revisions came in 1821, the structural changes were relatively modest. The revisions abolished the Council of Revision and the Council of Appointment and replaced them with procedures more similar to what we have today.

*It left important work undone. The convention discussed abolishing the horrible practice of slavery but in the end it did not. That had to await legislation in 1799 and slavery was not formally abolished until 1827. Restrictions on men’s voting rights were gradually abolished in ensuing decades. Women finally got the right to vote in 1917. The constitution had no bill of rights other than protection of freedom of religion. The legislature enacted a bill of rights in 1787 and they were embodied in the 1821 constitutional revision. Since then, the constitution has been revised, updated, changed, and amended many times. That is a reminder that constitutions are subject to update and change over time, with voters’ approval.

*It was influential. The New York constitution includes some of the principles that were embodied in the U.S. Constitution a decade later, 1787. New York led the way in a sense. That is not surprising because New York patriot Gouverneur Morris was one of the principal writers of the New York document and a decade later, then a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Pennsylvania, he was also one of the writers of the U.S. Constitution.

*It is a source for teaching about self-government, constitutional law, and civic responsibilities. The constitution could be a source for deepening students’ understanding of self-government and their roles and responsibilities as citizens. Educating for American Democracy , a recent report on civics education, notes that students need more study of “the social, political, and institutional history of the United States in its founding era, as well as the theoretical underpinnings of our constitutional design. The state constitutions and the federal 1787 Constitution, as amended, form diverse peoples and places into an American people: one overarching political community.”

Boosting Reading Skills Through Social Studies at the Elementary Level

Boosting Reading Skills through Social Studies at the Elementary Level

Karissa Neely

Want to improve students’ reading scores? Incorporate more social studies into their instruction.

“The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study shows that social studies is the only subject with a clear, positive, and statistically significant effect on reading improvement. In contrast, extra time spent on English Language Arts (ELA) instruction has no significant relationship with reading improvement,” Adam Tyner and Sarah Kabourek explain in their 2021 Social Education journal article, “How Social Studies Improves Elementary Literacy.”

According to the study, social studies has the power to boost literacy and student language acquisition. Because of its focus on people and the world around us, social studies gives students context for their ELA learning. As students use background knowledge to decipher informational text, they build real-world vocabulary and gain stronger reading comprehension skills.

In many elementary schools, where teachers have very limited social studies instruction time, they can use informational text from social studies during their language arts block.

“Integration of ELA strategies into social studies gives students an opportunity to use and refine ELA skills while using relevant content,” says Kelly Jeffery, ELA curriculum director at Studies Weekly.

Beyond reading, social studies instruction can also be more deeply blended with ELA, and support reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. Here are four tips for further integrating social studies and ELA:

1. Use Interactive Notebooks

“[I]nteractive notebooks are simple spiral-bound notebooks into which students glue or tape my handouts,” says Christina Gil in a 2016 article for Edutopia. “It’s just a simple, functional way for students to create, write, and explore ideas all in the same place.”

Jeffery adds that interactive notebooks are a way for both the teacher to see what students are learning and thinking. Students use them to take notes, explore ideas, ask questions, reflect and respond. They then become a sourcebook for students as they review for assessments.

“They pair very well with Studies Weekly because it is a perfect way to consume our publications,” Jeffery explains.

2. Create a Presentation

Students need different types of opportunities to share their understanding and presentations are perfect for this.

Brochures, posters, Google Slides, Nearpods, etc. are all interactive avenues for students to work individually or collaborate together to demonstrate knowledge. Similarly, students can create video journals to storyboard events and their responses. The goal is not a perfect analysis of the event or the historical figure they are studying, but a reflection on it.

Additionally, students can create readers’ theaters or short plays based on historic events, and perform them for the class. Others might opt to write a poem about a historic figure or create a children’s book explaining about an even

Three examples of easy ways students can show learning (from top left): file folders used to summarize information, popsicle puppets to share information from a historical figure’s point of view, and trioramas used for summarizing, fact/opinion, analyzing a primary source, or as a mini-report.

3. Create a Supported Response

Using informational texts, students can create a reasoned persuasive argument sharing their opinion on an event or person.

One form of supported response is a small paragraph following the TEES Template as explained by Jeannette Balantic and Erica Fregosi in their 2012 article, “Strengthening Student Thinking and Writing about World History,” for Social Studies and the Young Learner.

The TEES Template helps students strengthen their thinking, reasoning, and responses to open-ended assessments. With this exercise students go beyond learning historical facts — instead they use these facts to form arguments and support.

4. Hold Collaborative Groups

After reading an article, students may analyze the information and reflect on it within their interactive notebook.

With their notebooks and/or articles in front of them, teachers can guide students in opening up a dialogue about what they read with a small group or the entire class. Students should consider all voices and sides to an issue or event, and use additional sources, if needed, to deepen their understanding.

As they share their opinions and factual evidence, students should also be instructed to actively listen to the other side. The goal of this exercise is not to win but to try to find a compromise between both positions.

These four tips are only just few options to help teachers blend social studies and ELA in the elementary classroom. Even more, in addition to integrating with ELA, social studies is also the gateway to deeper learning in all subjects. For example, as students learn geography, they learn spatial math concepts. Or as they learn about historical developments in technology, they develop background knowledge for science. Even within the study of social studies, students learn how to make connections between a specific topic and its effect on people, events, and society. They begin to understand how geography affects a region’s economics, history affects governments, and governments affect society.

Teaching social studies with an integrated learning approach strengthens students’ ability to reason and think critically, gain a deeper understanding of the content, and transfer information to solve new problems. This knowledge can prepare them for the future as they become the world’s government, business, and family leaders.

References:

Balantic, J., & Fregosi, E. (2012, November). Strengthening student thinking and writing about world history. Social Studies and the Young Learner, National Council for the Social Studies. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.socialstudies.org/social-studies-and-young-learner/25/2/strengthening-student-thinking-and-writing-about-world

Gil, C. (2016, August 30). Interactive notebooks: No special hardware required. Edutopia. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/interactive-notebooks-no-special-hardware-christina-lovdal-gil

Tyner, A., & Kabourek, S. (2021, January). How social studies improves elementary literacy. Social Education, National Council for the Social Studies. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.socialstudies.org/social-education/85/1/how-social-studies-improves-elementary-literacy