This 1955 yearbook from Dunbar Junior/Senior High School in Little Rock, Arkansas is radically different from the school's yearbooks prior to Brown v. Board in it's format. The earlier yearbooks were printed on poor quality paper, only a few pages in length, only featured the senior class and stapled together. This was due to the lack of financial support provided to the segregated schools in the community. Instead they relied on a few black businesses.
In contrast, this yearbook is a gold colored, hardcover book that is labeled with the school mascot- Bearcat. Four of the nine Little Rock Nine students appear in the yearbook, including Ernest Green in class 9-4, Terrence Roberts in class 8-1, Thelma Mothershed in class 8-4, Carlotta Walls in class 7-3.
Closing Exercises For the Grades is designed to assist teachers tasked with developing and conducting commencement exercises for grammar schools. It contains inspirational poems, stories, short plays, and activities. There are some black and white illustrations of children in various dress and costumes. The front cover is illustrated with two large flowers. Both the front and back cover pages, and the back cover itself, contain lists of recommended patriotic songs, play, and exercises.
Harriette Wilbur was an editor and author of teachers’ guides for children. In addition to Closing Exercises For the Grades, she compiled and/or created other works to entertain and inspire a love of reading in children. These include Bird Gossip and A Dream of Mother Goose and other Entertainments. She also published original stories in The Youth’s Companion (1920), a family-oriented Reader’s Digest type magazine designed to appeal to the middle class and noted for their sponsorship of the creation of the Pledge of Allegiance as well as promoting a “flag over every schoolhouse” and images of patriotic figures in classrooms.
March Brothers publishing house was established in Lebanon, Ohio and was active in the Midwest. It specializing in teacher’s exercise books and educational materials.
Geography Reader’s IV: Europe attempts to combine the best features of a textbook and those of a geographical reader. Contents include a description of most European countries’ physical features, along with a brief history of the main cities, industries, and climate. There are review questions at the end of each chapter. There are numerous black and white illustrations of peoples and activities. The red cover contains an illustration of two men seated within a shield-like frame and globe. One holds the tools of a farmer and the other the tools of a factory worker.
Issac Oscar Winslow (1856-1949) authored a series of Geography Readers that were widely used as textbooks. He also authored books on the principles of agriculture and arithmetic for use in public schools. In addition, Winslow served as the Superintendent of Providence Public Schools in Rhode Island.
The famed publishing company was founded in Boston by Edwin Ginn and Daniel Collamore Heath in 1885 and specialized in textbooks. D.C. Heath and Company was owned by Raytheon from 1966 to 1995. When Raytheon exited the textbook market, it sold the company to Houghton Mifflin. The deal gave Houghton Mifflin a substantial boost as a publisher of textbooks in modern languages, science, language arts, social studies and mathematics.
This is one of John Rogers’ multi-figure statuettes (called Rogers Groups), which was patented in 1867. These works were known for being relatively inexpensive art objects made of cast and painted plaster and popular decorative art for the period. This piece, entitled “The School Examination,” shows a young girl looking at a slate, while a seated man gestures at something on the slate. The female teacher is standing between them with one hand on the girl’s shoulder and a book in the other, peering at the student’s work. This scene depicts an examination at a rural school, with the man being a visitor from the School Committee. He appears to be calling attention to a mistake in the girl’s work. It should be noted that John Roger’s wife, Harriet (Hattie) Moore Francis, was a teacher prior to her marriage in 1865.
John Rogers (1829–1904) was a famous American sculptor who produced very popular, inexpensive figurines. Instead of working in bronze and marble, he sculpted in more affordable plaster, painted the color of putty to hide dust. Rogers’ statuettes celebrated the lives and values of ordinary Americans. Through his Rogers Groups he offered a snapshot of the manners and customs of the period. Rogers sold rights to his factory and to the production of the Rogers Groups to his foreman William Brush inn 1893, who produced copies in the Rogers Statuette Co. until 1895.
This print was made from a woodblock engraving and appeared in the Harper’s Weekly issue dated June 23, 1866. The image depicts an outdoor school setting with the primary Freemen School of Vicksburg, Mississippi in the background. Adults and children are playing and talking to each other in small groups. This is a companion image to 1866 Primary School for Freeman, in Charge of Mrs. Green, at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
The article accompanying the illustration indicates that there are a few whites in the community who believe in educating blacks. The author goes on to compare the Freeman School to a New York public school by pointing out “…these people showed the average intelligence displayed in the New York public schools.” During Reconstruction, Northern freedmen's aid organizations began establishing schools in the former states of the Confederacy. These benevolent organizations raised funds, recruited teachers, and attempted to keep the future of the freed people before the Northern public.
The original artist was Alfred Rudolf Waud (1828-1891), a British-born American illustrator. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts before immigrating to the United States in 1850. According to Britannica, Waud’s “lively and detailed sketches of scenes from the Civil War, which he covered as a press correspondent, captured the war’s dramatic intensity and furnished him with a reputation as one of the preeminent artist-journalists of his era.”
Harper’s Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City and was published by Harper & Brothers from 1857-1916. It featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, as well as illustrations.
This print was made from a woodblock engraving and appeared in the Harper’s Weekly issue dated December 15, 1866. The image depicts a large class at the Zion School in Charleston, South Carolina. An African American teacher is standing and addressing dozens of well-dressed African American children who are seated in long rows.
The Zion School was a Freemen School under the direction of the American Missionary Association. Francis Cardozo was its first Director. During Reconstruction, Northern freedmen's aid organizations began establishing schools in the former states of the Confederacy. These benevolent organizations raised funds, recruited teachers, and attempted to keep the future of the freed people before the Northern public. The accompanying caption states that: “It is a peculiarity of this school that it is entirely under the superintendence of colored teachers.”
The original artist was Alfred Rudolf Waud (1828-1891), a British-born American illustrator. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts before immigrating to the United States in 1850. According to Britannica, Waud’s “lively and detailed sketches of scenes from the Civil War, which he covered as a press correspondent, captured the war’s dramatic intensity and furnished him with a reputation as one of the preeminent artist-journalists of his era.”
Harper’s Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City and was published by Harper & Brothers from 1857-1916. It featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, as well as illustrations.
This is one of John Rogers’ multi-figure statuettes, called Rogers Groups, which was patented in 1873. These works were known for being relatively inexpensive art objects made of cast and painted plaster and popular decorative art for the period. This piece, entitled “The Favored Scholar,” depicts a pretty young lady holding lilacs in her left hand, while talking to her young male teacher at his desk. The catalogs of the time stated that these flowers wer probably a gift. The teacher is leaning over the teacher's desk explaining a problem on the slate. A young male student peeks around the desk and tries to distract the girl with twisted pages of a book or pieces of shaved wood placed on his ears, providing comic relief.
John Rogers (1829–1904) was a famous American sculptor who produced very popular, inexpensive figurines. Instead of working in bronze and marble, he sculpted in more affordable plaster, painted the color of putty to hide dust. Rogers’ statuettes celebrated the lives and values of ordinary Americans. Through his Rogers Groups he offered a snapshot of the manners and customs of the period. This education related group is one of his best sellers and was sold throughout the US and internationally. Rogers sold rights to his factory and to the production of the Rogers Groups to his foreman William Brush inn 1893, who produced copies in the Rogers Statuette Co. until 1895.
The Cambridge Manual Training School for Boys was founded in 1888 by philanthropist, textile merchant, and real estate developer Frederick Hastings Rindge (1857-.1905). Cambridge had a long history of primary and then secondary education. In 1892 Cambridge English High School moved to a new building on land presented by Rindge and after a remodeling, the Manual training School moved to their old building along with Cambridge Latin School. In 1899 the school was renamed Rindge Technical School and Rindge had retired to a huge ranch on land that is currently Malibu, California.
The Cambridge Manual Training School for Boys presents a detailed account of the facilities and educational philosophy of the school. The fields of study offered included wood working, forging, mechanical drawing, and iron working. There was also a training program for a fire brigade. This 19th Century pamphlet includes 29 pages of text + 30 additional pages of black and white photographs. Tuition for sons of Cambridge citizens was free with an incidental charge of $3-$5 for drill suit, locker, and toilet articles. Non-residents were charged $150 a year. Admission requirements included an ability to read, write, spell, a command of grammar 5 and a good knowledge of history, geography, and arithmetic.
Author C. W. Parmenter (1852-1940) was a leading educator and authority on industrial education. He was the principal of the Mechanic Arts High School of Boston, Massachusetts for many years. Parmenter served as the President of the Boston Principals’ Association. As a prominent community leader, he was also a member of the Twentieth Century Club and the Boston City Club.
The Harvard Printing Company was an early publishing house based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This turn of the 20th Century textbook on physiology and introduction to comparative anatomy contains numerous illustrations, most in black and white in154 pages. An additional 6 pages feature advertisements. The front cover is illustrated with an elaborate brown floral pattern. The back cover is imprinted with the publisher’s insignia containing a lit torch, an open book, and eagle’s wings.
Jeannette Winter Hall was an early American author born in 1860 in Cicero, Illinois after her parents immigrated from England. She was a prolific author of textbooks on hygiene and physiology for the lower grades. In addition to guiding teachers, her books were designed to assist parents with the education of their children. Besides The New Century Primer of Hygiene for Fourth Year Pupils (1901), her works include: New Century Series of Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene (1918); A Manual of Sex Hygiene (1913); and Girlhood and Its Problems: The Sex Life of Woman (1914).
Her frequent co-author was husband Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, a professor of physiology at Northwestern University. Together they were American pioneers in the field of sex education.
The American Book Company was an educational book publisher formed in 1890 and based in New York City that specialized in elementary school, secondary school, and collegiate-level textbooks. The company was absorbed into D. C. Heath in 1981. Any remaining K-12 assets of the American Book Company were acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 1995.
This charming manual contains “instructions for the cultivation and preservation of the voice and use of gestures.” It features many short selections for reading and recitation. Most of the entries are anonymous rhyming verses, indicative of what passed for conventional wisdom at the time. Some selections were reprinted from popular periodicals, such as Harper’s Young People. A few are taken from acclaimed poets (e.g., William Wordsworth) or speeches (e.g. Walter Scott).
Pages 3–16 contain delightful illustrations of a young woman in a flowing gown adopting various theatrical poses. The front cover contains a color drawing of two little girls in proper evening dress with long white gloves and fans. The back cover has a black and white illustration of five young girls musing over a book in a classroom. These illustrations were very typical of the late 19th Century.
The W. B. Conkey Company was formed in Chicago in 1877. It later built a plant in 1897 at 617 Conkey Street, Hammond, Indiana. At the time, it was one of the most modern, largest, and best equipped printing plants in the world. Conkey won the coveted commission to print the Official Directory of the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. It also published the very first Sears Roebuck Catalog in 1898. After the original owner and president died in 1923, his son Henry P. Conkey took over controlling interest of the company. Numerous types of catalogs and books were printed at the plant, including textbooks, biographies, encyclopedias, fiction, and Bibles. The publishing house was sold to Rand McNally in 1949.
Nursery and Kindergarten Stories is an anthology containing original short stories, songs and rhymes by numerous writers for young readers. There are 370 original black and white engravings. The red cover features a young girl in a gold dress and red bonnet holding two dolls and pulling a toy. It is over 400 pages in length.
Sophie May was the pseudonym used by Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833-1906), an American children's author. She wrote forty-five books, chief among them were the very popular Little Prudy and Dotty Dimple series. Clarke lived most of her life in her hometown of Norridgewock, Maine, save for ten years spent as a teacher in Evansville, Indiana.
Mary D. Brine (1816-1913) was a successful poet, author and lyricist from New York. Among her many other children’s books were Grandma’s Attic Treasures: A Story of Old Time Memories, and Thoughts and Fancies: Poems and Pictures of Life and Nature. She is perhaps best known for her poem, “Somebody’s Mother.” Brine also wrote the lyrics for “Hearts and Flowers,” a late 19th-century piano piece that was a popular hit.
The Saalfield Publishing Company published children's books, educational toys and games from 1900 to 1977. It was once one of the largest publishers of children's materials in the world. The company was founded in 1900 in Akron, Ohio, by Arthur J. Saalfield (1863-1919). The company published the works of authors such as Louisa May Alcott, Horatio Alger, P. T. Barnum, Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Dr. Seuss. In 1977, the Saalfield Publishing Company shut down, and its library and archives were purchased by Kent State University.
The Union Speller presents an "orthography" or set of conventions for writing a language and the norms of spelling. It also contains numerous exercises on punctuation, pronunciation, synonyms, etc. It claims to be compatible with Webster's then-new American Dictionary. While the title page and face pages are missing, this Sanders' Union Speller was copyrighted in 1865 and published in 1872.
The green front cover depicts a male teacher instructing five young boys and girls who are also standing. The back cover contains ads for other texts in the American Educational Series. The text is 178 pages long.
Charles W. Sanders (1805-1889) was a teacher and prolific author of several well-known series of children’s textbooks which bear his name. These include readers, spellers, primers, and grammars designed for both the primary and secondary grades. Sanders’ books became the standard and were adopted in all of New York State’s public schools. His textbooks were also published widely overseas.
Henry Ivison (1808-1884) was one of the pioneers of the school book industry in America. The business he established in Manhattan, New York grew and prospered under several partnerships, with the name of Ivison always at the head of the firm. When The Union Speller was published, the house was incorporated as Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co. Intense competition in the American textbook industry caused several of the leading publishing houses to join forces. In 1890, the consolidation of Ivison, Blakeman and Co., Van Antwerp, Bragg and Co., A.S. Barnes & Co., and D. Appleton and Co. resulted in the creation of a new corporation known as the American Book Company
This vocabulary book for young readers presents lessons in the form of short stories. Characters are middle class white children and their families, as well as animals. The stories illustrate the daily life of privileged children in the late 19th Century. Some of the lessons also serve to shed light on common racial stereotypes. For example, Lesson 22 contains the character of Fred, an African-American boy of five who works informally as a servant. The text explains that Fred is the orphaned son of a “negro nurse” from the South, who took care of the children’s mother who is now the Southern-born lady of the house. The matriarch was fond of the nurse, the author explains, and so adopted her son Fred after his mother’s death and brought him up North.
Eben Harlow Davis (1840-1915) graduated from Harvard University and became a teacher and later Superintendent of Public Schools for Chelsea, Massachusetts. He authored and compiled a series of vocabulary books for young readers that presents lessons in the form of short stories. This Lippincott Series included The Beginner’s Reading Book through to The Fourth Reading Book.
Born in 1813 in New Jersey, Joshua Ballinger Lippincott became a bookseller shortly after he moved to Philadelphia at age 14. He purchased Grigg, Elliott & Co. in 1850, which was reputed to be “the largest book jobbing house in the country.” J. B. Lippincott & Co. continued to grow throughout the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and was known for having a comprehensive portfolio in a variety of genres, including religion, medicine, poetry, and Americana. By the 1940s the firm estimated it had sold 20 million books—not including millions of textbooks. Harper & Row acquired Lippincott in 1978.
Adventures in Reading: Treasures is a post-World War II literary anthology for young readers that stresses vocabulary and comprehension, as well as interpretation. It contains short stories, poems, and essays by great Western authors such as Pearl Buck about immigrants after the rescinding of Chinese Exclusion Act, as well as by Robert Browning, Mark Twain, and William Saroyan. There is also a Memorial Address dedicated to the battle of Iwo Jima and a story by Nevil Shute about a World War II bomber crew.
Each entry contains a short summary and analysis. There are several color illustrations. The green front cover has an illustration of a pirate and a treasure chest, probably denoting “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Reading program suggestions for the teacher are at the back of the book.
Editor Dorothy Nell Knolle was a reading specialist and teacher in the El Paso Public School System. She edited a series of literary anthologies for young readers: Adventures in Reading: Treasures i (1947); Adventures in Reading: Discovery (1950); and Adventures in Reading: Exploration (1951). Dora E. Palmer was an English teacher at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts. She co-edited the successful Adventures in Reading series, which featured collections of poems, short stories, and excerpts from well-known classics.
Commercial illustrator Robert Doremus graduated from Pratt Institute in 1936. His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, as well as children’s textbooks, young adult books, and educational materials. In addition to the Adventures in Reading Series, his credits include the Childhood of Famous Americans Series.
This print was made from a woodblock engraving and appeared in the Harper’s Weekly issue dated June 23, 1866. The image depicts classroom setting with the primary Freemen School of Vicksburg, Mississippi in the background. A woman named Mrs. Green appears to be the teacher. There are about 40 African American children and adults seated in long rows, many of whom are reading from a lesson book. Others appear to be playing and talking. This image has a companion image captioned June 23, 1866, Noon at The Primary School for Freedmen, Vicksburg, Mississippi.
The article accompanying the illustration indicates that Mrs. Green is one of a few whites in the community who believes in educating blacks. The author goes on to compare the Freeman School to a New York public school by pointing out “…these people showed the average intelligence displayed in the New York public schools.” During Reconstruction, Northern freedmen's aid organizations began establishing schools in the former states of the Confederacy. These benevolent organizations raised funds, recruited teachers, and attempted to keep the future of the freed people before the Northern public.
The original artist was Alfred Rudolf Waud (1828-1891), a British-born American illustrator. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts before immigrating to the United States in 1850. According to Britannica, Waud’s “lively and detailed sketches of scenes from the Civil War, which he covered as a press correspondent, captured the war’s dramatic intensity and furnished him with a reputation as one of the preeminent artist-journalists of his era.”
Harper’s Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City and was published by Harper & Brothers from 1857-1916. It featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, as well as illustrations.
Each page of Bird Children: The Little Playmates of the Flower Children contains a four-line rhyming stanza that introduces a specific bird species. The color illustrations depict each bird with a child’s face and arms. The colorful, lithographed cover contains drawings of “bird” children and “flower” children on both the front and back.
Elizabeth Gordon was an author of children’s literature and pioneering female journalist. She was educated in the Maine public school system and attended the University of Minnesota. Gordon contributed articles to a variety of newspapers and journals, and was editor of the Children’s Tribune, Minneapolis, from 1901-1904. She was a member of the Illinois’ Women’s Press Association and the Southern California Women’s Press Club. She authored numerous illustrated children’s books, including the popular Bird Children and Flower Children series.
M.T. Ross was a successful American illustrator and cartoonist. He worked as a cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun during the post-World War I years. His notable children’s works include the Bird Children and Flower Children series which he illustrated. Ross moved to Southern California in 1926 to work for RKO and other studios as a set designer.
German-born Paul Frederick Volland founded the P.F. Volland Company in Chicago in 1908. Originally intending to publish greeting cards that would compete with the European dominated industry, by 1917 Volland had transformed the company into a nine-acre plant that issued calendars, and books for adults and children. Due to Volland's vision of publishing high quality, mass-produced books, his books for children were highly successful. The publisher is best known for its Raggedy Ann and Andy series begun in 1918 and still in print today. Volland was forced to abandon the book business in 1934 during the Great Depression. However, Volland’s children’s books remain highly collectible due to their high quality and rarity.
This textbook presents the terms and issues related to educational psychology. The author’s aim is to maintain a “strictly experimental, scientific viewpoint.” As such, he dwells less on topics of instinct and imagery, and includes then-new topics such as intelligence tests (e.g., Binet-Simon and Stanford) and the transference of training in school subjects. It also includes a discussion on gender education differences, such as was understood in the 1920s.
Author Daniel Starch (1883-1979) was a pioneer of modern marketing and consumer research. He received an M.A. degree (1904) and a PhD. in psychology (1906) from the State University of Iowa. Starch was a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Wisconsin (1908-1919) and professor of business psychology at Harvard (1920-1926). His Educational Psychology (1919) was the most widely used text in the field for many years.
In 1923, he founded the business consulting firm of Daniel Starch & Staff, which became the largest in its field in the country. Among his groundbreaking studies was one in 1926 that advanced the principle of stabilization in determining the size of samples in research. His market research techniques had a major influence on advertising.
Macmillan was founded in London in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander MacMillan, two brothers from Scotland. George Edward Brett opened the first Macmillan office in the United States in 1869. Macmillan later sold its U.S. operations to the Brett family in 1896, resulting in the creation of an American company, Macmillan Publishing, also called the Macmillan Company. In 1998, Pearson acquired the Macmillan name in America, following its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and professional group (which included various Macmillan properties).
Today, Macmillan is a global trade publishing company operating in over 70 countries, with imprints in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and India. Macmillan is a division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, which purchased it in 2001. McGraw-Hill continues to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand.
