Papists and Pluralists: The Founding of America’s First Grassroots School Choice Organization

ABSTRACT

Critics of school choice claim support for educational options was an outgrowth of racist, segregationist views following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In this paper, I examine these claims by analyzing the development of the public school system in the United States and the historical records from Citizens for Educational Freedom. Founded in 1959 in St. Louis, Missouri by Martin and Mae Duggan, CEF was a grassroots school choice organization. The records contain newsletters, text from speeches and national conventions, and personal correspondence, among other relevant materials. The records help us understand the motives and mind-set of the early school choice movement.

KEYWORDS:

• School choice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. EDUCATORS TO FIGHT FOR U. S. SCHOOL AID – The New York Times (nytimes.com).

2. See Figure 8, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. U.S. Department of Education. Viewed online at: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf, see Figure 8.

3. See Figure 8, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. U.S. Department of Education. Viewed online at: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. See Figure 9.

4. 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. See Table 20.

5. 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. See figure 6 and 7.

6. 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. See figure 12.

7. ‘Federal Aid for Schools,” Christian Century, LXIII(June 5, 1946), p. 710 as cited in Kizer.

8. Out in the Open. (December 8, 1948). Christian Century, LXV pp. 1327–1329.

9. Lechtreck’s first letter is currently not available.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University.