“Making Her Community a Better Place to Live”: Culturally Responsive Urban School Leadership in Historical Context

Abstract

This article examines the notion of “culturally responsive leadership” through a historical case study of the life of Gertrude Elise MacDougald Ayer, the first African American woman principal in New York City. I begin by situating Ayer’s leadership practice in light of the social and political context of Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s. Then I compare her leadership approach to findings from historiographies of African American educators before 1960, as well as current case studies of African American women leaders. In the end I conceptualize the “culturally responsive” urban school leader as public intellectual, curriculum innovator, and social activist and argue that leadership for social justice must be analyzed in light of the historical, political, and social contexts in which it is practiced.

Notes

¹ “Why a Teacher Should Also Serve as a Social Worker; Elise MacDougald Ayer in 2-Fold Service.” Scrapbook, Gertrude Ayer Papers (hereafter GEA papers).

² Ayer was featured prominently in several national and local newspapers in the 1930s and early 1940s, including The New York Times, Time magazine, Newsweek, The Crisis, Opportunity, the Amsterdam News, and the New York Age. She even made a cameo appearance in The Negro Soldier, a classic World War II film produced in 1944 by Frank Capra’s Office of War Information that highlighted the role of African Americans in the military as well as other “firsts” for Black Americans. After her retirement in 1954 her legacy as a high-profile New York City school leader was largely forgotten.

³ Here I am dating the Southern civil rights movement from a series of landmark events in the 1950s and early 1960s: the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, and the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960. Although there is a growing historical scholarship that reconceptualizes the roots of the civil rights movement in terms of political activism in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in Northern cities (see, for e.g. Biondi, 2003), many educators continue to trace diversity efforts in the schools to civil rights activity in the 1950s and 1960s.

⁴ As Siddle Walker notes, scholarship on African American leadership has focused on national educational leaders such as W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Thurgood Marshall and generally ignored the ways in which local leaders (particularly women principals, I might add) have influenced community development (Siddle Walker, 2003). However, recent historical studies are beginning to document the lives and careers of other Black women principals before 1954. See Danns (2003) for a discussion of the career of Maudelle Bousfield, the first African American principal of a Chicago public school who was appointed in 1939.

⁵ A version of this biographical profile appeared in Johnson (2004).

⁶ In our current understanding of race, Ayer could be considered of “mixed” racial background because her father was African American with American Indian ancestors and her mother was white and British. However, by all historical accounts (including her own), she affiliated culturally as an African American and lived, worked, and married within the African American community. The differences in the way that the White media and the Black press discussed her accomplishments at the time are instructive about U. S. racial views in the 1930s. African American newspapers across the country were laudatory and proud of her struggle to attain the principalship after years of battling the system. Time magazine, on the other hand, used racist terms like “ragged Negro moppets” to describe the children at P.S. 24 and emphasized what they termed Ayer’s “light skin” and “kinkless” hair. See, for example, “Mrs. Gertrude Ayers Appointed Principal” (1935) and “Harlem’s First” (1935).

⁷ Ayer notes that she was required to quit her teaching position because the New York City Board of Education did not provide maternity leave at the time. See Scrapbook, GEA papers.

⁸ In 1925 she divorced her first husband, and in 1928 she was remarried to Dr. Vernon Ayer, the first African American medical examiner for the New York City schools. She took his surname and thereafter became known professionally as Gertrude Ayer.

⁹ Although she passed the written examination, Ayer was initially denied her principal license on the ground of “insufficient meritorious record” because a former White principal under whom she served as assistant principal did not rate her highly enough on the examiner’s form. On appeal, Ayers pointed out that she had received consistently high ratings from the same supervisor on her semiannual ratings and raised the issue that an administrator could not be given high ratings for one purpose and a low rating for another based on the identical service record. She won her appeal, and was permanently appointed principal of P.S. 24 in February 1936. In retrospect, Ayer’s permanent appointment the year after the Harlem Riot Commission might be an instance of what Critical Race Theorists term “interest convergence”—that Whites will promote advances for Blacks only when they also serve White interests (Bell, 1980). With increased scrutiny on the Harlem schools, there was mounting pressure on the New York City Board of Education to appoint a Black administrator in Harlem. See “Principals’ Ratings Must Jibe,” and “First Negro Woman Wins Principal Post,” Scrapbook, GEA papers.

¹⁰ Estimates of the number of Black teachers in the New York City schools in the 1930s range from 500 to 800 because as a result of their “colorblind” policy the New York City Board of Education claimed they did not compile statistics on the race of New York City students or faculty (See Tyack, 1974, p. 226). In her article on the occupational roles of African American women, Ayer notes that there were approximately 300 African American women teaching in Harlem. At P.S. 24 there were only three African American teachers amongst a faculty of 24. See McDougald (1925).

¹¹ Scheurich (1998) terms these schools “hybrid” because of their incorporation of certain aspects of the dominant Anglo culture (e.g. using high-stakes tests to drive instruction).

¹² See “Child Training,” Scrapbook, GEA papers.

¹³ William Kilpatrick’s “project method” involved the development of purposeful activities tied to a child’s interests and needs. He argued that students should apply classroom knowledge to meet real community needs. See Kilpatrick (1918).

¹⁴ Gertrude Ayer, Schomburg Clipping File, 1925–1974, Sc 000,388–1, Schomburg Center.

¹⁵ “Why a Teacher Should Also Serve as a Social Worker,” Scrapbook, GEA papers.

¹⁶ See The Harlem Project, box 18, file 1, IHRC 114, Immigration History Research Center, Anderson Library, University of Minnesota.

Child Training—Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child—Vicious Propoganda, Gertrude Ayer Scrapbook, Gertrude Elise Ayer Papers, 1931–1966, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Education Hearing, April 4, 1935. E. Franklin Frazier papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

First Negro Woman Wins Principal Post, Sc Micro R-4842, Gertrude Ayer Scrapbook, 1931–1966, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Harlem’s First, Time, February 18, 1935, p. 56

Human Principal, Newsweek, July 5, 1954. Gertrude Ayer, Schomburg Clipping File, 1925–1974, Sc 000,388–1, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Mrs. Gertrude Ayers Appointed Principal, The Chicago Defender, February 1, 1935, p. 1

Principals’ Ratings Must Jibe, Gertrude Ayer Scrapbook, Gertrude Elise Ayer Papers, 1931–1966, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Retired Principal Wants More Respect for Teachers, Gertrude Ayer Scrapbook, Gertrude Elise Ayer Papers, 1931–1966, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Woman Principal Runs School Like a ‘Big City.’ (1935). Gertrude Ayer Scrapbook, Gertrude Elise Ayer Papers, ScMicro R-4842, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Why a Teacher Should Also Serve as a Social Worker: Elise MacDougald Ayer in 2‐Fold Service.” Gertrude Ayer Scrapbook, Gertrude Elise Ayer Papers, 1931–1966, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library