Chapter 3 Resources
Exhibits on Wadleigh High School
These digital exhibits from the Harlem Education History Project explore various aspects of Wadleigh’s history. For more on Wadleigh High School in the 1930s and 1940s, see especially “The War that Wadleigh Students Imagined” and “Same Space, Different Worlds: Anna Brunson and Cecile Woodley.”
Many issues of Wadleigh High School’s yearbook, The Owl, are available digitally. They contain students’ creative writing and art, as well as photographs of students and staff.
The Owl, Wadleigh High School Yearbook, 1940. Credit: Wadleigh High School.
This website explores the creation of residential discrimination and segregation through discriminatory mortgage lending or “redlining,” which helped make Harlem’s demographic transition in the 1930s and beyond. Readers can view the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation redlining maps for Harlem (contained in the Manhattan map) and other neighborhoods across the United States.
Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series (1941)
Between 1910 and 1970, more than six million African Americans migrated from the South to Northern and Midwestern cities like New York City. Artist Jacob Lawrence documented the Great Migration in a series of sixty paintings, presented with explanations and context in this exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art. The “Visualizing the Great Migration” page includes graphs and maps of the population change that occurred.
Discussion Questions
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In chapter 3, author Kimberly Johnson describes the demographic changes at Wadleigh in the 1930s and 1940s. These shifts were accompanied by tensions around curriculum and teaching, segregation within the school, and racism experienced by Black girls at the school. Many of Wadleigh High School’s yearbooks are available online. Browse the 1931 and 1943 books and see what similarities and differences you notice. What could a yearbook tell us about this time in the school’s life? What do you think is missing from the yearbook’s depiction of the school.
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In an article from 1937, the New York Times reported on a speech given by former associate superintendent Dr. John L. Tildsley at a lunch at the Hotel Astor. Tildsley advocated for moving Wadleigh High School away from 114th Street because the students “have to pass through a neighborhood where gentlewomen do not like to pass.” Read this critique in the Amsterdam News and consider the following questions: Who is a gentlewomen? What views of the neighborhood were expressed by the New York Times and the Amsterdam News in their coverage of the event?