On the map, click “schools” and then scroll down to “elementary.” When you click on an individual icon, you will see the name of the school. In the 1950’s Chicago there were no junior high schools. If you stayed at the same address you would experience the same school building for the first eight or nine years of education. I went to Bret Harte Elementary, for some bizarre reason named after a short story writer who wrote about the California gold rush. I started in the kindergarten room on the first floor and by eighth grade was in the last room of the second floor. I walked two blocks to school. By the seventh grade I was a patrol boy at 57th and Stony Island by the old artists’ buildings from the 1893 World’s Fair, now demolished.
At Bret Harte the older students were expected to care for the younger ones, helping to take off winter coats and guiding them to their rooms, an apprenticeship in caring absent from junior high schools. Classes were divided into two sections. Those students who started in September were labeled as “B” and became “A” in February. Another group of students entered in February who were then labeled “B and became “A” in September. Therefore an “A” class always graduated, one in February and one in June. During our grade school years the Chicago Public School System had a policy of skipping students a half grade if those students showed some kind of promise, the result being that in high school many students were a year younger than they should have been. Because I skipped half of third grade, I was scheduled to enter Hyde Park High in February of 1953 and graduate in February of 1957. Instead, I attended summer school at Scott Elementary in 1952 so I could enter with the “B” class in September of 1952 even though I was twelve years old. This web-book is for the senior “A” class that graduated in June of 1956.
In the early 1950’s all of the grade schools in our district experienced an influx of students and almost all were filled to capacity or over-capacity. Later in the 1950’s trailers were attached to schools, called “Willis wagons.” School over crowding caused community concern as parents and PTA’s urged more resources for education.
Some of our grade school were mostly Christian White or Jewish; some were predominately Black. At Hyde Park High all would be mixed together.
Comments:
Julia Hardin Clay: I was 16 when I graduated, too young when I arrived in college. I don’t remember feeling different because of this in high school, though. At that time, the Chicago public schools skipped kids regularly so a lot of us were younger.
Roberta Rosenstein Siegel: “I was double promoted three times (that is three semesters). I learned how to adjust socially, not wanting to be thought of as smart (and nerdy, like my older brother and his friends)….Entering HPHS when I was 12 ½ made my parents think hard about allowing me to date!”
Dorothy Anderson Faller: “Being on the school patrol—girls allowed for the first time under our fearless leader Howie Leon. Somehow this was the beginning of women’s lib for me. We really knew that we were doing something different and important…..Being able to skip semesters twice, allowing me to graduate at 15 years old.”
Robert Howard: “I stayed with the same class during the 7 ½ years of grammar school. Many of my teachers lived in the neighborhood and knew my parents. I tended to be younger than most of my class since I had just turned 13 right before I entered HPHS.”
June Lewis Mustiful: “When I attended Wadsworth, I had moved from a southern segregated school system. Therefore, my Wadsworth experience was new. However, I embraced it because it allowed me to be exposed to and appreciate other cultures and laid the foundations for an integrated learning experience that prepared me for the best high school years ever imagined.”
Paul Hofman: “My classmates at Bret Harte became very special to me. We grew up together, we know their siblings, we knew their parents, we knew how they lived and we knew what made them interesting. That closeness carried over to HPHS.”