“Instilling Good Principles in the New Generation”: Gendered Visions of American Citizenship in Turn-of-the-Century Tucson, Arizona

• In Event: A Theoretical Toolbox: Using Theories of Gender and Sexuality to Uncover New Histories of Education

Abstract

This paper uses public discussions about the 1870 establishment of Saint Joseph’s Academy for Young Ladies in Tucson, Arizona, to examine the complexity of the Americanization process. As residents of Tucson, Arizona, transitioned from Mexican to American citizenship toward the turn of the nineteenth century, Americanization was not a monolithic project imposed by outsiders, but, instead, a constantly debated process that juxtaposed multiple local views of how to be an American. One area where those debates were particularly visible was in discussions about future Americans – specifically community deliberations about children and education. While Tucson public school officials would later argue that public schooling was directly linked to the creation of good American citizens, promoters of Saint Joseph’s Academy for Young Ladies linked their work to American citizenship in an alternatively gendered way. Instead of becoming individualistic, politically engaged citizens, the female students at Saint Joseph’s Academy were expected to become moral and pious young mothers who would strengthen the community and nation through their work for family and church. This more communal vision of American citizenship that depended on idealized attributes of girls and women sometimes concurred with and sometimes clashed with the visions of other groups of Tucson civic boosters (Kerber, 1998; Bredbenner, 1998; Gardner, 2005; Glenn, 2002; Keyssar, 2000; Shklar, 1991).

Saint Joseph’s Academy for Young Ladies was particularly important to Tucson’s Mexican Americans because they hoped that the convent education would help to buttress their community against growing cultural conflicts with immigrant Anglo Americans. Mexican Americans hoped that the morality and piety inculcated in Saint Joseph students would stabilize the social hierarchy that would enable the Hispanic community to present a united face to incoming Anglos. Furthermore, Mexican-American conceptions of familial and personal honor relied on ideals of sexual purity for women. The Sisters of Saint Joseph would reinforce expectations of female behavior that would maintain the honor of families, and this, in turn, would create a strong community; strong enough to confront the racial bigotry already beginning to batter Mexican-Tucsonans in the 1880s. The pursuit of a convent education for girls was not a retreat to an outdated mode of life, but an alternate vision of how to create the necessary social stability for American citizenship. The archival sources for this paper come from both Arizona repositories, such as the Arizona Historical Society, as well as from Catholic archives in Tucson and at the Order of Saint Joseph Provincial House in Santa Monica, California. Newspaper discussions of education found in Tucson archives were of primary importance. Published works from prominent community members were useful in gaining an understanding of how education and citizenship were perceived in this place and time (Twinam, 1999; Seed, 1988; Stern, 1997; Gutierrez, 1991; Piccato, 2010; Alonso, 1995; Deutsch, 1987).

Author

• Amy Grey, The University of Arizona