Sexuality and Gender Transgression Among Chicago Educators During the Progressive Era

• In Event: 61.020 - Looking Back, Moving Forward: LGBTQ Research in the History of Education

Abstract

As Chicago rapidly expanded during the late-1800s through early-1900s, becoming the second largest city in the country and fifth largest in the world, school workers struggled to keep pace with changes. The city’s unprecedented growth, however, also opened opportunities for school workers to defy sexual and gender norms of the time, especially women. New forms of housing for independent women proliferated throughout the city (Meyerowitz 1988), providing teachers with choice for the first time about living free of family obligations or husbands. Some decided to live in residential community with other women educators (Author 2005). All enjoyed new opportunities to work in a nearly homo-social world of women teachers (Herrick 1971, 49) with added chances to socialize in a burgeoning number of organizations.

In this presentation, the author will profile several Chicago educators from this time who might, from a contemporary perspective, be considered queer. Ella Flagg Young, Chicago’s superintendent from 1909-1915, had married while young, became widowed, and then met Laura Brayton. Brayton and Young soon spent much of their free time together, moved in together, lived and traveled together for the remainder of their lives, and were known by all as companions (Author in progress). Such relationships were not uncommon at the time and many of their friends enjoyed them, too, such as Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith; however, Young and Brayton still needed to navigate public tensions around their relationship, which defied gender and sexual conventions. The author will describe several of the ways they managed this. Beyond Young and Brayton, George Howland, Chicago’s superintendent from 1880-1991, also transgressed norms by remaining unmarried at a time when marriage was increasingly becoming an unwritten, but absolute requirement for men serving as prominent school officials. Howland, Young, and Brayton have in common the fact that they chose to leave no personal archives – and in Young and Brayton’s cases, took active measures to conceal their lives. The author will examine the aspects of these figures’ lives that might appear queer to contemporary eyes. She also will describe how she is working to understand their experiences in historically sensitive ways.

Author

• Jackie M. Blount, The Ohio State University