Methodological Contours and Movidas to Historically Recover the early Maestras of Los Angeles, 1920-1949

• In Event: Narratives of Resistance within Education, Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Overview and Purpose
This paper illustrates the methodological challenges and opportunities to historically recover Chicana educators from the Los Angeles City School District (LACSD). Established in 1872, LACSD had grown and expanded so much by 1900, it included 57 schools and for the subsequent three decades the district experienced a student population boom resulting in the hiring of more teachers and establishing evening schools (Los Angeles Unified School District Office of Environmental Health and Safety, 2014). Very little is known about the Chicana teachers who were part of the teaching force during this time. This paper illustrates the ways race and gender rendered Chicana teachers invisible in the historical archive, and offers three methodological considerations for recovering and unforgetting Chicana educators from dominant educational histories.
Theoretical Perspectives
Drawing from a Critical Race Educational History lens (Santos et.al, 2107; Partida and Ramirez, 2023), which calls to interrogate the salience of race, racism and white supremacy in educational institutions, policies and practices. This methodology draws from the tradition of Critical Race Theory in Education (Solórzano, 1997), that give way to the development of historical counternarratives that challenge dominant ideologies present in educational discourse, such as notions of “objectivity, meritocracy, color and gender blindness, race and gender neutrality, and equal opportunity” (Solórzano, 1997, p.126 ). Of particular importance is the way this methodological orientation helps identify the salience of race and racism in repositories and archival sites.

Methods & Data Sources
This study draws on archival research methods and relies solely on primary key documents. Specifically, I drew from LACSD sources that include Directories of the Personnel from 1928 to 1941, school yearbooks, workshop minutes, and district minutes. These sources allowed me to situate the professional trajectories of each teacher. Additionally, I utilized official government documents such as marriage certificates, along with Census Population Schedules ranging from 1910 to 1940, to establish familial relationships such as marriage partnerships and obtain social and economic qualitative data around homeownership, education, and occupation. These sources were all analyzed to understand the trajectory of three Chicana women into the teaching profession.


Findings & Significance
The three methodological contours identified in this paper highlight the need to reclaim the archive by keeping the following in mind. First, the importance of Spanish names and the saliency of misspellings in the historical record. Spanish names often led to erroneous entries in official records making the historical recovery of Chicana teachers much more difficult such as the case of one maestra, Manuela, whose name appears as “Manuella” “Mauela” and “Marcella” in Census Population Schedules. Secondly, the implication of marriage in name changes pose a challenge in the historical recovery of women in general but compounded with the misspelling of spanish names, the issue becomes more acute. Finally, evening schools, which were used to alleviate student overcrowdedness were often the first teaching posts for Chicana teachers in LACSD. However, evening school faculty, staff, and students were often not included in official school yearbooks, further marginalizing and erasing Chicana teachers from the historical record.

Author

• Lluliana Alonso, California State University - Long Beach