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The Northern High School Student Walkout In his article “Community, Race, and Curriculum in Detroit: The Northern High School Walkout,” author Barry M. Franklin notes that the 1966 student boycott “was one event in an ongoing struggle between Detroit’s black citizens and the city’s largely white educational establishment concerning the problem of low achievement among African American students and its remedies.” In the context of the larger race issues, Franklin explains the walkout was precipitated by “the refusal of the head of [Northern High School’s] English department, Thomas Scott . . . to allow publication in the student
newspaper of an editorial critical of the school and the education it offered Detroit’s black youth.” We used first-year student Michelle Harlow’s research in the Students on Strike class to help put together this timeline of the walkout, which begins with the contested student newspaper article.
March 1966
Senior honors student Charles Colding writes “Educational Camouflage,” for the student newspaper about the failure of schools such as Northern High to provide a quality education. Principal Arthur Carty and the head of the English department decree it should not be published.
and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit — which has the largest labor archive in North America. “It was a very exciting class because you got to discover history for yourself,” says Harlow. “This was the first time I participated in oral history. It was interesting to have these people we were reading about tell the story from their point of view.” But Harlow also loved combing through scores of Detroit News articles on microfilm at U-M’s Graduate Library. She eventually created a timeline spanning April 1 to May 9, 1966 (see above). All of this was interesting enough, but this class had another dimension that gave the research even more meaning: The material gathered by the students will provide the basis for an original play that will be performed by the Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit in 2010. They have hired U-M alumnus and playwright Michael Dinwiddie, now a professor at New York University, to write it. The Students on Strike class was taught by Dr. Stephen Ward, a historian and an assistant professor in LSA’s Residential College and in the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies. But the curriculum was the brainchild of Mosaic’s founder and C.E.O. Rick Sperling, as well as Karl Gregory, who was involved in the walkout.
April 7, 1966
The walkout begins with a student-parent demonstration in front of the school. More than 2,000 students participate. Marchers make their way to nearby St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, which subsequently holds classes in the basement and is termed a “Freedom School.”
April 11, 1966
Students write to Superintendent Samuel Brownell listing their demands, which include firing principal Arthur Carty, and formulating a plan that articulates how issues at Northern High can be fixed.
April 17, 1966
Brownell meets with student leaders, and asks Northern High’s assistant principal, Charles Wolfe, to step in for Carty, who has been asked to work off-site.
April 21, 1966
1,200 students attend the first day of classes at the Freedom School. Thirty-one Northern teachers send a telegram to Brownell requesting permission to teach at the Freedom School.
April 23, 1966
Students representing seven of Detroit’s 24 high schools attend a meeting to organize a city-wide student boycott in support of Northern High students.
Ward’s class was offered as part of U-M’s newly launched Semester In Detroit program, and was conducted at U-M’s Detroit Center. It was an experimental class, Ward says, but one that seems to have worked — especially for students. “It was definitely an interesting experience being able to talk about these events with people who were involved with them,” says Diana Flora, an anthropology and Spanish major who graduated in May. She says that one walkout leader the class interviewed seemed like a “minicelebrity.” Harlow too was impacted by class visitors, adding that these in-person appearances helped her learn about Detroit’s educational community and attitudes about activism. Best of all, she wrote in her final project, was the excitement of doing original research. “I felt like a graduate student researching a thesis or like an explorer following a treasure map.” n
April 25, 1966
Students and education leaders meet to discuss terms of an agreement and return to class.
April 26, 1966
Student leaders urge their peers back to class. At 8:55 A.M., students return to Northern High School.
May 2, 1966
Four Northern students receive scholarships from the University of Michigan. Sources for this story include: 1.) April and May 1966 issues of the Detroit News; 2.) Franklin, Barry M. (2004) “Community, race, and curriculum in Detroit: the Northern High School Walkout.” History of Education, 33:2,137-156.
(Opposite page and below) Archived issues of the Detroit News show the 1966 student boycott at Northern High School making headlines.