Sextant Volume XVIII Fall 2010

SEXTANT The Journal of Salem State College 

Spring 2010

Volume XVIII, No. 1

Note & editor’s

acknowledgments

President Patricia Maguire Meservey Provost and Academic Vice President Kristin G. Esterberg Editor Patricia Johnston, Art + Design Assistant Editor James Gubbins, Interdisciplinary Studies Interim Dean of the School of Graduate Studies Emerson W. Baker Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Jude V. Nixon Editorial Board Susan Case, Biology Cleti Cervoni, Education Jeanne Corcoran, Occupational Therapy Susan Edwards, Archives Heidi Fuller, Sport & Movement Science Thomas Hallahan, Theatre & Speech Krishna Mallick, Philosophy Mark Malloy, Art + Design Ellen Rintell, Education Leah Ritchie, Management Keja Valens, English Design & Production of Volume XVIII, No. 1 Susan McCarthy, Design Services, Marketing and Communications

Photography Kim Mimnaugh, Art + Design

Sextant is published by the faculty of Salem State College.

Opinions expressed by writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect college policy.

Copyright © 2010 Sextant encourages readers to submit letters or comments to:

Sextant Salem State College 352 Lafayette Street Salem, MA 01970-5353 pjohnston@salemstate.edu

Please include your name, address, phone number, and email address.

Letters may be published and edited according to space.

978.542.6488 salemstate.edu/sextant

T

his volume of the Sextant begins with essays on historical and modern educational practices. First, Severin Kitanov examines debate as the central pedagogical practice of medieval universities. Kitanov details the types of debates that occurred in universities, illustrating his essay with the poignant example of the argument that took place at the University of Paris about how best to baptize conjoined twins. Continuing the theme of rhetoric and educational debate, Elizabeth Hart describes student life for the women at Salem Normal School. Hart argues that the ability to express ideas and communicate effectively was then, and still is to this day, “an essential measure of scholarship and teaching.” Mary-Lou Breitborde’s article highlights the struggles and triumphs that Laura M. Towne and her colleagues experienced on the barrier islands of South Carolina as teachers of freed slaves during the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction. Breitborde emphasizes the indestructible link between education and community, and the fortitude of these women who forged ahead despite crushing social pressures.

Haig Demarjian contributes his study of Heads to the center portfolio.

Demarjian takes the familiar figure of the human head and transforms it into an eerie and disturbing object. The strangeness of these contemporary works echoes the monstrousness of the medieval images in the first essay. Patricia Markunas relates the story of the horrifying murders of Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone in 1978 San Francisco. Markunas’s historical description illuminates the differences between the events and the way they were portrayed in the recent Hollywood film Milk starring Sean Penn. Gayle Fischer’s essay on the origins and impact of “Casual Friday” describes the confusion of those who attempt to “Dress for Success,” particularly women in the corporate world. Barbara Poremba contributes her compelling photographic journal of her medical missions to Honduras.

The Salem State College administration, as always, has been very supportive of the Sextant. We are grateful for the continuing support of President Patricia Maguire Meservey, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Kristin G. Esterberg, Dean of Arts and Sciences Jude V. Nixon, Interim Dean of the School of Graduate Studies Emerson W. Baker, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Amie Marks Goodwin, and Vice President for Institutional Advancement Cynthia McGurren.

Many institutions, museums, and libraries have provided images and copyright permissions, including the British Museum, the British Library, Beloit College, the Penn Center in South Carolina, the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Library of Congress, and the San Francisco Chronicle; we are very grateful to all for their kind assistance. We also thank Salem State photographer Kim Mimnaugh, whose portraits of the authors add immeasurably to the visual record of the college, and archivist Susan Edwards, who located images that bring to life the students of the Salem Normal School.

Once again the Sextant has been designed by Susan McCarthy in Design Services. Her creative talent is outweighed only by her grace under pressure.

Two other individuals contributed enormously to this issue of the Sextant. As Assistant Editor, Professor James Gubbins of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department, worked with authors over several drafts of each article. Graduate Assistant Josilyn DeMarco ’07, ’10G traced often complex copyrights and permissions for the illustrations and shared her expert editing and proofreading skills. I am also grateful to other members of the college community who supported our work: the Editorial Board, who read and commented on the articles; Professor Susan Case, who proofed the final copy; Graduate Assistant Kayleigh Merritt ’08; my colleagues in the Art + Design Department, particularly Chair Benjamin Gross; Joyce Rossi-Demas, Simeen Brown, Karen Cady, Corey Cronin, Rose Cooke, and Amy Macione Turcotte. Special thanks to Gina Deschamps and the staff at Deschamps Printing in Salem for their excellent printing and service. ­­—Patricia Johnston

SEXTANT

Spring 2010

Volume XVIII, No. 1

E S S A Y

How to Baptize a Monster:

The Culture of Debate in the Medieval University

2

Severin Kitanov

Empowering Educators:

Rhetoric in the Nineteenth Century at Salem Normal School 11 Elizabeth Hart

An Incautious Spirit:

The Life of Laura Matilda Towne 15 Mary-Lou Breitborde

The Moscone/Milk Assassinations:

Missteps, Misinterpretations and Miscarriage of Justice 30 Patricia V. Markunas

Dressing for Success on Casual Friday:

Written and Unwritten Dress Codes in the Corporate Workplace 38 Gayle V. Fischer

P O R T F O L I O

Heads

23

Haig Demarjian

P H O T O E S S A Y As Big and Bright as the Stars 46

Barbara A. Poremba

Kim Mimnaugh

B O O K S H E L F Recent works by faculty and staff

Inside back cover

Dis Figure On the cover: Dis Figure (detail) by Haig Demarjian, mixed media on foam, 2007, 14" x 19" (See page 23).

1

E S S A Y

How to Baptize a Monster: The Culture of Debate in the Medieval University Severin V. Kitanov How to Baptize Conjoined Twins

M

edieval surgeons had a very limited understand ing of human anatomy and physiology. Dissection of human bodies as part of university medical and surgical education only became a routine practice in the fourteenth century. On the other hand, surgical knowledge was heavily dependent on ancient sources, such as the writings of Galen, and, as a result, surgical experimentation was rather narrow in scope. The most ambitious and at the same time extremely dangerous surgeries involved removal of cataracts, removal of bladder stones, correction of scrotal hernias, and punctures of fractured skulls for reducing pressure and draining blood and pus.

It will be demonstrated that as two: because wherever there are two heads, there are also two hearts, since these have corresponding members.

Therefore, if there were two heads, they must be baptized as two.

Counter-objection: Monsters are sometimes born with 24 digits and with other multiple organs, yet there is only one rational soul.

The same therefore applies to [the case of monsters with] two heads.

Response: When a monster is born, it is either certain that it has one soul or that it has two.

It is certain that if there Because surgery was so limwere two heads, two necks, ited, the wardens of the body The birth of conjoined twins in two chests, then there could not do anything to treat would consequently be thirteenth century France led priests conjoined twins. Such anomatwo hearts. In this case, lies fell to the wardens of the to ask how to perform the sacrament one should baptize as two. soul, the spiritual surgeons, or And even though it is preof baptism in these rare cases. It was priests. The birth of conjoined sumed that many can be twins in thirteenth century baptized simultaneously not clear whether the twins ought to France led priests to ask how “I baptize you” be baptized as one or two individuals. byandsaying to perform the sacrament of so on, it is however baptism in these rare cases. It safer to baptize separately. was not clear whether the twins ought to be baptized as If there is ample doubt in case there are not two one or two individuals. The question was difficult enough clearly distinct heads, or two necks rooted in to prompt Franciscan theologian John Pecham (ca. 1225– the same crevice, then one [individual] should 1292) to offer an expert opinion in the context of the folbe baptized first, and after that, once this [first lowing debate that took place at the University of Paris: individual] has been baptized, the other can be baptized with reservation by saying “if you are How to baptize a monster born not baptized, I baptize you” and so on. with two heads?

It is asked subsequently how to baptize a Response to the counter-objection: monster born with two heads, whether It should be said that this is not the case with as one or as two [individuals]. all monsters.

2

By permission of the Morse Library, Beloit College, Beloit, WI

Male Siamese Twins, illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel, folio CCXVIIr. Nuremberg, Germany, 1493.

3

To the modern reader, it may seem shocking that the theologian saw human beings not as “conjoined twins” but as a “two-headed monster.” The category of the “monstrous” in the medieval mind often blended purely imaginary and fictitious creatures with unusual (or abnormal) real beings. An imaginary creature could be anything from the monstrous races in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History to the demons and devils decorating the facades of medieval cathedrals. Animals and humans who were perceived as aberrations of the divinely instituted order of nature fell into the second class of unusual (or abnormal) real beings. Conjoined twins were perceived as monstrous because their extraordinary character was interpreted as a sign of divine punishment for sin or as an ominous warning. It was not until the Renaissance and Reformation periods that conjoined twins took on a new positive meaning as omens of good fortune or as symbols of political reconciliation and unity.

recorded and survived in some forty-five manuscripts because it was erroneously included in the group of Thomas Aquinas’s quodlibets.

The question of the baptism of conjoined twins involves crucial conceptual issues regarding personal identity and the relationship between body and mind. These conceptual issues could only be discussed by specialists welltrained in logic and well-versed in both philosophy and theology. It is not surprising therefore for a university professor to engage problems of practical relevance and discuss those problems in a highly technical manner. After all, the very identity of the medieval university as a social institution was predicated upon the idea of expert knowledge. University professors were viewed as craftsmen, and the university as a whole was regarded as a guild of professionals working together with the common goal of the diffusion and advance of knowledge.

Pecham offered expert advice to treat conjoined twins as if they were more than one individual human being. Should there be any doubt regarding the number of individuals to be baptized, the priest ought to baptize the twins as two distinct individuals. Otherwise a priest runs the risk of committing the unbaptized soul to eternal estrangement from God.

By permission of the British Library

Questions regarding conjoined twins were often discussed in the context of medieval quodlibetal disputations. A quodlibetal disputation is literally speaking a disputation about “whatever pleases you.” This type of disputation was meant to test the dexterity of a professor and represented the peak of academic performance. A professor was given a list of questions solicited from others at the university and he had to respond definitively to each question on the list within a specified amount of time, usually a day or two.

John Pecham responded to the question about conjoined twins in the context of a quodlibetal disputation which most likely took place during Advent in 1277. The In the first century CE, Pliny the Elder described extraordinary races of humans living in India and disputation was later Ethiopia. Seventeen examples of Pliny’s ‘monstrous races’, Harley MS 2799, folio 243r, c.1175.

4

Since quodlibetal disputations provided academics with the unique opportunity to test their talents by responding to a wide range of topics of both practical and speculative character, we are thus naturally prone to ask: What kinds of topics did university professors discuss in the context of quodlibetal disputations?

Discuss What You Please

obligations with respect to her once dead and resurrected husband. The question raises the philosophical problem of personal identity and continuity after the resurrection. As the modern-day philosopher Jean-Luc Solère points out: “If the man who returns to life is not the same man, the woman who was his wife obviously no longer has obligations to him.”

A

These examples of quodlibetal disputation topics and problems raise further questions: (1) What exactly is debate? (2) What was the medieval culture of debate like?

(3) What made debate such an important part of medieval university life?

© Trustees of the British Museum

ccording to a very popular seventeenth-century satire of medieval quodlibetal disputations, probably created by the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588– 1679), scholastic theologians argued about how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.

No medieval text discussing how many angels can dance on the point of a pin has been discovered. There are, however, a great number of texts debating the problem of angelic location.

Some examples of speculative quodlibetal disputation topics are: Do angels occupy physical space? How are they related to physical points? Can they be in several places at the same time?

Medieval scholastics discussed also other speculative questions such as “Whether one can determine the distance between the earth’s surface and hell granted that hell is at the center of the earth,” “Whether the impious enjoy sun light in hell,” “Whether God can create two right angles one of which is larger than the other,” “Whether God can make an eternal world” or “Whether God can in this very instant make an ancient world.”

The Origin of the Idea of Debate

T

he term “debate” is derived from the Latin word disputatio, which also means disputation and argumentation in addition to debate. Today one can define debate more broadly as Woodcut depicting conjoined twin girls, and a description in letterpress a mode of instruction and text in two columns. According to the text, this birth took place in a form of communication Eßlingen, in a village called Reichenbach, in the year 1528. Printed between an opponent and a

by Johann Stuchs, Nuremberg, 1528. respondent carried out with the purpose of persuasion.

Questions regarding conjoined twins Instruction and persuasion Some of the speculative seem to have been the original were often discussed in the context of topics also had significant purposes of the art of debate medieval quodlibetal disputations. practical implications. Medias understood by the sophists, eval academics explored the the first professional teachA quodlibetal disputation is literally question “Whether the flesh ers in ancient Greece. Debate speaking a disputation about of the victim of cannibalism in the sense of a dialectical will be resurrected within the encounter or a meeting of “whatever pleases you.” This type of cannibal or as the food of the minds for the sake of discovdisputation was meant to test the cannibal.” Needless to say, it ery and mutual enlightendoes make a great difference was introduced by the dexterity of a professor and represented ment whether one is resurrected ancient Greek philosopher the peak of academic performance. as mere stomach contents (or Socrates (470–399 B.C.). body fat) or as an intact living Socrates understood debate organism. There were also questions regarding the metaas “a procedure of joint deliberation among several people physical status of the dead body. For example, Pecham’s for the purpose of arriving at a definition.” For Socrates, contemporary, the secular master Henry of Ghent (ca. debate did more than persuade an opponent. Unlike his 1217–1293), discussed whether a woman has matrimonial contemporaries, the sophists, Socrates conceived of the 5

By permission of the British Library

6

Debate for the soul of a man involving a devil, an angel, two saints, the Virgin Mary, and Christ. Stowe MS 39, folio 32v, 15th century.

Debate, in particular, was used as a means of interaction disputation as a means of arriving at the truth of things. between professors and their audiences comprised of stuIn essence, Socrates’ dialectical encounter involved an dents, fellow scholars, and the educated public at large. oral interchange between a respondent and an opponent.

Dialectical discussion as a pedagogical approach is to be The respondent formulates a thesis: a statement that is distinguished from the discipline of dialectic proper, which commonly believed to be true or a statement believed to be true by an expert but considered false by most people. was part of medieval logic.

The aim of the opponent is to undermine the thesis by The culture of debates permeated the entire institution leading the respondent through questions on an inference of the medieval university. Debates arose naturally from path that will eventually force the opponent to concede questions evoked in the context of a professor’s lecture a contradiction. Strangely enough, Socratic interrogation on authorized texts. During the first two years of their most often had the negative effect of refuting an opposchooling in the arts, students participated in university nent’s mistaken beliefs rather than expanding the oppodisputations mostly as listeners and observers. They were nent’s knowledge. In Plato’s early dialogue Euthyphro, consequently encouraged to raise objections (usually in for example, an Athenian priest is forced to admit his their third year), answer objections (in their fourth and ignorance regarding the meaning of piety. After several fifth year), and play the role of a mediator in a debate (in unsuccessful attempts to define piety, the priest simply their sixth and seventh year). Since the main goal of uniwithdraws from the conversaversity pedagogy was to train tion and Socrates is left questo become experts, As a result of the influence of Socrates, students tioning the priest’s sincerity and since becoming an expert and eagerness to play the presupposed the ability both Plato, and Aristotle, debate came to dialectical game. to articulate and defend one’s serve two chief intellectual purposes.

Socrates’ disciple, Plato view against adversaries, stu(428/7–348/7 B.C.), further dents were immersed in the Debate can establish an interaction developed and refined the culture of debate from the between two or more people for joint method of his teacher and start of their university life. consciously tried to separate Sometimes formal university discovery of values or truths.

It can Socratic truth-seeking rhetoric lectures did not begin until a also generate knowledge through from the pseudo-rhetoric of month after the semester had the sophists. Plato’s disciple, started. During that month, various techniques of reasoning Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), students would only listen to and argumentation. distinguished three types of and learn from debates. debate: debate for the purpose Three main genres of disof teaching and learning, putation developed in the medieval university: (1) private debate for the sake of competition, and debate for the sake disputations intended only for the student audience of a of practice and experimentation. Aristotle also took great particular master known as disputationes in scolis; (2) pubcare to differentiate the various fallacious forms of argulic disputations intended also for the student audience of mentation employed by those who practice debate solely a master’s colleagues called disputationes ordinariae ; and for the sake of victory and the pretentious display of skill.

(3) disputations on “whatever you please,” i.e. disputatioAs a result of the influence of Socrates, Plato, and nes quodlibetales. The commencement of the quodlibetal Aristotle, debate came to serve two chief intellectual purdisputation genre has been placed at the theology faculty poses. Debate can establish an interaction between two or in Paris in the first half of the thirteenth century. Quodmore people for joint discovery of values or truths. It can libets of the theology faculty are much better known to also generate knowledge through various techniques of specialists and their number is much greater than that of reasoning and argumentation. The end product of an act quodlibets in the arts faculty. The works of 133 authors of of debate can thus be defined as the increase of knowledge quodlibetal disputations have been preserved in manuscript attained through the practice of good judgment and sound form, mostly from the period 1230–1350. The majority argument. of these authors belonged to the mendicant orders: the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Austin Friars. Very few manuscripts contain evidence of quodlibetal disputations in the arts, but the model of the theological quodlibet Debate in the Medieval University can serve as an illustration of the genre in general. n the medieval university, debate was one of the main Theological quodlibets were spectacular public events. methods of instruction in addition to the lecture (lecThey were staged twice a year, for Advent (just before tio) and question (quaestio). Students were exposed to Christmas) and Lent (just before Easter). The main actor these three forms of pedagogy as soon as they entered the in the disputation was always a master. Bachelors pararts faculty, which played the role of a preparatory faculty ticipated as respondents in order to obtain their teaching for the higher faculties of law, medicine, and theology.

I

7

license. In addition to the master and the bachelors, the audience included fellow academics, secular officials, and church prelates. Everyone dressed formally and the debate followed a strict procedure. The debate had two distinct structural parts, the discussion session and the final solution (determinatio) of the master, that came a day or two later. The reports of the quodlibetal debates were revised afterwards for publication by the master himself although we have only a few surviving quodlibets edited by the masters who delivered the actual disputations. Most surviving quodlibets were edited by the master’s assistants or students.

works in the thirteenth century, as well as with the impact of Islam, Judaism, and heterodox forms of spirituality. In particular, the interaction between the Christian and Aristotelian worldviews gave rise to heated debates.

W

8

By permission of the British Library.

Scholastic theologians demonstrated a deep appreciation of Aristotle’s achievements systematizing logic as a method of analysis; they believed that Aristotle’s logical tools applied to the entire domain of natural reason. Aristotle’s system of logic, however, presented a serious challenge to belief in the coherence of the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the view that God is a simple and indivisible unity of three metaphysically The most distinctive feadistinct persons. As Christian ture of medieval disputations Miniature of the Three Estates (Church, Nobles, and Labor) in debate in general is their dependence before Theology, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry and Music. Arundel MS 71, scholars followed Aristotle, they became deeply confolio 24, ca. 1462–1467. on logic as a tool of analysis. cerned with avoiding contraLogic played a very important diction and paradox implicit in the concept of the Trinity. role because the medieval university was built upon the A typical example of a logical impasse is the following classical model of the seven liberal arts, i.e. the trivium, Trinitarian syllogism: which included grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium, which incorporated the sciences of arithme(P1) This God is the Father. tic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The training in (P2) This same God is the Son. logic introduced students to mathematics and prepared (C) Therefore, the Son is the Father. them for careers in medicine, law, and theology. A thirteenth century treatise wrongly attributed to the The conclusion of this syllogism cannot be accepted ancient Christian writer Boethius (ca. 480–ca. 525), as true by the Christian believer. Obviously, the Father De disciplina scholarium, characterizes logic as the only is not the same entity as the Son. However, both Father science capable of distinguishing between truth and faland Son are identical in terms of their divinity. If the sity. Logic is the most subtle of the sciences. It enhances application of Aristotelian syllogistic rules to the concept the qualities of those who enter the shrine of nature and of the Trinity leads to paradox, what hope is there of aspire toward the heights of scientific understanding. reconciling Aristotle with Scripture or natural reason “What is more lucid than the knowledge of universals,” with Christian revelation? the author asks rhetorically, “who is the master of the There were two views on the relationship between trivium, the strength of the quadrivium, and the fullness Aristotelian logic and Trinitarian doctrine. According of related qualities!” to the radical view, Aristotelian logic is valid only within the natural order. The realm of faith requires a higher level, supernatural logic with exceptional rules applicable The Clash of the Christian and the to rational argumentation involving revealed truths.

According to the moderate position, there is no need to Aristotelian Scientific Worldviews develop a special logic of faith. In principle, syllogisms containing Trinitarian terms are fallacious but this only hy was debate so important to medieval means that theological inferences have a nonstandard academics, and what did they achieve through character. One can circumvent the logical difficulties debate in general? The answer to these presented by Trinitarian syllogisms by employing various questions has a lot to do with the rediscovery and incorporation of Aristotle’s scientific and philosophical ad hoc theological solutions.

showcase possibilities and circumstances incompatible In order to appreciate the sensitive nature of the issue with Aristotelian physics. A case in point is Aristotle’s of the compatibility between Aristotelian logic and the thesis that vacuum cannot exist in the natural world. claims of Christian revelation it must be said that the critiThe thesis was accepted by cal separation of the domains almost all medieval natural of philosophy and theology …the critical separation of the philosophers. Most thinkers, occurred partly because some however, were convinced that fourteenth-century thinkdomains of philosophy and theology God could annihilate matter ers such as the English logioccurred partly because some within the world and create cian William of Ockham (ca. a vacuum. Moreover, they 1285–1347) recognized the fourteenth-century thinkers such thought that bodies could difficulty of reconciling natuas the English logician William of move in a vacuum with finite ral and supernatural claims. velocities and could undergo Ockham (ca. 1285–1347) recognized Ockham entertained as a qualitative changes. Aristotle possibility the idea that the had also denied as absurd the the difficulty of reconciling natural elaboration of Trinitarian docexistence of multiple worlds. and supernatural claims. trine requires a reassessment He assumed that the earth of the principles of logic, but moves naturally in a downit was not until the time of the German reformer Martin ward direction toward the center of its own world. Thus, Luther (1483–1546) that the conceptual priority of logical if other worlds existed, the earth of one world would seek necessities was rejected in favor of divine omnipotence. to move in an upward direction toward the center of anLuther believed that the laws of logic are subordinate to other world, which is impossible. Medieval natural philosthe will of God and have ophers believed that God no independent ontological could create other worlds status. In other words, God if He wished to do so. could in principle violate These worlds, however, the fundamental laws of were conceived as struclogic and even substitute turally identical to our an entirely different set of world, each with its own logical principles in place center and circumference, of the ones that govern hueach composed of the man rationality. Needless to same four basic elements, say, Luther’s view signaled and each containing incorthe most radical breach ruptible heavenly bodies. between the domains of Aristotle’s thesis that faith and reason, a breach the universe is eternal that late medieval scholastic presented the most radical theologians stimulated in challenge to the Christian many ways but were not worldview.

In the eyes of ready to fully embrace.

Christian theologians, the thesis undermined the bibAnother issue of conlical doctrine of creation. tention has to do with the If Aristotle is right and compatibility between the the universe is eternal, it Christian understanding follows that God, if He of God’s relationship to exists, is metaphysically the universe and Aristotle’s speaking on a par with the natural philosophy. By reuniverse. In fact, the very lying upon the distinction idea of creation ex nihilo, between what God does when He acts in His usual which is not supported way and what God could by the description of the do ex tempore and absolutely universe in Genesis 1:2 as created from a shapeless speaking (i.e. the distincprimeval soup (tˉohû and tion between God’s ordained and absolute power), bˉohû), was used by Chrisscholastic thinkers devised William of Ockham stained glass from All Saints Church, Ockham, Surrey by tian theologians as a means Lawrence Stanley Lee, 1985. thought experiments to of establishing the meta9

By permission of the British Library

The Creation of Earth, Egerton MS 856, folio 4, 15th century.

physical priority and independence of God with respect to the universe. In his very ingenious solution to the problem of the eternity of the universe, the renowned medieval theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) argued that it is not logically contradictory to suppose that God created our universe ex nihilo from eternity!

Did Aquinas achieve a true reconciliation between faith and reason or did he push the philosophical agenda a bit too far? This question provoked a heated debate among the readers of Aquinas’s many works.

10

Severin V. Kitanov is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Salem State College. Born in Varna, Bulgaria and educated at the local French Gymnasium “Frédéric Joliot-Curie,” he moved to Finland, where he received his MA and Doctorate of Theology from the University of Helsinki. Dr. Kitanov’s specialty is Philosophy of Religion and Theological Ethics with a particular focus on Medieval Scholastic Theology and Philosophy. He is also passionate about paleography (the study of ancient and medieval handwriting) and the critical editing of Medieval Latin theological and philosophical texts. He is married with a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. Special thanks to Patricia Johnston, William Cornwell, Keja Valens and Lucinda Damon-Bach.

Kim Mimnaugh

Aquinas’s writings are understood today as the most systematic scholastic attempt to synthesize faith and reason, theology and philosophy. Many medieval thinkers questioned whether such a synthesis is possible at all.

Perhaps Aquinas came closer than anyone else in his time to the ideal of perfect synthesis. What he accomplished instead was a very tenuous and uneasy reconciliation that left readers wondering, just as in the case of conjoined twins, whether Aquinas had successfully preserved the identity of each domain. Perhaps the awkwardness of Aquinas’s synthesis can tell us something about the condition of human reason when faced with the problem of grasping its own absolute foundations and recognizing its boundaries.

Perhaps the image of conjoined twins can be interpreted as a symbol of the strenuous yet marvelous relation between human reason on the one hand and the absolute as reason’s alter ego on the other: two distinct yet inseparable entities, a single being yet two persons, constantly questioning each other, constantly seeking each other, destined to be together, destined to seek independence.

SOURCES Bovey, Alixe. Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Friedman, Richard Elliott. Commentary on the Torah. San Francisco: Harper, 2001.

Glorieux, P. “L’année universitaire 1392-1393 a la Sorbonne a travers les notes d’un étudiant.” Revue des Sciences Religieuses 19 (1939), 429–482.

Grant, Edward. A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Guthrie, W. K. C. Socrates. Cambridge, London, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

Hallamaa, Olli. “Defending Common Rationality: Roger Roseth on Trinitarian Paralogisms.” Vivarium 41.1 (2003), 84–119.

Knuuttila, Simo. “Luther’s View of Logic and the Revelation.”

Medioevo 24 (1998), 219–234.

Koetsier, T. and L. Bergmans, eds. Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005.

Kretzmann, Norman, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg, eds. The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Pecham, Ioannes. Quodlibet II.24, Oxford, Merton College Library, MS 96, fol. 266vb.

Pseudo-Boèce. De Disciplina Scholarium, édition critique, introduction et notes par Olga Weijers. Leiden & Köln: E. J. Brill, 1976.

Quodlibase: Base de données des Quodlibets théologiques (1230-1350). http://www.quodlibase.org/.

Schabel, Chris, ed. Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages. 2 vols.

Leiden & Boston: E. J. Brill, 2007.

Spinks, Jennifer. “Wondrous Monsters: Representing Conjoined Twins in Early Sixteenth-Century German Broadsheets.” Parergon 22.2 (2005), 77–112.

Thijssen, J.M.M.H. “Eternity of the World, Medieval Views.” E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge, (1998). http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/B039.

Weijers, Olga. Terminologie des universités au XIIIe siècle. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1987.

—————. La ‘disputatio’ à la Faculté des arts de Paris (1200–1350 environ): Esquisse d’une typologie. Brepols, 1995.

Courtesy Salem State College Archives

E S S A Y

Salem Normal School students, 1886.

Empowering Educators: Rhetoric in the Nineteenth Century at Salem Normal School Elizabeth Hart

F

or two days in the summer heat of 1860, eighteenyear-old Elizabeth W. Poole and her classmates took their final examinations at the Salem Normal School. Each young woman wore her best day dress layered with a petticoat, a bustle, a corset, and high button shoes: these were public, oral examinations.

The young women spoke extemporaneously, answering questions from their professors and visiting dignitaries.

Elizabeth and several other students also read aloud their scholarly papers. The Wizard, a contemporary newspaper

in neighboring Danvers, reported that the young women “answered and gave their views with a readiness and fluency… Some of the replies were elaborate, and expressed with such clearness of language so correct and refined as to afford good examples of improvisation.”

However, the young women did not entirely escape criticism. One account highlighted an abiding problem of speech teachers—the difficulty of encouraging students to speak louder—but Elizabeth’s essay was described as “finely read.”

11

to become teachers. The members of the class were given Oral examinations were the norm rather than the exa list of topics relevant to education from the scholars and ception. At Salem Normal School these examinations were community members in attendance. Some of the topics held semi-annually in all subjects, from Arithmetic to the in August 1860 included such Theory and Art of Teaching. currently relevant issues as sex The women acquitted themNumerous archived reports attest discrimination and assessment. selves admirably, as reported The students had a brief time by a local newspaper article of to the widespread interest in the to prepare their responses and 1857: “the young ladies gave great satisfaction and delight to education of young women as teachers then were required to respond in front of an attending audithe spectators present by the at Salem Normal School. The school ence of family, friends, teachproficiency they manifested, ers, esteemed citizens and the readiness and aptness of received attention and support from of the press, some of their replies to questions proall over the Commonwealth because it members whom traveled by horse and posed by others than the teachcarriage or by train from as ers, and by their graceful and was among the earliest institutions of far away as Framingham and dignified deportment.” Of parBrewster. Despite the difficult ticular importance were the ex- higher learning in Massachusetts. travel conditions, the hall was ercises given to students, all of often filled to capacity. whom were women preparing

Courtesy Salem State College Archives

12

Numerous archived reports attest to the widespread interest in the education of young women as teachers at Salem Normal School. The school received attention and support from all over the Commonwealth because it was among the earliest public institutions of higher learning in Massachusetts. Examination days at the Normal School were socially and politically important events, where exams and practical exercises were interspersed with musical performances and recitations. Elizabeth and her classmates were well-trained in the art of Rhetoric, one of the foundations of a Western education dating back to Aristotle. The teaching of Rhetoric continued in ancient Rome through the middle ages and up to the late nineteenth century. Rhetoric accompanied the study of Logic, Grammar, and Philosophy. Rhetoric at Salem Normal School included five parts referred to as canons: invention, the discovery of relevant arguments; disposition, the ordering of arguments; style, the choice of words and language; memory, recalling the substance and order of arguments; and delivery, the expressive use of voice, postures, and gesture. The first course catalog printed in 1854 for Salem Normal School reflected the classical tradition of education. “Rhetoric and Composition,” “English Grammar,” and “The Art of Reasoning” were required courses. In the late nineteenth century, the nature of a course in Rhetoric was clearly defined by Adam Sherman Hill, eminent Harvard professor of rhetoric and oratory. Hill stated in the introduction to his textbook of 1880, The Principles of Rhetoric and Their Application, that the art of Rhetoric “uses knowledge not as knowledge but as power” and further emphasized his point when he contended, “Aristotle makes the very essence of rhetoric to lie in the distinct recognition of a hearer.” From the worn black copy of Hill’s textbook in the Salem State College archives, we can infer that the text was used at Salem Normal School for many years. Similar to modern public speaking texts, Hill’s textbook devoted chapters Program for first oral examination, 1855.

Courtesy Salem State College Archives

Original Salem Normal School Building at Summer and Broad Streets, 1871.

13

Courtesy Salem State College Archives

hand copied and posted multo introductions and conclutiples of information needed sions, narrative, the structure for a group of people. Cumberof arguments, and persuasion. some written methods made Less familiar are his references speaking and listening the to “barbarisms,” “solecisms,” most efficient and cost-effecand “improprieties” in a section tive means of communicating titled “Grammatical Purity.” with any audience.

In addition to argument and reasoning, speech delivery skills Perhaps due in part to the were specifically addressed in invention of the typewriter the curriculum. The Forty-Third in 1868 and other Industrial Annual Report of the Board of EduAge conveniences, after 1874 cation 1878–79 described “vocal public oral examinations were culture,” where elocution and limited to Education courses voice training was “philosophiand no longer mandated for all cally interpreted” by professors subjects. However, Rhetoric of rhetoric and oratory. Physical did remain as a course, as did delivery skills in speaking and public lesson presentations by reading were considered within students on examination days. the context of the message, Speaking skills were still conand the Report exhorted “the sidered an essential measure of teachers of reading, in our comscholarship and teaching, and mon schools even, should give the effective communication of careful instruction in the art of ideas was constantly tested in expression.” In order to achieve students’ courses as well. The expressiveness, the course regAims and Methods of Study and ister for fall and winter term of Training of 1873–74 explains 1879–80 admonished “Constant that “recitations, however and careful attention must be excellent, are not deemed satgiven… [to] reading, includisfactory unless every pupil is ing analysis of sounds and voable to teach others that which cal gymnastics,” and the Board she herself has learned.” These declared that “vocal exercises Marietta Paul (Class 37), 1874. young women gained lasting developed by professionals can benefits from their proven often alleviate nervous and pulability to express themselves.

These young women gained lasting monary diseases.” Classrooms Consider the words of Marirang with teachers’ commands benefits from their proven ability to etta Paul, the valedictorian of to stretch and breathe deeply, the class of 1874. She affirms express themselves. Consider the words the young women lifting their the value of her training at the voices in defiance of their conSalem Normal School in her of Mariett Paul: “if we would take strictive corsets. valedictory speech, calling out public places in life we must show to women in the “political, litFrom 1856 and into the late erary, or scientific world”: “if ourselves competent to fill them.” nineteenth century, speaking we would take public places in in a clear voice with “gramlife we must show ourselves competent to fill them.” Well matical purity” and reasoned discourse was a requirement said, Marietta!

This audience member is applauding. every semester for every student in all academic subjects.

Even the Arithmetic course was described in the catalog as “Oral and Written.” The academic building rebuilt in Elizabeth Hart is Professor of Theatre and 1871, which still graces the corner of Summer and Broad Speech Communication at Salem State College.

She is passionate about the rhetorical tradition Streets with its mansard roof and copper trim, included of empowering students through speech education seven recitation rooms. On warm spring days, voices and has been privileged to participate in this drifted from open windows as students recited literature; tradition throughout her long career teaching on chilly winter days, students’ breath was visible in those speech at Salem State. Her work has been pubrooms as they performed vocal gymnastics. Only in the lished in Thought & Action, the Endicott twentieth century did technologies for making cheap, Review and Ireland’s Own. Thanks to multiple copies of documents become widely available.

Susan Edwards, archives librarian, for her considerable help in preparing this article.

Printing was, and still is, costly. Teachers and students Kim Mimnaugh

14

E S S A Y

An Incautious Spirit: The Life of Laura Matilda Towne Mary-Lou Breitborde

I

islanders and her “missionary” colleagues through bouts of yellow fever and small pox, cleaning and sanitizing homes, bringing food and medicine to those in need.

No one who came to the island to help could expect to have only one role, however, and this multi-talented, energetic woman became household head for the island’s general superintendent, advisor to the people on land rights and conscription, midwife, undertaker, clothing distributor, and teacher. Charlotte Forten, Salem State’s (then Salem Normal School’s), first African-American graduate, described the small, dark-haired Miss ...their commitment to the lives of Towne as “housekeeper, physician, everything here.

On the island of St. Helena, others who were oppressed resulted The most indispensable one of the tidal and barrier in a personal reconstruction of their person on the place, and the islands separating the Atlantic people are devoted to her.”

Ocean from the low counown lives and a model of the real Towne was at first reluctry coast of South Carolina, power of women working in tant and unsure of herself a white woman, Miss Laura in the classroom. She had Towne and her white and black community for social change. better luck with adults and colleagues taught thousands older children than with the of islanders to read, preparing young ones, who, she wrote, “had no idea of sitting still, them as teachers, wheelwrights, dressmakers, farmers of giving attention, of ceasing to talk aloud. They lay and carpenters, future doctors, nurses and ministers. down and went to sleep, they scuffled and struck each A life in education had not been her plan. As a young other. They got up by the dozen, made their curtsies, woman she had been trained in homeopathy at a time and walked off to the neighboring field for blackberwhen medical training was rarely available to women. ries, coming back to their seats with a curtsy when they The work she had hoped to find on St. Helena when she were ready. They evidently did not understand me, and arrived in April 1862, shortly after the Union capture of I could not understand them, and after two hours and a the sea islands, was medical. Indeed, Miss Towne could half of effort I was thoroughly exhausted.” be credited with saving hundreds of lives, nursing the n 1862, a group of women educators braved ridicule, harsh physical conditions and the dangers of war to establish a school for former slaves on St. Helena Island.

Moved to help the islanders secure political and economic rights along with literacy, these radical reconstructionist women were themselves formally powerless, lacking the right to vote, own property, or outwardly control the conditions of their lives. Yet, their commitment to the lives of others who were oppressed resulted in a personal reconstruction of their own lives and a model of the real power of women working in community for social change.

15

In time she grew to love the work and rose to the superintendence of all island schools. While Miss Towne was not immune to the ethnocentrism of the time, she rapidly lost it as she settled in to a life among the people.

Early entries in her journal referring to ‘bullet-headed Negroes,’ and ‘savage’ religious practices soon gave way to descriptions of the people’s intelligence, their resourcefulness, hard work, and strong motivation to learn. In a letter to her sister she wrote “To be deprived of a lesson is a severe punishment. ‘I got no reading to-day,’ or no writing, or no sums, is cause for bitter tears. This race is going to rise. It is biding its time.”

It was her willingness to observe and report with a questioning mind, test assumptions, re-invent norms, and speak up that made her radical in the context of her times.

While Towne family geneaologist Edwin Towne presumed that the life and work she chose meant a “sacrifice of home with all its pleasures,” in fact, her work gave her a comfortable and fulfilling life. She was supported by a strong network of friends and relatives whose money, attention and company she drew 16

The Port Royal Experiment and “Gideon’s Band”

I

n November 1861, Union naval forces captured Port Royal Sound, between Charleston and Savannah, as part of the effort to blockade the Southern coast.

The twin Confederate forts at the harbor entrance on Hilton Head and Phillips Islands were still under construction with slave labor requisitioned from island plantations.

Captain Rufus Saxton reported the victory gave the Union “possession of the finest harbor in the South… in the heart of the richest part of the cotton district.”

Plantation owners along the coast fled with only the possessions that would fit on horse-drawn carts. Slaves refused to leave, taking from the houses the rest of the furniture, planting vegetable gardens to feed their families, and ignoring the cotton crops lying in the fields. De facto emancipated, though not by law, they were technically defined as “contraband” of war. Most of Lincoln’s cabinet saw them as a burden and a social problem.

A few progressive abolitionists saw in them an opportunity to make a political point, and looked to Laura Matilda Towne, Dick, Maria, and Amoretta, February 1866. education to prove it.

From the Penn School Collection. Permission granted by Penn Center, Inc., St. Helena Island, SC

The outrage she felt about slavery continued as Reconstruction crumbled under the weight of racism and Jim Crow. Returning to St. Helena in 1884 following a stay with her family in Pennsylvania, she wrote, “That old plague, the North Penn conductor, came and talked to me a long time at Yemassee….

He says the whole race of niggers ought to be swept away, and I told him my business was with that race and that they would never be swept away.”

into the work. Among them were her four sisters and two brothers, and a group of women who included some of the literary and political lights of the times: Sarah Orne Jewett, Charlotte Forten, Annie Fields, Anna Loring, and Lydia Maria Child.

Saxon traditions and beliefs, with little attention given Besides approximately 10,000 former slaves, plantation to the history or aspirations of the people themselves. By owners left behind acres of valuable long-staple cotton helping the former slaves assimilate to an existing social waiting to be harvested. Lincoln’s cabinet was far more order, most of the evangels were ignorant of their own interested in the proceeds of that cotton, which could be role in creating the class, gender and racial divisions that used to fund the war effort, than in the fate of the black would characterize the South for the next century. They islanders. But the few abolitionists among them used the began an educational process but did not achieve real crisis to convince the President to support the Port Royal advancement, and most returned home at the end of the experiment to determine whether former slaves, or “colwar (or well before). ored” people in general, would work without the threat of the whip and become self-reliant. Recognizing that the Nevertheless, these missionary women crossed imisolated islanders had been kept ignorant of the means to portant cultural and gender boundaries in living far from live independently, but unwilling to lay out funds to help home and taking up tasks not considered women’s work, them learn, the government hired plantation superintenand their work had unintended political and social condents to oversee their (badly) paid work but relied upon sequences. In conflating conventional notions of womanvolunteers to ‘civilize’ (that is, Christianize) the people. hood with commitment to morality, religious ideologues These volunteers, selected more on the basis of their of the nineteenth century moral character than their own gave women the responsilearning or teaching ability, bility and the right to act Often left to run things themselves, emphasized the values of piety, against the evils of slavery industry, thrift and orderas the men came and went on other on the basis that, as women, liness, along with reading, they could feel the pain of business, they developed new female writing and ciphering. the slave mother and hurt for strategies and models of power. Later, Sponsored by the American the slave child. Their petition Missionary Association and drives, fund raising, letter the abolitionist movement would other religious societies and writing, and public speaking transmute itself into the suffrage anti-slavery organizations from were framed in moral, rather Boston, New York, and Philathan political terms, an exmovement, with women’s recognition delphia, hundreds of teachers tension of their natural roles took up the work, armed with that the formal power they lacked as women. Those who stayed their Bibles and their pens. in the movement grew more was, indeed, a political issue.

“Gideon’s Band” included some sophisticated about the roots men, most of whom became of the problem and the need plantation superintendents within a year or two. There for political change. Committed abolitionist women radiwere a few teachers from the South and there were free, calized themselves. Often left to run things themselves as educated blacks from both North and South, but most the men came and went on other business, they developed teachers were white women from the North. Their trip new female strategies and models of power. Later, the South was, for many, the longest trip they had ever abolitionist movement would transmute itself into the taken and the only one they’d made alone. Laura Towne, suffrage movement, with women’s recognition that the Ellen Murray, Ellen Winsor, Harriet Ware, Susan Walker, formal power they lacked was, indeed, a political issue.

Martha Schofield and others left behind family and the comforts of home for a place full of danger from war and disease to serve people they knew nothing about. Their A Radical Reconstructionist courage and commitment did not go unnoticed: W.E.B. Du Bois called them “saintly souls,” writing, “This was Woman in Development the gift of New England to the freed Negro: not alms, or a tiny minority of Northern white teachers, the but a friend; not cash, but character… the contact of experience of working for and alongside the former living souls.” slaves transformed the purpose and path of their lives.

Unlike Towne, who was motivated by humanitarian Laura Matilda Towne was ripe for this transformation. concerns, most Yankee teachers saw their task as religious.

She was in full possession of her own mind and heart, Education would liberate those who, through no fault of deeply committed to her principles, keenly aware of the their own, lacked Christian values and mores. Education risks she was enduring but sure of her ability to face them. would enable them to read the Bible, keep track of their She had the confidence of her class and the support of a earnings, learn where they were on earth and where they strong family. She was her father’s daughter. might go in the afterlife if they accepted the sanctity of marriage, refrained from drinking alcohol, covered their John Towne had left his home in Methuen, Massachubodies with clothing, and practiced good table manners. setts, at fourteen to earn his fortune in shipping during In most schools, the curriculum represented white AngloPittsburgh’s mercantile boom. After the death of his wife

F

17

From the Penn School Collection. Permission granted by Penn Center, Inc., St. Helena Island, SC

father, Laura inherited an appreciation of nature, a love in 1833, he took his large family of seven children to of the arts, a concern with applying ideals to action, and Boston, where they lived on Snow Hill Street in the an assumption that she must be useful and do her part.

North End, among abolitionists, Transcendentalists, progressive educators, free-thinkers, and experimenters of Laura came to St. Helena in the second boatload of all kinds. Ten-year-old Laura would certainly have known Yankees in April 1862, sponsored by the Pennsylvania about William Lloyd Garrison being dragged through the Freedmen’s Relief Association, a mostly Quaker orgastreets of Boston by an angry mob. She would have heard nization. She was thirty-seven years old and had spent about Angelina Grimke’s historic speech to the Massachuthe last several years working with the poor in charity setts legislature, and perhaps schools and organizations in read in the Boston papers the North. Though doing about the seventy-five ladies Laura came to St. Helena in the good work, she was neverfrom Lynn who petitioned theless dissatisfied, looking second boatload of Yankees in April the legislature for a change for something more meanin the law prohibiting black1862, sponsored by the Pennsylvania ingful, something to engage white “unions.” her passion. When the war Freedmen’s Relief Association, a began, she immediately made John encouraged an interplans to go South, traveling mostly Quaker organization. est in science and political afby herself to a place far from fairs in all his children, male the life she’d been leading, and female. Like their father, apologizing to her sisters for worrying them. In her dithey grew up to be large-thinking and practical, clearary, she listed her fellow passengers on board the steamer headed and kind-hearted people who took their responsibilities seriously, including their citizenship and their Oriental, all sent by anti-slavery societies: a minister’s commitment to social justice. The Townes were Unitarwife from New York, a new graduate of Yale College, a ians, believers in the idea of human perfectability and in teacher from Boston. By her own name she wrote only the importance of living a moral life on earth. From her one word: “abolitionist.”

Linnie Lumpkins Blanton teaches her first graders.

18

The strength of her commitment to the cause was reflected in her complaint a few days later that the Northern organizers were reluctant to discuss their anti-slavery motives with the Union soldiers occupying the islands.

She wrote, “I think a rather too cautious spirit prevails…

I wish they would all say out loud quietly, respectfully, firmly, ‘We have come to do anti-slavery work, and we think it noble work, and we mean to do it earnestly.’

Instead of this they do not even tell the slaves that they are free, and they lead them to suppose that if they do not do so and so, they may be returned to their masters.”

Towne and Murray held to an academic program that would prepare leaders and professionals with knowledge and skills in reading, writing, arithmetic, Latin, history, physiology, and geography. In later years, they added carpentry, nursing, printing, sewing, and mechanics to the curriculum to help students gain employment and contribute needed skills to the community. For many years, Penn School was the only secondary school available to African-Americans in the region. In 1870 the founders added a normal school to prepare teachers for their own and other South Carolina schools.

Freed people came by the hundreds, in search of the literacy that they hoped would ‘uplift’ them and transform their lives. That strong motivation resulted in impressive achievement. Miss Towne and most other Yankee teachers remarked how quickly their “scholars”— both children and adults—learned to read. But Laura Towne realized early that land ownership was as essential as literacy for the future independence and self-reliance of the islanders. That they should own the land they had worked for years was also a clear matter of justice. She wrote letters to Northern newspapers and magazines, to generals, and to President realized early that Lincoln on behalf of the land ownership was as essential as freed people, advocating for fair payment for labor and literacy for the future independence for their ultimate right to the and self-reliance of the islanders. land. In addition, she gave people advice about their That they should own the land they financial affairs, for, like her had worked for years was also a father and brother, she had a good, practical business clear matter of justice. sense.

The letters she wrote to her sisters in the first few days and weeks after her arrival on St. Helena contain disapproval and disbelief, but also curiosity and an open mind. She had critical words for the New York missionary teachers, whom she found “uneducated and coarse.”

She decried the soldiers’ poor treatment of the former slaves and the corruption and self-interest of some of the plantation superintendents. On the other hand, her respect for the character and culture of the islanders grew rapidly, and she was happy to see that the initial docility with which they addressed the white Northerners declined over time.

But Laura Towne The work was difficult.

Against the noise of gunfire and the threat of Southern recapture of the islands, she distributed clothing, hosted dinner discussions with visiting generals and government officials, grew vegetables, brushed the horses, kept household and store accounts, wrote reports to her sponsors, sewed, held Sunday School, visited homes and listened to the people’s stories, accepted gifts of eggs and chickens, nursed the ill and buried the dead through outbreaks of small pox and yellow fever, refusing all suggestion, even directives, that she return home to safer and healthier conditions. In between, she taught crowded classes of eighty or a hundred children and adults, many of them toting babies on their backs.

Towne and her friend Ellen Murray, a trained teacher, first kept school in a room within the Oaks—a rundown plantation house that was her first home on the island—and then in the Brick Church, until numbers and church politics intervened. In 1864, the Philadelphia society sent three modular school buildings, which Miss Towne named Penn School after its Quaker patrons.

The curriculum was built on the same texts and content available to students in traditional schools of New England, with additions about the people’s heritage intended to instill pride, such as stories of the slave Toussaint L’Ouverture who led his people to revolution and John Brown, “the brave old man who had died for them.”

An Unconventional Community

Y

ankee women and men working on the island socialized, met at church, went on outings, and occasionally courted. But as the Union officers left the island for other posts with more immediate needs and as the district superintendents and governors withdrew when Reconstruction abruptly ended in the 1870s, the women were left to manage. In this isolated setting they were able to forge new patterns of life, away from conventional roles and relationships. Laura Towne, Ellen Murray, Nellie Winsor, Harriet Ware, Charlotte Forten, and others, including for months at a time Laura’s and Ellen’s sisters, lived and worked together defying not only the rules of order that defined their gender, race and class, but also challenging the rape myth that would have made living amidst black men unacceptable. Carolyn Heilbrun proposed that the very act of disqualifying themselves—of “expelling themselves from conventional society”—by living on their own, speaking out publicly, taking up causes that challenged the dominant order, 19

allowed women the space and time to undertake work that was personally fulfilling and socially transformative.

French, noted in her journal that she could not easily relate to the former slaves, and they in turn had difficulty cooking for a woman who was dressed like a white lady, but with features closer to their own.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Call number: Portfolio 157, Folder 41

The women constructed rich lives on St. Helena. In their free time, they shared books and newspapers, sewed Over time, Laura Towne and her white colleagues for each other, gardened together, nursed each other, became more socially involved with, and influenced by, went on picnics and took boat rides to other islands. To the black people on whose behalf they were working. make their homes cozy and warm, they sent North for She traded medical knowlfavorite chairs and rugs, fine edge, taught with, and dined china, and curtain fabric. The The women constructed rich lives on with black women. By the closeness among the Northern St. Helena. In their free time, they end of her life, it was certainteachers did not, however, ly more difficult to discern extend to the relationships shared books and newspapers, sewed whether the women she rethey had with the women on for each other, gardened together, ferred to in her letters were whose behalf they worked. white or black. Sociologist While white women spent nursed each other, went on picnics Edward Blum attributed the time in black homes and black success of the Penn School churches, black women’s roles and took boat rides to other islands. experience largely to the fact in white homes were largely that white women teachers secured the people’s trust service. Great affection might have existed between the and respect by visiting black women in their own homes, white and black women, but the two groups were not soasking questions about their lives and their aspirations, cial equals. Race and class mattered, class perhaps more sharing advice and remedies, and trading stories, woman than race. Charlotte Forten, a highly educated, highly to woman. cultured African-American who wrote poetry and spoke

Education Among the Freedmen “To the friends of education among the freedmen,” broadside, ca.1862, Philadelphia.

20

The Legacy

F

ment. But it was seen as regressive and oppressive by those who believed that the earlier classical education offered freed people access to the same education as had the middle classes. Du Bois had argued that a deep and well-rounded education would develop “exceptional men” who could “save the race” through their “broad sympathy” and knowledge of the world.

or forty years, Penn School thrived under the direction of Laura Towne and Ellen Murray until their deaths within a few years of each other. The pair were well aware of the importance of the school to the islanders, especially during the post-Reconstructionist backlash against freed people. At the end of their lives, the practical and philosophical foundations of the school were being called into question. The passion that had driven philanthropists to contribute to the school had subsided with the death of Reconstruction and the token gestures that South Carolina had made to “negro education.” The state was offering public education for black children only up to eighth grade and in poorly built, poorly equipped, and often inaccessible schools. With funding steadily decreasing, the women drafted a new charter for Penn Normal, Agricultural and Industrial School, with a board dominated by Hampton Institute associates but including memCharlotte Forten a graduate of Salem Normal School in 1856. bers of the Towne family.

Coincidentally, its new principals would be another pair Great affection might have existed of women, Rossa B. Cooley between the white and black women, and Grace House. They would add to the school’s curbut the two groups were not social riculum training in laundry equals. Race and class mattered, class work, cobbling, first aid, social hygiene, midwifery, perhaps more than race. Charlotte and basketry, and a health and environmental program.

Forten, a highly educated, highly The charter of the new school would move away from the philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois, a Penn School admirer, and closer to that of his rival, Booker T. Washington. The industrial and agricultural curriculum was touted as unique and progressive in its marrying of academic learning with community improve-

cultured African-American who wrote poetry and spoke French, noted in her journal that she could not easily relate to the former slaves, and they in turn had difficulty cooking for a woman who was dressed like a white lady, but with features closer to their own.

Du Bois also argued that education for blacks should nurture the “talented tenth,” who would then lead the people with knowledge and wisdom. Yet the leadership of the Penn School remained white for its first one hundred years. Despite Towne’s organizing on behalf of black leaders like Robert Smalls and her appointment of blacks to serve as public school trustees and Penn School teachers, there is little evidence that she offered a share in the administration of her own school to black islanders or graduates. Writing in 1970, in the era of the black power movement, about the difficult transition from white to black leadership in historically black schools and colleges, James McPherson suggested that there might have been relatively few black teachers and administrators well qualified for leadership positions before 1900. The valuing of expertise over black control may have held back the advance of black leaders at the time, he says, or it might have served to prepare a more skilled and knowledgeable next generation of leaders, including W.E.B. Du Bois (Fisk), James Weldon Johnson (Atlanta), Martin Luther King (Morehouse), Thurgood Marshall (Lincoln University and Howard Law School), Marian Wright Edelman (Spelman College) and Stokely Carmichael (Howard).

21

Bending to the pressure of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s, South Carolina improved public education for blacks on St. Helena, including opening a high school on the island. The Penn School re-invented itself as a community service center, where black and white civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr., could hold meetings in safety. Today, the Penn Center functions as a multi-purpose educational and resource organization helping to disseminate and preserve the Gullah culture of the African-Americans who, partly due to the Center’s history, still own most of the land.

At the Center, local people demonstrate indigo dyeing and sweet-grass basket weaving, give talks on the West African roots of Gullah language and culture, host child development and youth leadership programs, and provide assistance with economic development, heirs’ property ownership and community organization.

Laura Towne reconstructed herself as she helped to reconstruct society, creating a meaningful life in the context of the hard work of change and despite the restrictions on women. She probably did not herself recognize the impact of her work and would never know its lasting influence. She was dismayed by the inevitable curriculum changes facing Penn School, and she was furious that emancipation had not resulted in justice, but she died feeling lucky that she had found useful work that had also provided her a life that she loved.

She wrote in her diary in 1862: I have felt all along that nothing could excuse me for leaving home, & work undone there, but doing more & better work here. Nothing can make amends to my friends for all the anxiety I shall cause them and for the publicity of a not pleasant kind I shall bring upon them, but really doing here what no one else could do as well. So I have set myself a hard task.

Billings, R.A., ed. The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten: A Young Black Woman’s Reactions to the White World of the Civil War Era. New York: The Dryden Press, 1953.

Blum, E. “Race, Gender, and the Transforming Power of Missionary Work in the Reconstruction South.” Paper, annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, GA, August 16, 2003. http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p107666_index.html.

Butchart, R.E. “Remapping Racial Boundaries in Reconstruction: Border Police and Boundary Transgressors in Post-emancipation Black Education, 1861-1876.” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 43 (1), p.61-78.

Cooley, R.B. School Acres: An Adventure in Rural Education. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930.

DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903.

Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth.” In The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative Negroes of To-day. New York: J. Pott & Co., 1903.

Faulkner, C. Women’s Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Aid Movement. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

Forten, C. “Life on the Sea Islands.” Atlantic Monthly 13 (1864): 587–96.

Ginzberg, L.D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics and Class in the Nineteenth Century America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.

Heilbrun, C. Writing a Woman’s Life. New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1988.

Holland, R.S., ed. Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1912.

McPherson, J.M. “White Liberals and Black Power in Negro Education, 1865–1915.” The American Historical Review 75, no. 5 (1970): 1357–86.

Pearson, E.W., ed. Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War. Boston: W.B. Clarke Co., 1906.

Penn School Papers, #3615. Southern Historical Collection.

Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Rose, W.L. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment.

New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1964.

And again in 1871: “I do never intend to leave this ‘heathen country.’ I intend to end my days here and I wish to.”

Martha Schofield Papers, RG 5/134, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College.

Mary-Lou Breitborde is Associate Dean of Education at Salem State College, and Executive Director of the Northeast Regional Readiness Center. She is co-author of two books, Teaching on Principle and Promise and Educating the Global Village. Her research and teaching address the social foundations of education, particularly the place of schools in a community, and their mutual potential for effecting change. A former fifth grade teacher, Dr. Breitborde received her EdD and master’s degrees in Humanistic and Behavioral Studies from Boston University, and an AB in Sociology from Wheaton College. She received the Guion Griffis Johnson research award from the University of North Carolina’s Southern Historical Collection to support her work on a biography of Laura Towne.

“Teachers: Their Qualifications and Support.” American Missionary 10 (1866): 152.

Margo W.R. Steiner

22

SOURCES

Sklar, K.K. Women’s Rights Emerges within the Anti-slavery Movement: Angelina and Sarah Grimke in 1837. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

David Franklin Thorpe Papers, #4262. Southern Historical Collection. Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Towne, E.E. The Descendants of William Towne, Who Came to America on or about 1630 and Settled in Salem, Mass. Newtonville, MA, 1901.

United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Ser.1, Vol. 6. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 1882. http://digital. library.cornell.edu/m/moawar/waro.html.

Washington, B.T. “Atlanta Exposition Address, September 18, 1895.”

In The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. L.R. Harlan, et al. Vol. 3, 584–87. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974.

Weiler, K. “Reflections on Writing a History of Women Teachers.”

Harvard Educational Review, 67, no.4 (1997): 635-657.

P O P O R T F O L I I O

Haig Demarjian Polyphemoid Phenomenon, 2009, mixed media on masonite, 18" x 28"

23

24

Shovelface, 2009, 2-color reductive woodcut, limited edition of five, 14" x 18"

HeadPile, 2008-present, mixed media on foam (in progress), 24" x 32"

25

(Above and below left) Brunswick Horrors, September 27, 2008.

India ink drawings from a series generated while a Visiting Artist at Bowdoin College, each 19" x 24"

(Above right) Preliminary charcoal and india ink drawing on an uncut woodblock, 14" x 18"

26

Six, 2008, india ink on paper, 9.5" x 10.5" Traditionally, drawings tend to be thought of as studies for paintings. These two works are an inversion of that expectation.

The imagery was generated by manipulating paint on wood (below) and then the painting was used as a source for the ink drawing (above).

Six, 2008, painting on plywood, 18" x 28" 27

28

Demarjian’s studio, Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Polyocular Cranium, 2008, acrylic on wood, 8" x 8"

S

Heads Teaching drawing at Salem State has kept me engaged on a daily basis with students solving problems of space and form. This has spurred me on to ask new questions and further probe into my lifelong obsession with the depiction of heads. I find it challenging and invigorating to push those recognizable masses back and forth between the realms of the understood and the undiscovered.

Some of my heads are quickly executed, with spontaneity encouraging accident and improvisation. I keep the paint moving and gestural, the lively brushstroke a metaphor for living flesh. There are times when twenty or more drawings or paintings will proliferate in a single session. Also, there are some paintings which undergo more extended study as I invent impossible anatomies that stretch the idea of portrait beyond the rational. Some of these singular paintings are built up over many months, amassing material, transforming one thing into another—what first seems a cheek becomes an eye, features are added then lost, shapes swell and shrivel in unexpected ways as I savor the twisting of conventional spatial relationships into physical inconsistency.

Haig Demarjian has been drawing heads and monstrosities in various forms since he could first hold a pencil. He is Associate Professor of Art + Design at Salem State College, where he teaches drawing and printmaking. He was trained as a printmaker and painter, earned his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and received both an MA and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has been exhibited internationally and spans a broad range of media from fine art to illustration to motion picture film. Recently, his work was included in Engraving 2009, a print portfolio which debuted at the IMPACT International Print Conference in England last fall before being exhibited at Salem State College’s Winfisky Gallery among other U.S. venues.

Haig Demarjian

ome of my recent work in paintings, prints and drawings has been concerned with the exploration of heads. This subject matter is familiar territory to me.

Drawing heads has been a consistent fascination of mine since childhood. Over the last few years, I have begun to grapple with heads in new ways. To the viewer, heads and faces are supremely recognizable and my deep interest in this subject matter has driven me to distort, rearrange, reconstruct and ultimately re-invent the subjects of portraiture.

29

E S S A Y

The Moscone/Milk Assassinations:

Missteps, Misinterpretations and Miscarriage of Justice Patricia V. Markunas

N

ovember 2008 marked the thirtieth anniversary of three political assassinations associated with the city of San Francisco and the release of a major motion picture concerning two of them.

book by Randy Shilts about Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street, reissued in conjunction with the film’s release.

Actor Sean Penn, who portrayed Harvey Milk, received an Academy Award for Best Actor in February 2009.

The murder of Congressman Leo Ryan (D-California) Given the success of Van Sant’s film, Penn’s award and on November 18, 1978 remains the tragic centerpiece brisk sales of Shilts’s reissued book, it seems an appropriof the larger Jonestown massacre. Jim Jones, the dictatoate time to reexamine the Moscone/Milk murders, Dan rial leader of a quasi-religious cult, had moved from San White’s controversial verdict, and the connection of these Francisco to the jungles of events to the Jonestown masGuyana, South America, to sacre and the assassination of What has been the aftermath of this establish a socialist paradise.

Leo Ryan. How could the After his orders to assassinate case over the past thirty years? assassination of two American Ryan and those accompanying elected officials, carrying out How has the popular culture’s him back to California were official responsibilities in a carried out, Jones directed an public building, result in such attention to Harvey Milk’s life and act of mass suicide that took of justice? What death altered our view of the events of ahasmiscarriage over nine hundred victims, been the aftermath of this almost the entire population case over the past thirty years?

November 1978 in San Francisco? of Jonestown.

How has the popular culture’s attention to Harvey Milk’s life and death altered our view However, it is the murders of San Francisco Mayor of the events of November 1978 in San Francisco? We will George Moscone and Board Supervisor Harvey Milk on see that the events leading up to this miscarriage of justice November 27, 1978, in San Francisco City Hall that resoand those that have followed to this day are replete with nate more in our collective memory. As shocking as these ironies, missteps, and misinterpretations. assassinations were, so was the verdict received by the man who killed Moscone and Milk: Dan White, another member of the Board of Supervisors, whose conviction for voluntary manslaughter provoked riots in San Francisco and outrage throughout the country.

On November 26, 2008, Milk —Director Gus Van Sant’s long-anticipated feature film about Harvey Milk— was released. Van Sant’s film used as one source the 1982 30

The City of San Francisco

I

n the 1960s, San Francisco began losing its industrial and blue-collar economic base, along with the working class, conservative, Catholic families who had worked and lived in the city. The 1967 “Summer of Love” drew

Image by © Bettmann/Corbis

Board Supervisor Harvey Milk shaking hands with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, April 1978. Published in the San Francisco Examiner newspaper.

These changes, and the tensions they generated, occurred in other American cities. What made San Francisco unique was the incredible influx of gay men and lesbians as part of that city’s gentrification, exacerbating feelings of long-term residents that their city was changing in ways that they did not like and that pushed them out. Today the Castro Street neighborhood, which was Harvey Milk’s political and business base, is a gay/lesbian enclave, but the white working-class families who lived there long before Milk’s arrival from New York City had referred to it as Most Holy Redeemer Parish because of the dominance of that church in neighborhood life.

Two political changes that occurred at that time are important to understand the events of November 1978.

The first was the 1976 election of George Moscone, a liberal Democrat who campaigned against the “Manhattanization” of San Francisco—tall buildings, denser population, and gentrification—and who openly courted the city’s gay/lesbian and minority voters. The second was the successful conversion of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (similar to a city council) from a body elected at-large to eleven district seats.

District seating, a controversial change that survived a special election to repeal it even before it was implemented, generated enormous interest. Dozens of people filed nomination papers to run for the new Board. The resulting Board included the first openly gay man elected to office in America (Milk), the first Chinese-American

supervisor (Gordon Lau), the first black woman supervisor (Ella Hutch Hill), a Latino (Robert Gonzales) and a single mother (Carol Ruth Silver).

These five individuals formed the liberal wing of the new Board, which almost immediately faced off against the Board’s conservative faction headed by Dianne Feinstein, a supervisor since 1970. Feinstein was elected as the new Board’s president with every vote except Milk’s and took under her wing Dan White, an Irish Catholic, newly elected from a working-class, traditional San Francisco district. With White and others in her corner, Feinstein had six reliable votes to wield in opposition to the five votes of the Board’s liberal wing.

The infighting that arose from this split stymied Mayor Moscone’s liberal initiatives. Particular tensions were sparked between Milk and White over the adoption of civil rights protection for gays and lesbians, and between Moscone and the San Francisco police force over the appointment of a new police chief.

Dianne Feinstein’s name started to circulate as a possible challenger to Moscone’s Rev. Jim Jones, of People’s Temple, expected re-election during an interview.

Photographed June 2, 1976. bid in 1980.

© Stephanie Maze/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis

hippies, runaways and other counter-culture types to the Haight-Asbury district. Financial services and tourism emerged in the 1970s as replacements for industry. The city gentrified with middle-class and upper-middle-class workers who drove real estate prices to exorbitant levels.

31

© Bettmann/Corbis

The body of Supervisor Harvey Milk is wheeled from his chambers at City Hall, after he and Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed here November 27, San Francisco, California.

November 1978

D

an White had a history of being intensely involved in an activity or organization, only to abruptly, and seemingly without cause, quit it. A star on his high school baseball team, he quit and walked off the field during a state championship game. He joined the city’s police force, resigned once, returned and then resigned again. After devoting enormous energy to his election bid for the Board of Supervisors, White found the political give-and-take unsatisfying and frustrating.

Harvey Milk was a particular irritant to White, less for Milk’s sexuality and flamboyance than his opposition to White’s initiatives, such as the denial of a permit to site a home for troubled adolescents in White’s district.

White shocked his office staff, political supporters and constituents when he submitted his resignation from the Board to Mayor Moscone on November 10. The efficient clerk to the Board, Gilbert Boreman, photocopied the resignation letter and entered it as official business for the Board’s meeting the following Monday, when it was accepted by unanimous vote.

Liberals and conservatives alike recognized the political implications of the appointment Mayor Moscone would

32

have to fill the vacancy created by White’s resignation.

Liberals, especially Harvey Milk, pressed Moscone to appoint a like-minded replacement; conservatives pressed White to rescind his resignation. Barely twenty-four hours after the Board’s vote, White called Moscone to say he had changed his mind about resigning. Moscone arranged to meet White at City Hall on November 15, the same day Congressman Ryan and his delegation landed in Jonestown, Guyana, to investigate charges that Jones would not allow dissatisfied followers to leave the country.

That morning, Mayor Moscone returned White’s resignation letter and told him that he supported White’s decision to return to the Board. However, given that the Board had accepted the resignation, Moscone wanted to consult the city attorney to determine the legal process needed to effect that return. This delay allowed forces in opposition to White’s return to organize and exert pressure on Moscone.

Moscone started to equivocate about his decision to allow White to resume his seat. Moscone’s re-election bid would need the support of White’s political opponents, who urged Moscone to appoint a liberal whose vote would tip the division on the Board. The San Francisco Police Officers Association and the fire fighters union were just

as determined to have White reappointed to his seat.

Rallies for and against White were held in his district and at City Hall.

White went to the mayor’s office and, after a brief wait, was taken to an inner office for a private meeting.

He shot Moscone once in the chest and then, executionstyle, three times in his head. Without the mayor’s staff realizing what had happened, White reloaded his gun and ran to see Harvey Milk. Milk agreed to talk and they entered White’s old office, now empty. White shot Milk twice facing him, then once in the back and twice in his head as he lay dying on the floor. Dianne Feinstein discovered Milk’s body after White ran out of City Hall.

On Sunday morning, November 19, the world was rocked by the news of Congressman Ryan’s assassination and the tragedy unfolding in Jonestown. Nowhere was the shock and concern greater than in San Francisco, where politicians feared that assassins had been directed

by Jim Jones to carry out additional murders. Metal detectors were installed for the first time in City Hall.

On November 27, White called an Both Moscone and Milk had aide and asked to be driven to City benefitted from political support provided by Jim Jones and Hall. He told her he wanted “to give his followers—support that George and Harvey a piece of [his] could prove controversial in their re-election campaigns. mind.” He brought a loaded gun and

extra ammunition and evaded the metal detectors by climbing through an unlocked basement window.

On November 27, White called an aide and asked to be driven to City Hall. He told her he wanted “to give George and Harvey a piece of [his] mind.” He brought a loaded gun and extra ammunition and evaded the metal detectors by climbing through an unlocked basement window.

Later, over forty people who worked there, including Board President Feinstein, would offer depositions that they had brought guns to work for selfdefense after the Jonestown The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle announces the shocking massacre. news of the assassinations and the identity of the suspect, Nov. 28, 1978.

Jury Selection and the Death Penalty

I

By permission San Francisco Chronicle

On Tuesday afternoon, November 21, the city attorney issued an opinion to the mayor that White’s resignation was binding and that Mayor Moscone was free to appoint whomever he wished, including White, to fill the vacancy.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Mayor Moscone selected Don Horanzy to fill the vacancy and arranged for him to be sworn in at City Hall on Monday, November 27. On Sunday evening, a CBS news reporter called Dan White at his home to ask his reaction to the mayor’s decision not to reappoint him. It was the first time White knew for certain that he would not return to the Board.

Dan White called his wife, who escorted him to the nearest police station where he confessed to the murders on audiotape. Once George Moscone’s dead body was discovered, Feinstein announced the assassinations to a stunned press, and she assumed the position of acting mayor of the city of San Francisco.

t is hard to imagine a stronger case to present to a jury than the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. The motive was clear: White let his supporters know how angered he was by Moscone’s betrayal and Milk’s fueling it. Premeditation was clear: White brought a loaded gun and extra bullets to City Hall, he evaded the metal detectors, and he reloaded the gun before confronting Milk.

The confession was clear: White confessed at a police station, on audiotape, under questioning by Frank Falzon, a long-time acquaintance of White’s who would later work with the prosecutor in court.

It is hard to imagine a stronger case for the death penalty than two political assassinations with a mountain of evidence. However, Prosecutor Thomas Norman’s decision to seek the death penalty, 33

who would be sympathetic to White’s defense and antagowith the adjoining selection of a “death-qualified” jury, nistic to his victims. backfired on the state’s case and set the stage for the controversial verdict.

Both attorneys used the same profile to accept and What is a death-qualified In capital cases, a death-qualified reject jurors. During jury jury? In capital cases, a deathqualified juror supports use juror supports use of the death penalty selection, a man who said he was gay was excused; of the death penalty as an as an appropriate punishment for liberals who supported gay appropriate punishment for certain crimes and is willing certain crimes and is willing to impose rights were excused; and even people who said that to impose it. Supporters are it. Supporters are more often men they knew gay people or had more often men than women, gay friends were excused. At more often whites than racial than women, more often whites best, the jury included one or minorities, more often Westthan racial minorities, more often two people who had voted for erners and Southerners than George Moscone for mayor.

Easterners and Northerners, Westerners and Southerners than Both Norman and Schmidt and more often Republicans Easterners and Northerners, and more accepted jurors who had law than Democrats. Opponents enforcement experience or hold more politically liberal often Republicans than Democrats. personal connections to law beliefs, including more skepenforcement. ticism about the entire criminal justice process and greater faith in defense theories Jury selection went quickly and both attorneys were and extenuating circumstances. pleased with the results. Rarely in criminal cases do both sides want the same type of jurors. Both Norman and Research on death-qualified jurors shows that support Schmidt were confident that the case would go his way. for capital punishment accompanies a propensity for conviction. Jurors who do not support the death penalty are less likely to believe that “people only get what they deserve” and more likely to find for the defense. Support The Prosecution for or opposition to the death penalty is not unequivocal. rosecutor Norman believed that his hanging jury Supporters sometimes make exceptions when dealing would not need much detail about the murders for with defendants who are female, mentally retarded or conviction. His opening witness, the chief medical exunder-aged. Opponents sometimes make exceptions aminer, was never asked to give an opinion in court about in heinous crimes with known perpetrators, such as the premeditated or intentional nature of White’s conduct Timothy McVeigh or Jeffrey Dahmer. of the shootings. Full-scale mannequins were prepared in Prosecutor Norman’s juror selection strategy was advance to demonstrate the series of shots and their imhard-nosed. He took conviction almost for granted but pact, but these exhibits were not entered into the record wanted a “hanging jury” to sentence Dan White to death. or used in court. The medical examiner was prepared to Voters in San Francisco had rejected the statewide initiatestify that both Moscone and White would have survived tive to reinstate the death penalty, but Norman did not the shots to their bodies, but by using the execution-style risk seating any juror who could be soft on the death shots to each man’s head, White murdered them. This penalty. His strategy meant rejecting supporters of both testimony was never presented to the jury.

George Moscone and Harvey Milk, even though those Other critical forensic details were overlooked. No people would likely have been especially outraged about testimony was offered as to where exactly White reloaded their murders and perhaps willing to impose the death his gun after he killed Moscone, an action explained as penalty despite personal liberal beliefs. automatic and learned through his police training rather Given that the case was hardly a “whodunit,” an inthan demonstrating intent to kill. No one testified about sanity defense might have seemed the best choice for White’s failure to reload his gun automatically once he White’s attorney, Douglas Schmidt. He chose instead a had emptied it into Harvey Milk’s body. “diminished capacity” defense, pleading temporary insanity for White. Defense attorney Schmidt did not want Both victims led flamboyant and controversial personal traditional opponents of the death penalty on the jury, lives. Although Milk stopped going to gay bathhouses however. He wanted a jury of Dan White’s peers: longonce he became involved in politics, his personal life intime San Francisco residents, Catholics, and members of cluded a series of lovers, one of whom committed suicide the working class who were threatened by the changes in in the summer of 1978. Rumors were commonplace that their city and frustrated by the political system. Rather Moscone consorted with prostitutes. The heterosexual, than focus on support for, or opposition to, the death conservative and largely Catholic jury would find such penalty, he used the jury selection process to pick jurors behaviors distasteful at best, appalling at worst.

P

34

Fresh in jurors’ minds was the massacre at Jonestown.

Jim Jones and the People’s Temple had provided political support to both Moscone and Milk, which generated further controversy and tainted their political legacies.

Given these circumstances, Prosecutor Norman minimized courtroom testimony about both victims and their clashes with the political positions and initiatives of Dan White and his constituents.

The diminished capacity defense emphasized White’s periods of depression, which he attempted to self-medicate by enormous consumption of junk foods and sugared drinks. A reporter sitting in court wrote the word, “Twinkies?” in his notebook, thereby branding the entire case, as it is known today, as the “Twinkie defense” case.

The Defense

D

efense attorney Schmidt elicited testimony from nearly every prosecution witness about White’s superb character, his traditionally masculine achievements, and his willingness to advocate for his constituents, who had much in common with the jurors.

Prosecution witnesses testified how shocked they were

by White’s actions, how out of character they seemed, and how something must have “snapped” for him to commit the crimes. Frank Falzon, who sat next to Norman every day in court, testified that he did not believe that revenge was White’s motive. Falzon’s opinion seriously damaged the prosecution’s case because the lack of revenge as an “irresistible impulse” opened the door for the jury to consider a verdict of manslaughter.

The most telling point about the jurors’ sympathies occurred during the broadcast of White’s taped confession in court. Some jurors wept openly, while others wiped away tears and looked aghast. No juror wept during graphic testimony about the murders.

The basis for Schmidt’s defense had been laid by the prosecution’s case. Schmidt conceded White’s actions and focused on answering the overriding question in everyone’s mind: Why did Dan White, upstanding citizen, devout Catholic, baseball star, veteran, police officer and fire fighter, snap on the morning of November 27?

The diminished capacity defense emphasized White’s periods of depression, which he attempted to self-medicate by enormous consumption of junk foods and sugared drinks. A reporter sitting in court wrote the word, “Twinkies?” in his notebook, thereby branding the entire case, as it is known today, as the “Twinkie defense” case.

Defense expert witnesses testified that White was not capable of forming the intent to murder. The rage and humiliation produced by Moscone’s betrayal and Milk’s political maneuvers, coupled with White’s mental illness and financial pressures, caused him to lose control and react without reason. Far from presenting White as a crazy person, Schmidt explained White’s behaviors as the abrupt culmination of a long, stressful, emotionally destructive process that any person could understand.

The Verdict and the Aftermath

T

he jury deliberated for about five days, and on May 21, 1979 returned dual voluntary manslaughter verdicts.

In the absence of testimony about the details of the murders and malice or revenge as motives, jurors reported afterwards that a first-degree murder verdict was never seriously considered.

White was sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison. An undated campaign photo of Dan Outrage at the ver- White. Prison officials at Soledad Prison, where White served his sentence for the dicts culminated not assassinations of Mayor George Moscone only in rioting by gays and supervisor Harvey Milk, were reand the destruction of luctant to reveal their plans for White’s eleven police cars but release because of fears for his safety. also a police rampage through the Castro Street district. District Attorney Joseph Freitas, who had assigned the case to his assistant and appeared in court only twice during the trial, lost his re-election bid. City voters abolished district seating on the Board of Supervisors, though it was restored in 2000. California voters abolished the “diminished capacity” defense.

© Bettmann/Corbis

Milk’s advocacy of gay rights and gay/lesbian migration to San Francisco fueled the “Manhattanization” of San Francisco that Moscone had campaigned against and that threatened San Francisco natives. Milk himself was in danger of being priced out of his camera store and apartment in the Castro district because of rising real estate prices, just as many long-time residents had been priced out earlier. It is easy to see how these jurors would view the politics and initiatives of both Moscone and Milk as destroying “their” San Francisco.

35

Dianne Feinstein was re-elected twice as the city’s mayor and is now the senior senator from California. The woman who headed the conservative wing on the Board of Supervisors and who stashed a gun in her City Hall desk in 1978 is now a gun control advocate and a liberal in the United States Senate.

Another member of Congress has a significant connection to the events of November 1978. Jacqueline Speier, a staff member for Congressman Leo Ryan who was severely injured during his murder, won a special election on April 8, 2008 to represent Ryan’s former district, covering San Mateo County and southwest San Francisco.

Dan White was released from prison on January 6, 1984. He returned to San Francisco and his marriage broke up. He committed suicide on October 21, 1985.

Some patrons of Van Sant’s film have taken the joke told

by Milk about White (“he’s a real closet case”) to mean that White could have been gay himself. No evidence exists for this assertion. Milk’s joke is a common one about Prosecutor Norman in 1978 and conservatives and opponents of gay/lesbian rights. White director van Sant in 2008 both seem have been homophobic unaware of the larger reality of Harvey may but Milk’s political effectiveness in advancing his Milk’s effectiveness in a significant own agenda while blocking and, to some people, frightening set White’s initiatives played a much larger role in White’s of social and cultural changes. assassination of Milk.

© Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis

George Moscone’s widow received a $700,000 settlement and a life-long pension. Her husband’s legacy has diminished over time and his assassination seems secondary to Milk’s. A particular irony is George Moscone’s name gracing the City of San Francisco Convention Center, a project he opposed as “Manhattanization” while mayor.

Never mentioned in Van Sant’s film was the strong support that both Moscone and Milk enjoyed in their election bids from Jim Jones and the People’s Temple of San Francisco. Moscone had appointed Jones to two city commissions, actions that proved politically explosive after the assassination of Congressman Ryan and the mass suicides at Jonestown. Had Moscone lived, his reelection would have been in serious doubt. He needed

Demonstrators gather to mourn over Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, who were assassinated at the city hall earlier that day.

November 27, 1978, San Francisco, California.

36

The “Twinkie defense,” as White’s murder verdict is known today, trivializes the Moscone/ Milk assassinations and blinds Milk noted us to its true death threats that miscarriage Harvey Milk reof justice: the ceived during his selection of a short political jury that did not career, but nearly represent the every political community of figure mentioned San Francisco, here received especially in the them as well. The discrimination fear and hysteria against people created by the based on their Jonestown massexual orientasacre caused many tion and political City Hall employbeliefs, in hopes ees to bring guns Harvey Milk at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, San Francisco, California 1978. of attaining the to work, using the death sentence. same basement window as White did to evade the metal The outcome in the Dan White murder trial could have detectors and save time. However, no one recognized been different had the prosecutor chosen a jury to focus White as the true assassin in their midst and the guns on getting first-degree murder convictions, rather than a smuggled into City Hall did not protect Moscone or Milk. hanging one to get death sentences in California, where few executions are carried out in any case.

Harvey Milk’s stature and legend continue to grow.

Milk shifts the perspective on his murder, however.

Sources George Moscone’s actions, not Milk’s sexuality or politics, Greene, Edie, Kirk Heilbrun, William H. Fortune, and Michael T. ignited Dan White’s murderous rage on the morning of Nietzel. Wrightsman’s Psychology and the Legal System. 6th ed.

November 27, 1978. Had Moscone reappointed White to Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007. the Board in 1978, Harvey Milk might still be alive today.

Milk, directed by Gus van Sant and distributed by Universal © Terry Shcmitt/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis

those six liberal votes on the Board of Supervisors and he reneged on his promise to Dan White to get them.

Pictures, 2008.

Prosecutor Norman in 1978 and director van Sant in 2008 both seem unaware of the larger reality of Harvey Milk’s effectiveness in a significant and, to some people, frightening set of social and cultural changes. By focusing attention on Milk’s sexual orientation as White’s motive to murder him, van Sant, in particular, distracts us from Milk’s role as both a representative (and target) of the massive economic and cultural shifts that were taking place in San Francisco as well as his being an effective player in shaping and promoting important aspects of these changes.

The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Rob Epstein and distributed

by New Yorker Films, 1984.

Weiss, Mike. Double Play: The San Francisco City Hall Murders.

Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1984.

Kim Mimnaugh

The final ironies associated with the assassinations of Leo Ryan, George Moscone and Harvey Milk, of course, are the monikers that the popular culture has attached to them. “Drinking the Kool-Aid,” a reference to the method Jim Jones used to effect the mass suicide of his followers at Jonestown, refers to people who blindly follow the selfdestructive orders of a leader. Many who use this expression often lack an understanding of its association with the assassination of the only member of Congress in U.S. history to be killed while carrying out official duties.

Shilts, Randy. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.

Patricia V. Markunas has been a professor in the Psychology Department at Salem State College since 1979. She served as the president of the Massachusetts State College Association from 2000 to 2008. Her interest in psychology and the law began with the O.J. Simpson case in 1994. She has attended conferences with forensic examiners and workshops with FBI profilers such as John Douglas, Roy Hazelwood and Gregg McCrary. Her last two sabbaticals were spent taking courses in psychology and the law at Harvard University Extension School.

Dr. Markunas made her theatrical debut in Eve Ensler’s A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant & A Prayer at Salem State in March 2010.

37

E S S A Y

Dressing for Success on Casual Friday: Written and Unwritten Dress Codes in the Corporate Workplace Gayle V. Fischer

W

hat do you wear to the office? If you work the floor at the New York Stock Exchange you wear “a dress shirt, buttoned at collar, with a dress tie knotted at the customary place, full length dress trousers,” and a jacket or, if you are a woman, your attire consists of a skirt or dress “worn at appropriate business lengths.” Women may wear pants as long as they are “full length dress slacks.” Failure to follow the NYSE dress code means losing your floor trading privileges—Casual Friday has not reached Wall Street. If, however, you work at the White House under President Obama you may opt for “business casual”— on the weekends. Although the President’s staff may at times relinquish the suit, this trend appears to be going out of style with many businesses. Perhaps you work at home and consider all the fuss about workplace outfits annoying blather. Beware! Gartner Inc., information technology advisers, reported in 2009 that as an increasing number of corporations are formalizing their dress codes, they are extending to the virtual business world.

In other words, your avatar must follow the office’s sartorial regulations. As the first decade of the twenty-first century ends, “dressing for success” is on the rise.

“Power dressing” is not new. For most of the twentieth century, business and professional men dressed to 38

convey competence and power. “Career women” attempted to balance the feminine (but not too sexy) and the masculine (but not too severe) when they dressed for the office. Gender differences in clothing and dress codes have been, and continue to be, a part of corporate America. Employers routinely assumed substantial prerogatives with respect to the dress and appearance of their employees, often imposing burdens on women that differed from those imposed on men.

After all, dress is one of the most important indicators of gender difference in daily interactions, in and out of the workplace. The law permits offices to establish dress codes, so long as they impose equivalent restrictions upon both sexes. For example, a dress code can prohibit men from wearing earrings to work but allow women to wear them. However, most companies enforce dress policies indirectly using corporate culture rather than directly through formal dress codes.

Informal and formal regulations have determined acceptable business apparel for women and men; at the same time, they reinforced inequities and asymmetries of power between women and men in the workplace.

In conventional dress, in and out of the office, women’s clothing was seen as expressing qualities that were softer, warmer, more emotional, mercurial, nurturing, exhibitionist, and so on, than men’s. Such stereotypes have interfered with women’s advances in the business world.

Women who rose to positions of power in the office hierarchy had to contend with the contradictory images identified by sociologist William Goode in his 1973 book Corporate Lib: “they are tough, cold, bitchy, and castrating women…slightly frivolous but cunning; they use their feminine wiles and tricks to get their way.” No wonder women have had a difficult time deciding what to wear to work.

Male business executives grudgingly and slowly made room in managerial positions for qualified women. However, they also resisted the promotion of women to the kinds of jobs that paid more, had more influence, and offered opportunities for advancement—in short, jobs fit for men. Male resistance took many forms; changing the rules of the corporate-dressing game inadvertently became one of the ways to keep women off balance, to keep women in their place. The advent of Casual Fridays in the 1990s seemed to herald a new democratic workplace, one possibly free of gender bias as well. The Casual Fridays concept, on the surface, appeared to be the antithesis of dress code regulations with its apparent freedom of choice. Far from being innocuous, though, these days were in some ways more insidious than other forms of dress codes. The history of Casual Friday is by its very nature a history of professional or office attire—different rules and attitudes apply to the shop floor and other manual labor situations. Examining casual office apparel establishes how clothing has operated in the power relations between employer and employee, between women and men, and between clerical and professional staff.

The Birth of Casual Friday

N

o one seems to know where Casual Friday came from. Accounts vary. Was the relaxed dress of the 1960s responsible? Or did the economic downturn of the 1980s somehow stimulate a desire to dress down? Can the casual style of Silicon Valley executives be blamed (or lauded) for introducing informal attire to corporate America? Or, did the practice originate with Hawaii’s Aloha Friday?

In 1948, Hawaii initiated Aloha Week in an effort to promote a market for Hawaiianmade merchandise and encourage tourism. This celebration permitted businessmen to wear Hawaiian shirts to work during that period and was such a success that businessmen began to wear Hawaiian shirts to work every Friday.

However, the tourist bureau of Hawaii distances itself from Casual Friday pointing out that Aloha Week focused on Hawaiian industries and not the workplace per se.

Hints about a “cult of informality” in the office had been circulating since the 1950s, but the first print reference to an official corporate casualdress day appeared in 1975 when the New York Times reported that few companies had formal, written dress codes. Instead, most large corporations used informal catchwords such as “neat, and appropriate,” or “business-like” to guide their employees in making clothing decisions. The Times also 39

© Tony Korody/Sygma/Corbis

Co-Founder and CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, in his office, 1981.

noted that a large New York office had declared Friday “casual dress day” as a way of improving employee relations. The policy was not without its drawbacks and the company sent home several employees on other days for “too casual” dress.

“yes” to casual apparel in the workplace, but most aspiring businessmen—and definitely most, if not all, aspiring businesswomen—would not have risked showing up for work in “passive sportswear.”

Fund-raising initiatives by charitable organizations may There were other clues Apple co-founder Steve Jobs tried to have spawned Casual Fridays. that a movement toward cadistance the company culturally from Employers affiliated with a sual days might be growing. A charity allowed employees 1975 television advertisement hardware institutions like IBM and to buy the privilege of wearfor Macy’s department store Hewlett-Packard. Apple’s “unfashion” ing casual attire to work by asked: “Can an executive wear donating money to the chariat work what he wears at play? statement—“either you’re with us or table organization. The highCan a lawyer meet with a cliyou’re a suit”—stressed teamwork and tech companies in the Silicon ent dressed like a client? Can a of California have been white-collar worker work with bottom-up initiatives that emphasized Valley credited most often with the his collar open? Macy’s says removing symbols of top-down creation of Casual Friday. yes—thanks to the leisure-suit Apple co-founder Steve Jobs revolution—casual, comfortauthority such as power suits. tried to distance the company able suits you can wear everyculturally from hardware where.” Leisure suits meant institutions like IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Apple’s originally just that—a suit worn when enjoying leisure. “unfashion” statement—“either you’re with us or you’re a The jacket was constructed in such a way that it gave suit”—stressed teamwork and bottom-up initiatives that a less formal appearance than a suit jacket or a blazer, emphasized removing symbols of top-down authority almost a big shirt. Macy’s fashion leaders may have said 40

such as power suits. Yet another particularly intriguing theory posits that with summer temperatures during the 1990s soaring to unusual heights, many organizations began allowing their employees to dress more casually, and coolly, in the office. Originally, in many companies this leniency was intended just for the summer season, but they felt that when their employees dressed down, their productivity shot up. As one commentator noted, who knew that “when the first employer told the first employee to loosen his tie on a hot summer Friday (a date now lost to history)” that a new trend would result.

Whatever its origins, Casual Fridays spread through the corporate world in the 1990s.

Casual Fridays in the 1990s

W

hen in the summer of 1991, the American Express Travel Related Services division sent a memo to 50,000 employees, inviting them to hang up their suits every Friday, the news made the New York Times. “People can wear anything they feel comfortable in,” said Larry Kurlander, an American Express spokesman. “Companies are finding that when people dress down, it breaks down status hierarchies,” said Douglass Lind, president of the Trisource Group. A senior product manager at another company stated, “People tend to forget about who’s the boss and who’s the employee when everyone is wearing loafers and polo shirts.” Note the use of the term “dress down.” Advocates of casual dress argued that management “empowered” employees by allowing them to choose work clothes and demonstrated company commitment and concern for the well-being of employees.

Though one of the stated purposes of casual days was to break down “status hierarchies,” many top executives did not “indulge” in the same privilege they extended to employees.

By 1992, twenty-six percent of all U.S. companies had a casual attire day. And in 1993 some of the problems with Casual Fridays started to appear when employees wore “inappropriate” informal garments. Nevertheless for most of 1993, corporations extolled the virtues of Casual Friday, stressing the egalitarianism of the policy. Newspapers and magazines reported on top executives who joined the casual trend such as Harper’s Bazaar publisher Carl Portale who wore “an open-collar shirt and wool trousers on some Fridays.” “A casual dress code for Fridays is in some ways symbolic, but it also raises your comfort level and creates a more collegial environment,” said Dick O’Brien, vice president of corporate personnel at the General Motors Corporation in Detroit. Others noted that Casual Friday encouraged “communication and creative thinking” or that it was “a great equalizer.”

No statistical evidence showed that dressing down pushed corporate profits— or productivity—up, although anecdotal evidence shared between corporations continued to support this notion. At the same time, some critics expressed reservations about casual dress policies.

They worried that if employees became “too sloppy” in matters of dress, they might “become too casual” in their work habits.

In 1994 corporations continued to insist that even if dressing down was allowed only once a week, it helped ease tension, improved communication between managers and workers, and instilled a sense of togetherness. A. Wright Elliott, the head of communications at Chase Manhattan Bank, noted that employees responded to the fact that “the company trusts them to dress themselves.” Writing in 1994 for Management Review, Martha Peak drew on her own experience when she questioned the free will that Casual Friday dress codes implied: “When I worked for an entrepreneurial, casual-dress 41

firm, I took the ‘unofficial’ dress code as seriously as when my paycheck came from a Fortune 500 monolith, because the informal dress code was as clear-cut as the other. For similar reasons, I suspect that the folks at Microsoft choose their Dockers as carefully as IBMers pick their Big Blue suits.” Peak was not alone in her assessment as a rather angry 1994 letter to the New York Times revealed, “Employees are kidding themselves if they view a once-a-week change in the dress code as some enlightened demonstration by management of concern for employee well-being. Dictating any employee dress is still an attempt by managers in big, old companies to exert control.” Another employee grumbled to Executive Female in 1997, “I guess this [Casual Friday] is the bone they’re throwing in lieu of raises.”

Casual Friday Faux Pas

B

y the end of the 1990s, every company had its share of casual day horror stories, some probably little more than urban legends. It is not surprising that throughout the 1990s, management worried about how employees would interpret casual dress when as early as 1986 chaos and confusion over formal and informal attire seemed to reign: “I have a terrible time with men,” said Denise Hale, writing in Vogue. “I have to call up wives and say, ‘This “informal” means a blue suit!’” Hale’s frustration revealed that choosing business casual apparel was difficult for men. Her complaint also suggests that dressing informally could be doubly hard for women who had to dress themselves and their men. Actually, it became easier for women to translate business casual for men By the end of 1994, a survey revealed that almost than for themselves. ninety percent of U.S. workers wore casual clothing to Most firms were prepared to take corrective actions for the office at least part of the time; at roughly the same dress-code violations—such as Spandex or miniskirts— time (1989–1996), about three million people had been including termination.

Fashion consultants agreed that laid off through downsizing. getting dressed for work in In an era of downsizing and the 1990s had gotten harder growing salary discrepancies Most firms were prepared to take as there were many interprebetween CEOs and the “typitations of casual. One guide cal” worker, Casual Friday corrective actions for dress-code listed four casual styles and became “a no-cost benefit.” violations—such as Spandex or then acknowledged that there However, employees noticed were many others. Kathy that Casual Friday sometimes miniskirts—including termination.

Lambert of Professional Presrequired purchasing a third Fashion consultants agreed that ence broke casual dress into wardrobe and that no conthree categories: “elegant, comitant pay raise offset this getting dressed for work in the 1990s smart and comfortable.” new expense.

However, comfortable casual, had gotten harder as there were many Despite evidence to the she pronounced, was “approinterpretations of casual. contrary, most commentapriate only after work or on tors viewed Casual Fridays as weekends.” a West Coast phenomenon.

Despite the confusion over the meaning of casual, Then, in September 1997, the Gap’s “Gap at Work” companies continued to extol the advantages of this costCasual Friday promotion decked out 3,000 New York free benefit.

Office workers had “a lot more fun” being Stock Exchange traders in khaki trousers and opendressed for work, management insisted, and were more necked shirts and the Northeast could no longer ignore comfortable, more productive, and spent less money on the trend—if it ever had. clothing, which ignored the fact that many employees had “Believe me, it’s inevitable that there will be no suits to purchase a third wardrobe to meet their company’s on Wall Street,” noted a “Street insider” as brokerage definition of casual. For top executives, dressing expenhouses, and some law firms, moved from business attire sively had long been a mark of success as well as a means to business casual. But the democratic principles that of communicating hierarchical differences within the supposedly drove the Casual Friday trend did not seem firm. Repeatedly executives mentioned how casual attire to operate in the financial district. One young lawyer broke down the long-standing social class lines. However, convinced a senior partner it was time to join the casual the leveling properties of casual dress often proved to be trend arguing, “when the only people wearing suits are more of an illusion—perhaps, a false consciousness—than department store clerks, just how prestigious do you a new reality in the workplace. After all, the highest levels think this will make us look?” Just as twenty years earlier of management decreed appropriate dress. At times when John Molloy in Dress for Success had equated gaudy ties it became too complicated to define what appropriate dress meant, management could simply eliminate those with low class taste, in the late 1990s, suits seemed disarticles of clothing deemed unsuitable. For example, tastefully plebeian to financially successful corporations. when a New Jersey J.C. Penney’s could not define approThe year 1997 also saw a movement toward casual-dress priate pants for its female employees, the company instiweeks, not just Casual Fridays, and more and more attuted a blanket no-pants policy. tention being paid to the definition of casual.

42

While proponents of Casual Fridays steadfastly maintained that a relaxed dress code fostered creativity and a sense of community, some managers came to detest the sight of “wrinkled shirts, worn jeans and ratty sneakers,” and “schlumpfy” tights. Beginning in 1997 and continuing through 1999 corporations were positively shrill as they denounced the apparel their employees wore to work.

Employers began telling employees what constituted casual attire, and ironically, companies that did not have written dress codes for formal attire began to distribute dress codes for casual day.

One company simply said, “If it is appropriate to wash your car in, then it’s probably not appropriate to wear to the office.” A retail company instructed employees, “undergarments must be worn.” A computer service manager recounted a Casual Friday fiasco that indicated the computer industry also had limits when it came to casual office apparel: “One woman wears black spandex biker shorts. When she bends over, the shorts ride really high up her rear— threatening other workers with a scary peek of her pubic hair.” A manufacturer eliminated all misinterpretation by displaying photos in the break room of acceptable casual attire. Another employer said clothing must be “clean, neat, and pressed.”

In 1999 Cosmopolitan, a popular women’s magazine, listed “casual day fashion faux pas”: dirty sneakers, jeans, culottes, shorts, sheer or suggestive clothing, tank tops, Halloween costumes, swimwear, spandex, sports jerseys, and “the biggest casual day disaster of all”— wearing casual clothes on a non-casual day.

Not satisfied that written policies or pictures in the cafeteria would solve the problem, some corporations began bringing in fashion consultants. Clothing manufacturers and department stores began producing videos and booklets explaining business casual to employees confused by company dress-down policies.

Provocative Fridays

A

lthough much of the literature on casual dress was addressed to men, the sartorial stakes of dressing down were higher for women. Having long fought to break into the top executive ranks, women found themselves running the risk of looking like secretaries when they gave up their power clothes in favor of more relaxed outfits. In many ways casual attire eroded the symbols of power between workers and management and for women this meant that their appearance might cause them to slip down the corporate ladder. More damaging to women than their apparent loss of authority when wearing informal outfits was the way in which the old dichotomy between sexual attractiveness and professional competence became more menacing under the new casual dress codes. Blaming women and female provocative dress for male transgressions was not new in the 1990s. However, relaxed female attire became associated with a lax workplace demeanor, especially with the increase of on-the-job flirting by casually dressed women. Julie Hatfield, reporting for the Boston Globe in 1992, assessed the problem of the female Casual Friday offender: “She is a constant distraction to the male employees, with her spiked heels, fishnet stockings and plunging neckline. Her makeup is more appropriate for a nightclub, and her skirt is so short and tight that her colleagues wonder how she ever sits down.”

One unintended consequence of sexy casual dress was that women were blamed more often for inciting sexual harassment.

Consultants who counseled management on how to curb sexual harassment in the workplace stated that it was the responsibility of employees—women employees—to dress appropriately. A lack of agreement on what comprised appropriate dress compounded the issue. It is not surprising that despite the oft-repeated complaints about sloppy dress, most Human Resources executives considered titillating female clothing such as halter-tops, shorts, and stretch pants/leggings the greatest Casual Friday faux pas. A fashion consultant succinctly summed up this view, “It has gone from casual Fridays to provocative Fridays.”

Common sense would seem to rule out some outfits and garments. However, the questionable fashion judgment of some women illustrated how the right image for working women remained unsettled; one woman’s “flair for fashion” could be her boss’s idea of a “bimbo.” At the same time, some men influenced, and conceivably coerced, women into sexy apparel with praise and other rewards 43

such as “unearned” job promotions. Almost anything women wore ran the risk of looking like they were trying to appear just like a man, or too feminine, or too sexy.

Casual Friday had done nothing to solve this dilemma and had in fact made it worse.

“The Corporate Clone is Dead?”

G

iven the confusion and mixed messages casual apparel instigated, it is not surprising that the 1995 maxim, “the corporate clone is dead,” gave way at the end of 1999 to “Dress-Up Thursdays” and “It’s Time to Get Dressed” campaigns. After all, welldressed people appeared to be “more intelligent, hardworking, and socially attractive,” but not flirtatious.

Casual days that turned into “sloppy days” forced some companies to return to their earlier dress codes. A number of companies banned casual wear from the corporate suite on the grounds that anything less than a suit and tie “engendered chaos in the workplace,” “threatened the chain of command,” and encouraged workplace flirtations. A survey by the Society of Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Virginia, found that despite a two percent increase in employers who allowed casual dress every day, the year 2000 saw an eight percent drop in the total number of companies that permitted employees to dress down at all. It is worth noting that the George W. Bush administration issued an unofficial dress code for White House personnel: “Jeans will not be permitted in the West Wing, and men will be expected to wear ties.”

Clothing in the workplace had never been about democratization until Casual Fridays seemed to totter sartorial distinctions between clerical staff and executives.

But business casual was never quite the social leveler it appeared to be. It did not mean dressing as one would at home, with comfort or self-expression the paramount concerns. It had its own rules, even if they were not explicit. That is why it could actually be harder to get casual dress right than the old uniform—the business suit. Businesswomen never had a corporate uniform or a standard style of dress, which made casual office-wear a greater hardship—professionally and economically—for them.

Casual Friday seemed to herald fewer dress codes, which suggested more autonomy for individuals and intuitively that more autonomy seemed better than less autonomy. However, dressing for work was far more complicated than this. Over the course of the twentieth century, women’s career apparel and appearance objectified women and constructed them as inferior, submissive, and less competent than men. The institutionalization of Casual Friday did nothing to change these ideas. Dress and appearance expectations for women—feminine, but not too feminine; masculine, but not too masculine; sexy, but not too sexy—persisted even in the absence of mandatory codes. In some workplace settings, men may have 44

obtained respect and privilege by wearing the accepted uniform—suit and tie—while women tiptoed around such contradictory choices as the skirted business suit and more feminine or “stylish” outfits. The “dress-forsuccess” literature cautioned women to avoid both the “imitation man” look and the feminine look, both of which detracted from authority. Casual Friday increased women’s dress and appearance options at the same time it increased the possibility that a woman might make a mistake. For many women, a casual dress code not only became a professional burden but also a barrier obstructing their climb up the corporate ladder.

Masquerading as an invitation to relax, Casual Friday brought with it a set of rules far more complex than those it replaced. If professional women found dressing for the executive suite with its focus on formal business attire a tightrope in the 1970s and 1980s, then the Casual Friday trend of 1990s was a minefield.

A Final Note

C

asual Friday continues to perplex employers and employees. Although dressing more casually on the last day of the week became an accepted part of work culture over the last two decades, not every company allowed nor did every employee embrace the practice. Furthermore, evidence that dressing down improved employee morale, increased company productivity, and leveled corporate hierarchy remains anecdotal; no controlled studies support these conclusions. Therefore, it is not surprising that some business publications suggest that Casual Friday is becoming a casualty of the recession. Convinced that they cannot afford to look too casual, employees are choosing to forgo Casual Friday and dressing up for work. Apparently office workers hope that dressing well will show the boss that they are professional, seriously engaged in their work, and worthy of promotion. In contrast to the 1980s and 1990s economic travails that promoted casual dress days as a company benefit, the sluggish economy of the 2000s has some employees picking their outfits as if their jobs depend on it.

Kim Mimnaugh

Gayle V. Fischer’s interest in clothing history stems from her early career as a professional theatrical costumer; she has published extensively on issues surrounding the regulation of appearance. Her book Pantaloons and Power focuses on nineteenth-century dress reform. Fischer is an Associate Professor of History at Salem State College. Thanks to Kevin Cannon, Lucinda Damon-Bach, Lillian Little, Nancy Schultz, and Julie Whitlow for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

45

P H O T O E S S A Y

As Big and Bright as the Stars

Barbara Poremba 46

47

I

In San Marcos, we were fortunate to have a cadre of dental experts to provide oral care to people who simply do not have access to a dentist (1 dentist per 26,000 residents). As the true unsung heroes of this mission, they 48

worked tirelessly from sunlight to sundown, mostly by extracting teeth decayed beyond repair. In an effort to turn this around, we visited schools, teaching oral hygiene and giving fluoride treatments and toothbrushes. It is through the eyes of those children, as big and bright as the stars above the mountain skies of Honduras, that I can see the vision of a better tomorrow for all.

Kim Mimnaugh

n 2007, I was invited to join CapeCARES, a Central American Relief Effort organization, which has been providing medical and dental care to rural communities in Honduras for over 20 years. Since then, I have made trips to San Marcos and El Algodonal, the latter to include 2007 Salem State graduate Rose Vega, RN. My role was primarily as a nurse practitioner and public health specialist; Rose, who speaks fluent Spanish, functioned as nurse and interpreter, making home visits and providing health education. Without electricity or running water, we treated 50-75 patients per day, who walked up to 4 hours and presented with such injuries and ailments as lacerations, skin rashes, infectious diseases, dehydration, parasites, hypertension, diabetes, asthma and emphysema.

Barbara Poremba is Professor of Nursing at Salem State College. She received her BS in Nursing from UMass Amherst, her MS in Community Health Nursing from Boston University, her MPH from Harvard, and her EdD in multicultural public health education and media from UMass Amherst. She completed her Adult Nurse Practitioner training at UMass Medical Center in Worcester. She plans to continue photojournalism and working with vulnerable populations both in the U.S. and in underdeveloped countries. For further information visit www.capecares.org/.

B O O K

S H E L F

Recent books and recordings by Salem State College faculty and staff

The Complete Letters of Henry James: 1872 – 1876, Volumes I and II

Building a Healthy Black Harlem: Health Politics in Harlem, New York, From the Jazz Age to the Great Depression

Edited by Pierre A. Walker

Writing the Forest in Early Modern England: A Sylvan Pastoral Nation Jeffrey S. Theis

Jamie J. Wilson

Keeping Up with the Joneses: Modeling Arms Races as Multi-State System Processes Kanishkan Sathasivam

Rebuses of Economics and Riddles of Economics: Solving Difficulties Easily Tatyana Gofshteyn

The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England Emerson W. Baker

Ikkyu’s Dream

Philip Swanson

By permission of the British Library

SEXTANT 352 Lafayet te Street Salem, Massachuset ts 01970 -5353

One of the earliest prints of conjoined twins, Monstrosa HoËœis Forma (carmen heroicum), woodcut by Jacob Locher, ca. 1500.

How to Baptize a Monster: The Culture of Debate in the Medieval University

by Severin V. Kitanov, see page 2