Does Urban Reform Imply Class Conflict? The Case of Atlanta's Schools

Abstract

THOUGH THE PRESSURES FOR CHANGE had been building for some time, reform came suddenly to the Atlanta public school system. On May 28, 1897, in a City Council meeting ostensibly called to consider some routine matters pertaining to the city's water works, Alderman James G. Woodward introduced a resolution which replaced the sitting seventeen-member school board with a new board comprising one member from each of the city's seven wards. Despite a recent escalation in the level of conflict between the school board and Mayor Charles Collier, the move came as a complete surprise to virtually everyone in Atlanta, including all of the members of the school board.' The entire operation took only a few minutes. As the Atlanta Constitution observed the next day: A Texas hanging couldn't have gone off with the precision and nicety of the sudden execution. . . . The ax revolved and the heads were basketed.2 The action of the City Council raised an immediate public outcry in Atlanta. A mass meeting held the following day denounced the move as illegal, revolutionary, despotic, and dangerous. The city's newspapers gave the unfolding story front-page coverage and banner headlines for several days.3 Within a week of the astounding coup, however, the new board had organized itself and won the endorsement of both city newspapers. The new members set themselves to the tasks of educational reform in the city's public school system.4 In this paper we assess the adequacy of the prevailing class-conflict model of progressive educational reform for understanding the 1897 reform of the Atlanta schools. We show that many of the classic school reforms were carried out in Atlanta in that year: the school board was reduced in size, the