Outlawing Teenage Populism: The Campaign against Secret Societies in the American High School, 1900-1960

Abstract

The words fraternity and sorority bring to mind college life. But the nation's public high schools have their own rich history of societies, complete with the familiar Greek letters, insignia, sweaters and jackets, rush teas, pledge hazing, bizarre initiations, and whirl of social life., In several respects, however, that history departs from the college model and from the larger history of adult secret societies. Unlike college fraternities and sororities, high school secret societies were organized by or perhaps more accurately, by persons labeled youths by the dominant, adult culture. Because they were in certain ways independent of the educational system, the secret societies inevitably came into conflict with the high school, arguably the century's most important institution for the socialization of youth. Their status as youth organizations also rendered the fraternities and sororities peculiarly vulnerable to the hostility of school officials, state legislatures, and courts. Beginning in the Progressive Era, high school secret societies were prohibited by law in many states. A second major effort to eliminate the organizations was launched in the 1940s, in the context of a war to preserve democracy and of a Cold War against communism. High school fraternities and sororities seem a curious target, hardly worthy of the decades of effort expended to eliminate them. They were neither gangs nor hotbeds of juvenile delinquency. In almost every case, the secret societies represented youths, including a certain portion of the working class, who had been