Salem Women's
History and
Business Community
History and
Business Community
Salem Normal School
Corner of Broad and Summer Streets — Owned by the City of Salem
As the demand for accessible and high-quality education grew in the mid-nineteenth century, the dichotomy between what was available to the different classes and genders was significant. Increasingly, leading thinkers and social reformers like Horace Mann (who married Mary Peabody), called for public support of the free common school for both genders and for standards (or, “norms”) in teaching that would professionalize the field. Horace Mann believed deeply that a democratic society should educate its young, and he decried the poor state of public education. Accessible learning, rigorous and consistent teacher training, and strong public support of this effort would increase literacy and enable all people to participate more fully as citizens, he argued. States needed to support "Normal Schools" that would train women and men to teach.
As Joan M. Maloney wrote in her history of the Salem Normal School, “by the 1840s, a number of prescient Salem citizens recognized the urgency of educational reform.”1 At Horace Mann's urging, the Governor of Massachusetts had already opened three Normal Schools elsewhere in the Commonwealth (the first one in Lexington in 1839), and when a fourth site was needed for what would become the nation’s eleventh, Salem citizens lobbied hard, arguing that “Salem ...was a community of men who were at once scholars, dedicated civil servants, and daring entrepreneurs. From the start Puritanism ensured the welding of learning to godliness, and Salem was one of the first settlements to provide a free common school.”2 The Salem Normal School building was dedicated on September 14, 1854 “with all the pomp the city and state could muster,” and the Governor declared, “we welcome this day ...her influence hence shall extend/Til precepts received by the few/To thousands shall lend.”3
The first class, consisting of seventy-two young women, was admitted that fall. In 1932, the college changed its name to Salem Teachers College. It became the State College at Salem in 1959, and Salem State College in 1977. In 1972, one of the college’s professors, Mildred Berman, brought a class action suit against the state’s Board of Regents to ensure equal pay for women faculty. The suit was finally settled in 1988 in Mildred’s favor. Also in 1972, with the growing popularity of women’s studies as a discipline, the Florence Luscomb Women’s Center opened. It was named for the renowned suffragist, labor reformer, and peace activist from Lowell and Boston. In 1990, the Charlotte Forten Room in the College Library was dedicated, and that same year the Governor of Massachusetts appointed Nancy D. Harrington president of Salem State College. She was the first woman, the first alumna/us, and the first Salem resident to achieve this distinction.
One of the college’s earliest students was Charlotte Forten (1838–1914), who graduated in 1856, began her teaching career at the Epes Grammar School in Salem, and went on to teach in Port Royal, South Carolina, where she was pleased to educate the children of recently freed slaves who would otherwise not have had any educational opportunity. In 1864, Charlotte returned to Philadelphia and spent the next twelve years writing and publishing poems and essays including two articles about her South Carolina experiences in the Atlantic Monthly. She also kept a journal, which was published and is now widely available.
Sources
1 Joan M. Maloney, Salem Normal School 1854–1905: A Tradition of Excellence (Acton, Mass., 1990), 2.
2 Ibid., 1.
3 Ibid., 21.
As the demand for accessible and high-quality education grew in the mid-nineteenth century, the dichotomy between what was available to the different classes and genders was significant. Increasingly, leading thinkers and social reformers like Horace Mann (who married Mary Peabody), called for public support of the free common school for both genders and for standards (or, “norms”) in teaching that would professionalize the field. Horace Mann believed deeply that a democratic society should educate its young, and he decried the poor state of public education. Accessible learning, rigorous and consistent teacher training, and strong public support of this effort would increase literacy and enable all people to participate more fully as citizens, he argued. States needed to support "Normal Schools" that would train women and men to teach.
As Joan M. Maloney wrote in her history of the Salem Normal School, “by the 1840s, a number of prescient Salem citizens recognized the urgency of educational reform.”1 At Horace Mann's urging, the Governor of Massachusetts had already opened three Normal Schools elsewhere in the Commonwealth (the first one in Lexington in 1839), and when a fourth site was needed for what would become the nation’s eleventh, Salem citizens lobbied hard, arguing that “Salem ...was a community of men who were at once scholars, dedicated civil servants, and daring entrepreneurs. From the start Puritanism ensured the welding of learning to godliness, and Salem was one of the first settlements to provide a free common school.”2 The Salem Normal School building was dedicated on September 14, 1854 “with all the pomp the city and state could muster,” and the Governor declared, “we welcome this day ...her influence hence shall extend/Til precepts received by the few/To thousands shall lend.”3
The first class, consisting of seventy-two young women, was admitted that fall. In 1932, the college changed its name to Salem Teachers College. It became the State College at Salem in 1959, and Salem State College in 1977. In 1972, one of the college’s professors, Mildred Berman, brought a class action suit against the state’s Board of Regents to ensure equal pay for women faculty. The suit was finally settled in 1988 in Mildred’s favor. Also in 1972, with the growing popularity of women’s studies as a discipline, the Florence Luscomb Women’s Center opened. It was named for the renowned suffragist, labor reformer, and peace activist from Lowell and Boston. In 1990, the Charlotte Forten Room in the College Library was dedicated, and that same year the Governor of Massachusetts appointed Nancy D. Harrington president of Salem State College. She was the first woman, the first alumna/us, and the first Salem resident to achieve this distinction.
One of the college’s earliest students was Charlotte Forten (1838–1914), who graduated in 1856, began her teaching career at the Epes Grammar School in Salem, and went on to teach in Port Royal, South Carolina, where she was pleased to educate the children of recently freed slaves who would otherwise not have had any educational opportunity. In 1864, Charlotte returned to Philadelphia and spent the next twelve years writing and publishing poems and essays including two articles about her South Carolina experiences in the Atlantic Monthly. She also kept a journal, which was published and is now widely available.
Sources
1 Joan M. Maloney, Salem Normal School 1854–1905: A Tradition of Excellence (Acton, Mass., 1990), 2.
2 Ibid., 1.
3 Ibid., 21.
