Congratulations, Evanston Township High School graduates. You’ve made it through an unusual four years, starting with virtual learning and hybrid classes and ending with a greater outlook on this beautiful, puzzling, frightening world.
You’ve already benefited the community with your concerts, plays, recitals, athletic games and volunteer work. Some of you decided to forgo extracurriculars to help your families. Your environmental activism led the school board to approve the Green New Deal for ETHS. And now you’ve walked across the stage and received your diplomas.
The school you’re leaving may not really ever leave you. Even if you don’t already know it, ETHS has left its mark on the way you will see the world from now on. Some of its history is embedded in the signs, names, trophy and display cases that line the school’s walls; some of it lurks in the library and in the files and in old copies of The Evanstonian. And some of it you may have picked up a bit in classrooms or casual conversations as you learned that your real assignments involved more than just completing homework – you were charged with becoming citizens of the world.
Even as you leave, the past goes with you.
55 swampy acres
Henry Boltwood, for instance, helped write the law for creating special township high school districts that could levy taxes. He served as the first principal of ETHS, when in 1883 it was located at Dempster Street and (what is now) Elmwood Avenue.
Wilfred Beardsley, who succeeded him and served as principal for 22 years, advocated for a new school, urging a site at Greenwood Street and Ashland Avenue. Turf battles ensued until 1919, and Beardsley championed 55 swampy acres at Church Street and Dodge Avenue, in a remote part of town characterized mostly by onion fields.
ETHS opened at 1600 Dodge Ave. in 1924. Two wings added over the next 40 years bore the names of the first four principals/superintendents: Bacon and Michael were added to Boltwood and Beardsley.
Almost 70 years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, your graduation ceremony took place.
A ‘segregated facility within an integrated institution’
The Supreme Court’s 1954 mandate to desegregate “with all deliberate speed” was in too many places halfhearted at best. Testifying before a Senate Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity in 1971, educator Barbara Sizemore said that when she was a senior at ETHS in 1943-44, “it was a segregated facility within an integrated institution.” Almost 20 years later, when her daughter attended ETHS from 1962 to 1966, she said it still seemed the same.
But by 1967, student activism had entered the halls. During 1967-69, Black students at ETHS demanded that the school hire more Black administrators, stop putting Black students into “basic” academic tracks and offer courses in Black studies. In the fall of 1967, about 350 Black students cut class to attend an 8:45 a.m. meeting in the auditorium, where James Brown, president of Progressions of ’68, an organization composed primarily of Black ETHS students, presented a list of seven grievances to Superintendent Lloyd Michael.
Racial tensions continued through that academic year and beyond. On Dec. 9, 1968, the Black Organization for Youth (B.O.Y.) presented the administration with a list of demands, some of which called for a restructuring of the curriculum.
Climate strikes, summits and affinity groups
As the climate crisis came to the fore, the furtive walkouts to Fountain Square burgeoned into communitywide climate strikes that drew hundreds.
In addition to the climate crisis, you and your teachers, your classmates and your school still struggled with some of the regrettably recurring issues such as race, class, identity, violence and social justice. Your experience was of summits and affinity groups, identity and equity.
The questions and challenges don’t end with graduation, of course, but even now they persist in this imperfect world. In the words of singer/songwriter and environmental activist Jackson Browne, “Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around.” You are better off for having been exposed to them while still in the protected environment of the school.
Whether you’re off to a four-year school, going into an apprenticeship, taking a gap year or staying here to take advantage of one of the fine colleges – two-year or four-year – in the Chicago area, you’re probably finding that a lot of people want to offer you some good advice. You can Google some college commencement speeches and see pretty much what you’re going to figure out on your own in the coming years.
That said, here are some more things to consider:
- Show up promptly and prepared.
- Learn to study in more than one place.
- Take at least one class or take on one task you think is too tough for you and one class or one task that really interests you, even if it’s not on your current horizon.
- Read. Try a book on the “banned” or “challenged” list and some classics written in or translated into English. If you’ve already read one, read another one.
- Seek ways to have thoughtful conversations with your peers and your teachers or supervisors.
- Keep up with the news, but use more than one source.
- Thank your family for their support.
- No matter whether you’re staying or going, register to vote.
And please know that if you go, we’ll want you back. You’ll always have a home here in Evanston.
Information on the history of ETHS came from articles by Victoria Scott and Larry Gavin in Encountering Evanston History. The book is available at evanstonbook.com and Bookends & Beginnings in downtown Evanston.