Students Defy Negro Teacher
Pupils' Strike Starts at Altgeld School over Substitute;
Parents Support Them
A revolt which threatened to require settlement by the Board of Education developed yesterday in the eighth grade of the Altgeld School, Seventy-first and Loomis streets. Two of the pupils have been suspended, others threaten a general walkout. Pickets are to be established about the school today, several students promised tonight to urge a general strike. The regular teacher was ill with influenza yesterday.
PUT NEGRO GIRL IN CHARGE
The only available substitute was a Negro girl, Effie Stewart, normal graduate and accredited eighth-grade instructor. She was taken to the schoolroom by Principal J. W. Brooks and given charge. As the principal left pandemonium broke loose. Disregarding the efforts of the teacher to restore calm, several of the boys arose and harangued the class to ignore the substitute. Half a dozen of the pupils left the room.
REFUSE TO OBEY HER
The teacher directed one of the pupils, Paul Brissono, to summon Principal Brooks to the room. Paul flatly refused. He walked out and reported the trouble to his parents at 1406 West Seventy-third Street. Genevieve Lindy, 6744 Laflin Street, next was told to go to the Principal's office for help. She declined and went home. Principal Brooks ordered both pupils suspended. He said the facts would be placed before the district superintendent, John A. Long. In the meantime many of the parents of eighth-grade pupils took a stand supporting their children.
The Commission sent investigators to check up the facts as a thorough test of a report which most whites believed and most Negroes did not believe. The Negro teacher in question, the school principal, the superintendent of schools, and some of the parents of white children in the school were interviewed. The following is the result of the Commission's investigation:
a) Every item noted by the press in this case was contradicted by the principal and teachers.
b) Principal Brooks stated that "the only part of the story that the newspapers gave straight was the color of the young lady teacher."
c) Superintendent of Schools Mortensen stated that there was no basis whatever for the story, and that no more trouble happened than often happened when mischievous boys took advantage of the absence of the regular teacher.