Forty years later: Educational experiment resonates

Written by Andrew Kersey, Assistant Editor
Saturday, 31 October 2009 05:42

This is the first installment in a series about the 40th anniversary and legacy of a New Canaan educational venture. Click here for parts two and three.

In the late 1960s, the total number of black students and staff at New Canaan High School could be counted on two hands. The same could be said of white students at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Va.

By the end of the decade — on the battered heels of a social and political upheaval that claimed the lives of several of the country’s iconic leaders — administrators at both schools decided to take advantage of a shifting milieu.

Forty years ago this fall, 10 black student teachers from Norfolk State arrived in the largely white town of New Canaan to take part in what became a cultural and educational exchange. The project became known locally as the “New Canaan Experiment.”

Dr. Sidney Boose, director of student teaching at the all-black college in Virginia, arranged for the students to spend two months living with white families and practice teaching within the town’s public school system.

“The 1969 experiment ... occurred at a time when ‘colored’ was moving to ‘Negro’ and on to ‘African-American,’” said Warren Allen Smith, then-chairman of New Canaan High School’s English department. “It was a difficult period. New Canaan was one community that in those days was making faster and better strides toward human rights than I felt was happening at my other home, New York City.”

Smith recalled chatting one day with Assistant Superintendent of Schools Harold Kenney when the idea of a “possible arrangement” between the two school systems was first broached. Kenney had reportedly come up with the concept along with Boose while at an educational conference in Illinois.

“I was never sure what Mr. Kenney knew about my private life,” Smith told the Advertiser. “He knew that I lived in New Canaan for the 180 days of the school year and in Hell’s Kitchen the other 185 days. He knew also that I owned and ran the major independent Variety Recording Studio on 46th Street, just off Broadway from 1961 to 1968. But I was not sure why he would ask my opinion about blacks. Perhaps he thought no one else on his faculty had any ‘black connections.’”

Smith and the other department chairs unanimously favored the project, which then received approval from principals, the Superintendent of Schools Dr. William French and, finally, the boards of Education and Finance. A total of $3,400 — which included a $10 weekly stipend for the interns’ personal needs — was ultimately allocated for a two-month-long experiment that lasted from early September to November in 1969.

Making connections

Smith assigned a 24-year-old eager intern named Vincent Mitchell to the “avuncular” Hiram Tindall, a veteran English teacher.

Now 64 and living in Ocala, Fla., Mitchell said his two months in New Canaan had a lasting impact on the rest of his 30-year, award-winning career in education. He is currently organizing a reunion in honor of the 40th anniversary of the project, to be held at Norfolk State University on November 20-22. The project continued for several years after its debut in 1969, and participants from all years are invited to attend.

“What was most impressive to me about being in New Canaan was this simple fact: I never felt unwelcome anywhere because of my race,” Mitchell told the paper recently. “So many places in my home town had been off limits to me all of my life. I never set foot on the grounds of the all white schools. It was understood that blacks were not allowed there except as janitors or custodians.”

At the high school, by contrast, “Although I was clearly a new face — only one of two black student teachers on an all-white faculty — I never felt anything but respect from my colleagues and administrators. My 10th grade English students and I got along extremely well when Mr. Tindall turned them over to me.”

Tindall wrote to Mitchell last year that “you were the best student teacher I had, and over my 30 years of teaching I had quite a few.”

One student echoed this in an anonymous, hand-written letter to the young intern.

“I feel you will make great success throughout your time [due] to the fact that you are the most considerate and just plain, downright kind person I have ever met,” reads the letter, in pencil-scratched cursive writing. “I know very few people in this world I have met that handle their words more coordinately and know what they are talking about ... Your choice for a teaching career was probably the best choice you could have made. Only one thing, (I don’t mean to criticize but just some advice) I think you should use your speech talent more often — give more lectures. I look forward to coming to your class to hear you speak. I hope you show Mr. St. Clair this letter, for I want him to know how much your students enjoy your company as a teacher.”

Sincere responses

Across town at West School, 20-year-old Mary Harris (now Mary Mitchell), acclimated herself to unanticipated questions from Thea Lent’s second grade students.

“I taught second graders, many of whom had never seen a black person before,” she said. “It was fascinating to listen as on one occasion I said, ‘Do I look like Mrs. Lent?’ I got responses you wouldn’t believe. One pupil informed me that ‘Mrs. Lent doesn’t have purple blood.’ I immediately demonstrated by pricking my skin that my blood is red, too.”

“They were also fascinated by the differences in our skin color and hair texture,” she continued. “These were sincere responses from children who were generally isolated from blacks, except for servants in their homes or neighborhoods.”

Lasting insight

At Saxe Middle School, Al Knaus, head of social studies, mentored the “magnetic” Beryle Isaac (now Dr. Beryle Baker), who was struck by the many differences in teaching style and class structure between her new environment and what she was used to back home.

“We didn’t use traditional grades or textbooks [at Saxe],” she said. “That was new to me and it stood out.”

She was also impressed by the “high parental involvement” and a “freedom to try new things.”

“We were not limited by the four walls of the classroom,” Baker said.

Now a professor of social science at Georgia Perimeter College, she said such insights stayed with her over time. Later in her career, for example, she persuaded a supervisor at a self-described “innovative school” to use the same materials she taught with in New Canaan.

The fruits of the project were shared by both groups, said participants, and encompassed more than academic benefits.

“I felt all our teachers had their eyes open to these folks who came from a different culture,” Knaus said. “We got to better understand what they were involved with and vice versa. A number of us in the 60s felt the town was lacking in minority representation and we wanted to do something about it.”

What resulted, he said, “was something beyond the schoolroom.”

For information on the upcoming reunion or to RSVP, call Louis Wright, executive director of development at NSU, at 757-823-9068 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .