Explanation of Methods: Yearbook Analysis
Schools did not have to collect information on the race or ethnicity of students and teachers at schools until the late 1960’s, so we acquired this data for our decade by using yearbook analysis. First, we went to each of the high schools: Fairfax, Garfield, Jordan, Lynwood, Santa Monica, and South Gate, and got yearbooks between 1953-1964. We would sit down in pairs with one yearbook and analyze it, inferring the ethnicity of each senior student and faculty member. The researcher looking at the yearbook would go photo by photo and decide which ethnic group the student or teacher appeared to belong to, making an inference by their last name and appearance. The research partner would keep a tally. We all used the same protocol so that we could all record our data consistently and could easily compare them to different schools. On the protocol we categorized the students into five groups: White, African American, Latino, Asian, and other/unknown. These categories use updated terms compared to the 1950 census; we only included categories we thought we could place people into just by looking at their photo and surname so there are fewer categories than the 2000 census. Once we had all the numbers of the 16 yearbooks from 6 schools, we decided to convert to percentages. Percentages allows us to compare schools even if they are of different sizes; making bar graphs helps us visualize ethnic breakdowns between different years in the same school and between different schools.
The only problem that we encountered was the fact that our methods were not totally accurate. The pictures were in black and white, which made it harder to tell their skin complexion. For example, there were a few people that looked almost white but had a traditionally black last name, so we would discuss these difficult cases with our partners and vote on a category for the person. Even though there were some controversy, the majority of them were easy to group.
After looking at the senior class and the faculty, we also looked at sports teams and other extracurricular activities to assess the group’s diversity. We decided to do this because most of our interviewees said that sports were the uniting factor between races. Also, some said that if the school was predominantly white you could find the few minority students in the athletics department and extracurricular activities.
We also attempted to estimate the dropout rate in a school by counting the number of sophomores in one class and comparing it to the number of seniors in the same class three years later. However, because Los Angeles was growing at such a fast rate during our decade the senior class was always considerably bigger than the sophomore class. Therefore, we could not estimate the number of students who had dropped out. In future research, it might be more effective to do a name-to-name analysis, following specific sophomores through their high school careers and seeing how many graduate and how many disappear because they move away or drop out.
Our yearbook method was chosen mostly because the census data from our decade did not entail information on ethnicity in schools. Being able to do the yearbook analysis gave us the opportunity to compare and contrast the data on the communities around the schools. We were able to see that if the communities were predominantly Hispanic or African American the closest school would probably be a minority school. Our yearbook analysis contrasts with traditional research because we not only looked at the student body but we saw what they were doing. For example, we tried to see who was in what sport, activity and so on. Critical Public History relates closely to the differences between the traditional research and our own. Critical Public History is when you take the information attained by the different kinds of research and analyze it. You take the information you have and ask why is this like it is and what made it that way. After you have asked the questions and gotten the answers you were looking for you can give your opinion on it. I think that Critical Public History is 1/3 research and 2/3 opinion.
Yearbooks as Artifacts
The quality of the yearbooks at each school didn’t vary much. The yearbooks were all hard-back with beautiful, creative designs on the cover and sturdy, glossy pages, except the yearbook for Jordan High School which had thinner, yellowed pages. The Jordan yearbook fit many more students on each page, requiring smaller pictures, probably because yearbooks with fewer pages cost less to produce than yearbooks with more pages. The Jordan yearbook also consisted only of student portraits followed by copies of the entire year’s school newspaper. There didn’t seem to be a separate group or class to publish articles just for the yearbook like other schools had – so they just dropped the newspaper in, which did make for an interesting overview of the school year’s events, sports, etc. The quality of the yearbooks says something about the school because it says if they actually knew how to create yearbooks or if they had the equipment to make them. Also, the yearbooks show what the school looked like showing the facilities, the students, and the activities they were involved in.