Charge Spite in Transfer of Teaching Staff

From The Indianapolis Star, Tuesday, June 17, 1919: Irvington citizens held a mass meeting last night in the School No. 57 auditorium protesting the Indianapolis school board’s wholesale transfer of teachers from the Irvington School. Matters quickly came to fever heat between those supporting the transfers led by Mrs. Harriet (Edward) Hecker, president of the Parent-Teacher Club of Irvington, and those opposing the transfers. Artist William Forsyth said the transfers were “petty spite” by former principal Lydia Blaich whom he characterized as a “Prussian unter-officer…attempting to make little obedient boches out of our children.” Charles Cross speaking for Miss Blaich said Irvington schools needed discipline, while Grace Julian Clarke accused her of being “a martinet who had been inflicting Prussianism on Irvington for years.” A delegation led by Demarchus Brown will later meet with the school board about the transfers.

“Charge Spite in Transfer of Teaching Staff,” The Indianapolis Star, 17 June 1919, p. 1:1