Trouble In Hamtrack

Trouble In Hamtramck

One of the toughest spots in U.S. education is the city of Hamtramck,* Mich. Hamtramck is a nest of factories, beer parlors and brothels entirely surrounded by Detroit. Hamtramckers were prominent among 400-odd Wayne County public servants indicted in recent years for assorted civic crimes. In two decades four Hamtramck mayors, one local State Senator and pecks of small political potatoes have gone to prison on liquor, vice and graft counts. When one mayor left jail, his constituents re-elected him, promoted him to be an isolationist Congressman.

Once Hamtramckers boasted of their schools. Until he was killed in an auto accident in 1935, School Superintendent Maurice Reed Keyworth combined educational idealism and political savvy to create an astonishingly effective school system. Day & night schools enrolled 17,000 students--no less than 33% of the population. Teachers were (until the depression) well paid and protected from political pillaging by a merit system, the Keyworth Code. They hoped to change Hamtramck's character by raising a new generation of better citizens. Over the door of Copernicus High School was blazoned Keyworth's motto: "To develop individuals who can live successfully in a democracy."

Economy or Something. When Keyworth died, the politicos went to work on the $1,000,000 school budget. In 1941 the seven-man School Board fired 41 married women teachers, said that other teachers who married would also be ousted. "Economy," explained the Board. The teachers brought suit, charged that the firings were-part of a scheme to give jobs to favorites, collect kickbacks on salaries. The Board, they declared, might better economize by calling off useless work invented for a maintenance force which had swollen 800%.

In a later injunction proceeding the teachers again tried to halt the Board's inroads. One principal testified that a Board member told him: "If each teacher will give me $25, they will get their raises." Other testimony: one politician offered raises and a closed shop if about 250 teachers would kick in $100 each; one teacher slipped a roll of bills to a Board member and got a $400 raise; bricks ordered for schools were built into Board members' saloons and homes; an $1,800 school fence was moved to the home of a Board member's daughter. The Board, it was later charged, paid itself $25,000 in unauthorized salaries.

Hamtramck's teachers won the support of the local Taxpayers Association and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. When the Board tried to increase its badgering of teachers by rescinding the Keyworth Code, the Circuit Court threatened a contempt action. Fifteen hundred students demonstrated against the Board.

A group of teachers struck for two days.

Meanwhile, School Board President Vincent S. Sadlowski has been indicted on the charge of having, as Councilman, accepted a bribe from a parking meter company. Last week teachers were struggling to get continuing contracts. The Board showed some signs of backing up, signing up. Tough Hamtramck, although busy in its war plants, happy in its beer gardens, was apparently beginning to resent its newest, if not greatest, local scandal.

*Its 50,000 inhabitants (predominantly of Polish origin) fight their way through its name (which commemorates the first local American military commander) by pronouncing it Hamtram-mick.

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