Daddy and the Family

Another ghetto school that so far seems to have escaped real strife is Detroit's St. Martin de Porres High School.* The reason may be that its tough-talking Negro principal, Joseph Dulin, 33, believes in confronting students before they confront him. "Damn you, nigger," he exploded at a student recently. "You stole them gloves. Now I'm gonna give you ten minutes to get them back to me." Eight minutes passed. Then the petrified freshman was back, sheepishly handing over the gloves. "These people are your family, don't you know that?" Dulin lectured the boy. "We got a family here. Help me, brother, why don't you help me?"

Tugging on Ripple. In a Catholic-run inner city high school that has gone from 55% to 85% black enrollment since the Detroit archdiocese reorganized its schools two years ago, Dulin maintains order by playing head of the "family" with such authority that the 32 teachers and 515 students all call him "Daddy." If he sometimes has to sound more like an angry stepfather than a soul brother to make a point, that is all part of his plan. As he told diocese officials at the time of his hiring, "I want to be the H.N.I.C. That means the Head Nigger In Charge."

He is all of that. On his desk lies a splintered canoe paddle with which he punishes boys who make trouble. Another weapon is the public address system, which Dulin uses to chastise errant students. This fall, for example, he publicly raked over some football players for "tugging on ripple" (cheap wine). Unorthodox in style and cyclonic in energy, the principal is often at odds with his superiors, as when he called off school the day the Detroit Tigers won the World Series last year. "Let me be the judge of when days off are relevant," says Dulin. "I might want to give them holidays on the days when Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were killed."

The Psyche Bag. Dulin warmed up for his present job as a physical education instructor at St. Mary's High School in tiny, all-white West Point, Iowa. It was the only job offered to him after he graduated from St. Joseph's College in his home state of Indiana. A bachelor when he arrived in West Point, Dulin soon married, had three children and moved down the road to Fort Madison, a town with 300 blacks. There he quickly became president of the local chapter of the NAACP. The folks in West Point still remember the day when Daddy Dulin ruined their annual pre-rodeo breakfast in protest against the appearance of "Aunt Jemima" as a so-called celebrity. After picking up a master's degree in school administration from Indiana State University, Dulin moved on to Detroit.

As the nation's first black lay principal of a Catholic high school (salary: $12,000), Convert Dulin sees his job mainly as one of building pride and responsibility among his black students.

"My job is not in the office," he says. "I belong out in the halls with the kids. It's my psyche bag. I'm telling them and showing them that they are beautiful people." As generous as he is strict, Dulin will lend a student a dollar out of his pocket or even hand over the keys to his car. His particular pride and joy is the school's Human Relations Club, a group of 15 black students who, in an unusual cross-cultural exchange, visit white suburban high schools whenever invited--but only if the suburban students agree in advance to return the visit.

To a few members of the family, Daddy Dulin's approach seems either too cute, or too overbearing. The important thing is that it works. Last year half of the graduating seniors went on to college, a matriculation rate far higher than that of most black-ghetto high schools. And teacher morale is soaring. "I'm here every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.," boasts Wardell Chisholm, an instructor in business methods. "I'm doing something for a change." Chisholm, 33, obviously likes his job. He took a $1,500 pay cut to get it.

* Named for a half-caste Peruvian lay brother of the Dominican order, who was barred from priesthood because of his race. In 1962, 323 years after his death, he was named the Roman Catholic Church's first mulatto saint.

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