What is a Community? Taking Documentary Photographs of Urban Americans into the Middle School Classroom

Photo Essay

Nora Faires

Photographs by Bruce Harkness

As the nation nears the end of a strife-torn twentieth century, Americans of many backgrounds and outlooks lament the conflict and hostility that seem to permeate our society and render even more acute the economic and social problems that plague our country. For scholars, especially historians, this lament is a familiar refrain. Indeed, the erosion of community values has been a recurrent theme in American social and cultural history, stretching back at least to the late-seventeenth century, when Puritan divines decried the decline in “publick spirit” in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Yet although cognizant that complaints about a decline of community have long historical antecedents, historians as scholars nonetheless have joined with journalists, social service practitioners, and policy makers in lamenting the disintegration of community, while trying to understand its root causes.

Historians as public actors, moreover, have sometimes felt impelled to intervene in pressing public policy issues resulting from the crisis of community, particularly as this social fragmentation has affected children and young people. In this spirit, curricular projects in the pre-collegiate schools provide an appropriate venue in which historians can expand the audience for their discussions of forces that unite, rather than divide. These discussions, in turn, should foster a climate in which crucial concerns of American life, including poverty and homelessness, might be addressed productively with young people at an early age.

One such ongoing public history effort to promote social cohesion and raise awareness of contemporary issues is “Reinforcing Community Values,” a Michigan social studies curriculum enrichment project combining historical analysis with documentary photographs of urban residents. This project introduces middle school students to the question “What is a Community?” Supported by the state of Michigan, and directed by historian Nora Faires in collaboration with photographer Bruce Harkness, “Reinforcing Community Values” promotes a historically informed consideration of how young persons can forge social bonds with others of diverse backgrounds, ages, and interests. To date, the project has been field-tested in four public schools in and around the city of Flint, known as the birthplace of both the General Motors Corporation (1908) and the United Automobile Workers (1937), but which now suffers from deindustrialization, racial polarization, and the deterioration of housing stock and urban infrastructure (1).

“Reinforcing Community Values” builds on a prior Michigan elementary schools project, conducted by Nora Faires and John J. Bukowczyk, Professor of History at Wayne State University, which had focused on the questions “What is a Family?” and “What is Diversity?” Project photographer Bruce Harkness previously collaborated on a five-year long oral history and photo documentary project entitled “Urban Interiors” (1987-91), conducted in Detroit under Bukowczyk’s direction, on which this earlier project was based (2). The following photographs are examples of those used to introduce the concept of community to middle school students; accompanying captions detail aspects of the “Reinforcing Community Values” project.

All photographs are reproduced from Nora Faires, Teachers Guide: Reinforcing Community Values-A Middle School Enrichment and Training Program, ed. John J. Bukowczyk (Flint: University of Michigan-Flint, 1995), photographs by Bruce Harkness; courtesy of the “Reinforcing Community Values” project, University of Michigan-Flint.

Endnotes

1. “Reinforcing Community Values” has received support from 1994-95 and 1995-96 State of Michigan Research Excellence Fund grants. Flint’s contemporary problems also have received treatment by film maker Michael Moore in Roger and Me, the 1989 documentary of his hometown.

2. See Nora Faires and John J. Bukowczyk, “The American Family and the Little Red Schoolhouse: Historians, Class, and the Problem of Curricular Diversity,” Prospects 19 (1994): 24-74; photographs by Bruce Harkness.

3. Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (1978; Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 7.

Nora Faires is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Flint. Bruce Harkness is the City Photographer of Dearborn, Michigan.

Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to provide the images with this article. However, here are the photo captions:

Two young women take a break from cheering for their school’s football team (Detroit, 1994). The project adopts a definition of community that emphasizes shared experience rather than place. As historian Thomas Bender writes: “A community involves a limited number of people in a somewhat restricted social space or network held together by shared understandings and a sense of obligation. Relationships are close, often intimate, and usually face-to-face. Individuals are bound together by affective or emotional ties rather than by a perception of self-interest” (3).

Three members of the Brothers on Patrol (or BOP, as it is known), a volunteer organization of African-American men, begin their morning round of volunteer activities at a local school (Detroit, 1994). BOP members provide a range of community services, including escorting young children across the street, ensuring safety on playgrounds and areas adjacent to the school, and meeting with their counterpart parents group, Parents on Patrol. This photograph, one of a series of ten images on the Brothers and Parents on Patrol, begins the classroom presentation on community and prompts students to think about other groups they might identify as “communities.”

Elementary school teachers and children of diverse backgrounds join in a parade celebrating Dearborn, Michigan’s “Clean-up Day,” an annual event to support both local initiatives, such as recycling and litter removal, and larger ecological concerns, including the destruction of environments throughout the world (Dearborn, 1994). In the background is Ford Motor Company’s giant River Rouge facility, which employed 85,000 workers during its World War II heyday. Historical analysis helps to ground the middle school students’ discussion of this civic effort, tying present-day civic and social issues to an understanding of economic forces and political decision making.

Family and friends of murdered children gather before they begin a “march for justice,” an effort to raise public awareness of the growing tide of violence against young people (Detroit, 1994). This photograph demonstrates how a sense of community has arisen among people who share grief and outrage, and who have come together to protest what they regard as lack of concern for the victims of crime. Presenting students with such contrasting images promotes discussion of critical questions: What forces foster community? To what purposes might community feeling be put?

A mural drawn on a concrete embankment in a predominantly Latino and African-American neighborhood illustrates one way in which community members express aspects of their culture in public space (Dearborn, Michigan, 1994). Middle school students proved keen observers of how individuals and groups use decoration, costume, and iconography to mark personal and community boundaries.

The rear wall of a garage bears the tags of rival gangs, showing the contested nature of urban space (Detroit, 1994). The project raised the question of whether all communities serve good purposes, challenging middle school students to think of groups in the past and present that have fostered a sense of comradeship among their members but have pursued such destructive ends as bigotry, intimidation, injustice, violence, and crime.

Members and coaches of rival football teams in the Detroit Police Athletic League greet each other after the conclusion of their championship game (Detroit, 1994). A major goal of the ongoing curriculum enrichment program is to contribute to efforts that build social cohesion among young persons, asking middle school students to consider various means whereby individuals and groups in American society can resolve differences and reconcile disputes.

		Photo Essay What is a Community? Taking Documentary Photographs of Urban Americans into the Middle School Classroom Nora Faires Photographs by Bruce Harkness
		As the nation nears the end of a strife-torn twentieth century, Americans of many backgrounds and outlooks lament the conflict and hostility that seem to permeate our society and render even more acute the economic and social problems that plague our country. For scholars, especially historians, this lament is a familiar refrain. Indeed, the erosion of community values has been a recurrent theme in American social and cultural history, stretching back at least to the late-seventeenth century, when Puritan divines decried the decline in “publick spirit” in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Yet although cognizant that complaints about a decline of community have long historical antecedents, historians as scholars nonetheless have joined with journalists, social service practitioners, and policy makers in lamenting the disintegration of community, while trying to understand its root causes. Historians as public actors, moreover, have sometimes felt impelled to intervene in pressing public policy issues resulting from the crisis of community, particularly as this social fragmentation has affected children and young people. In this spirit, curricular projects in the pre-collegiate schools provide an appropriate venue in which historians can expand the audience for their discussions of forces that unite, rather than divide. These discussions, in turn, should foster a climate in which crucial concerns of American life, including poverty and homelessness, might be addressed productively with young people at an early age. One such ongoing public history effort to promote social cohesion and raise awareness of contemporary issues is “Reinforcing Community Values,” a Michigan social studies curriculum enrichment project combining historical analysis with documentary photographs of urban residents. This project introduces middle school students to the question “What is a Community?” Supported by the state of Michigan, and directed by historian Nora Faires in collaboration with photographer Bruce Harkness, “Reinforcing Community Values” promotes a historically informed consideration of how young persons can forge social bonds with others of diverse backgrounds, ages, and interests. To date, the project has been field-tested in four public schools in and around the city of Flint, known as the birthplace of both the General Motors Corporation (1908) and the United Automobile Workers (1937), but which now suffers from deindustrialization, racial polarization, and the deterioration of housing stock and urban infrastructure (1). “Reinforcing Community Values” builds on a prior Michigan elementary schools project, conducted by Nora Faires and John J. Bukowczyk, Professor of History at Wayne State University, which had focused on the questions “What is a Family?” and “What is Diversity?” Project photographer Bruce Harkness previously collaborated on a five-year long oral history and photo documentary project entitled “Urban Interiors” (1987-91), conducted in Detroit under Bukowczyk’s direction, on which this earlier project was based (2). The following photographs are examples of those used to introduce the concept of community to middle school students; accompanying captions detail aspects of the “Reinforcing Community Values” project. All photographs are reproduced from Nora Faires, Teachers Guide: Reinforcing Community Values-A Middle School Enrichment and Training Program, ed. John J. Bukowczyk (Flint: University of Michigan-Flint, 1995), photographs by Bruce Harkness; courtesy of the “Reinforcing Community Values” project, University of Michigan-Flint. Endnotes 1. “Reinforcing Community Values” has received support from 1994-95 and 1995-96 State of Michigan Research Excellence Fund grants. Flint’s contemporary problems also have received treatment by film maker Michael Moore in Roger and Me, the 1989 documentary of his hometown. 2. See Nora Faires and John J. Bukowczyk, “The American Family and the Little Red Schoolhouse: Historians, Class, and the Problem of Curricular Diversity,” Prospects 19 (1994): 24-74; photographs by Bruce Harkness. 3. Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (1978; Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 7. Nora Faires is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Flint. Bruce Harkness is the City Photographer of Dearborn, Michigan. Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to provide the images with this article. However, here are the photo captions: Two young women take a break from cheering for their school’s football team (Detroit, 1994). The project adopts a definition of community that emphasizes shared experience rather than place. As historian Thomas Bender writes: “A community involves a limited number of people in a somewhat restricted social space or network held together by shared understandings and a sense of obligation. Relationships are close, often intimate, and usually face-to-face. Individuals are bound together by affective or emotional ties rather than by a perception of self-interest” (3). Three members of the Brothers on Patrol (or BOP, as it is known), a volunteer organization of African-American men, begin their morning round of volunteer activities at a local school (Detroit, 1994). BOP members provide a range of community services, including escorting young children across the street, ensuring safety on playgrounds and areas adjacent to the school, and meeting with their counterpart parents group, Parents on Patrol. This photograph, one of a series of ten images on the Brothers and Parents on Patrol, begins the classroom presentation on community and prompts students to think about other groups they might identify as “communities.” Elementary school teachers and children of diverse backgrounds join in a parade celebrating Dearborn, Michigan’s “Clean-up Day,” an annual event to support both local initiatives, such as recycling and litter removal, and larger ecological concerns, including the destruction of environments throughout the world (Dearborn, 1994). In the background is Ford Motor Company’s giant River Rouge facility, which employed 85,000 workers during its World War II heyday. Historical analysis helps to ground the middle school students’ discussion of this civic effort, tying present-day civic and social issues to an understanding of economic forces and political decision making. Family and friends of murdered children gather before they begin a “march for justice,” an effort to raise public awareness of the growing tide of violence against young people (Detroit, 1994). This photograph demonstrates how a sense of community has arisen among people who share grief and outrage, and who have come together to protest what they regard as lack of concern for the victims of crime. Presenting students with such contrasting images promotes discussion of critical questions: What forces foster community? To what purposes might community feeling be put? A mural drawn on a concrete embankment in a predominantly Latino and African-American neighborhood illustrates one way in which community members express aspects of their culture in public space (Dearborn, Michigan, 1994). Middle school students proved keen observers of how individuals and groups use decoration, costume, and iconography to mark personal and community boundaries. The rear wall of a garage bears the tags of rival gangs, showing the contested nature of urban space (Detroit, 1994). The project raised the question of whether all communities serve good purposes, challenging middle school students to think of groups in the past and present that have fostered a sense of comradeship among their members but have pursued such destructive ends as bigotry, intimidation, injustice, violence, and crime. Members and coaches of rival football teams in the Detroit Police Athletic League greet each other after the conclusion of their championship game (Detroit, 1994). A major goal of the ongoing curriculum enrichment program is to contribute to efforts that build social cohesion among young persons, asking middle school students to consider various means whereby individuals and groups in American society can resolve differences and reconcile disputes.