The Brooklyn high school pants protest of 1942

“Should high school girls, particularly students of Abraham Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway . . . be permitted to wear slacks to class?”

The question was asked by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in March 1942, in an article about 16-year-old Beverly Bernstein (below). Bernstein was suspended from Lincoln for showing up to class wearing blue gabardine slacks.

“She wore them to school, along with a lipstick-red sweater,” the Eagle wrote, explaining that she was then sent to the office of the dean of girls, who apparently issued the suspension.

Outraged classmates showed their support by coming to school the next day in pants.

“Girls show up in slacks at Abraham Lincoln High School, in Brooklyn,in protest because a classmate, Beverly Bernstein, was suspended the day before for wearing slacks,” reads the caption on this Daily News/Getty Images photo.

These rule-breaking wartime students also circulated a petition, stating that girls should be allowed to wear pants because “they are better than skirts in the event of an air raid” and to “conserve silk stockings.”

Boys signed the petition as well, according to the Eagle.

The next day, the Eagle reported that Lincoln’s longtime principal decided that although he disapproved of slacks on girls, “if the girls wear them, we won’t get excited about it.”

This wasn’t the only Brooklyn high school student protest. In 1950, thousands of students across the borough walked out of class to support teacher pay raises.

Like Midwood and Madison, Lincoln is one of those legendary Brooklyn high schools with an impressive roster of graduates since opening in 1930—including Arthur Miller, Joseph Heller, Mel Brooks, and Neil Diamond.

[Second photo: New York Daily News]

Girls’ High School is a Gothic dream in Bed-Stuy

“It is the ambition of every Brooklyn girl after graduating from the public schools to enter the Girls’ High School, where she may enjoy the advantages of advanced education, and be prepared for college or for more immediate concerns of life.”

That was the lead in a New York Times story about Girls’ High in 1895, when Brooklyn was a separate city known for its strong support of public schools.

The postcard at the top of the page gives us Girls’ High as a Victorian Gothic dream building, opened in 1886 at Nostrand Avenue and Halsey Street.

So proud of the school was the newly unified city that they put it on a postcard.

Today the combined Boys and Girls High School is on Fulton Street, and the old Girls’ building is an adult learning center.

[First image: NYPL; second image: 6tocelebrate.org]

Defunct Bushwick High’s glorious school song

Bushwick High School, opened in 1914, had a rough final decade or two before the school graduated its last class in 2006.

In the 1990s, a student was raped in the basement. The student body was twice as large as the building could hold. The graduation rate stalled at 35 percent.

With this in mind, it’s hard to imagine a time when Bushwick High was an athletic powerhouse and students swelled with pride.

But if the school song is to be believed, they were—about 100 years ago.

A sampling of the lyrics:

“Oh! See the flashing colors of dear old Bushwick High;
And hear her sons and daughters throw out the gladsome cry;
Dear Bushwick now and ever, in vict’ry or defeat;
On diamond, track, and field, old Bushwick’s athletes can’t be beat.”

The star athletes of Brooklyn’s Boys High School

Class of January 1934, that is—back then, when Boys High in Bed-Stuy was a top high school, graduations took place in January and June.

If these kids were 18 in 1934, they’d be 94 now. They got their diplomas during the Depression and were young enough to serve in World War II.

We don’t know what their lives were like. But the Boys High yearbook, where this photo comes from, reveals a bit about their personalities and plans. 

Isidore Friedenthal was voted Best All-Around Man and Best Athlete. Sidney Firestone snagged Best Speaker and Class Salutorian. 

Thomas Walsh was Most Popular and headed to Holy Cross for engineering school. Enoch Stolder got into Syracuse dental. And August Bartoli was planning on “New York University School of Commerce.”