Technical High School, one of several secondary schools in Springfield, Massachusetts, was photographed by the Detroit Publishing Company sometime between 1905 and 1915.
Following her undergraduate work at Fisk University, Dorothy earned a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Chicago. She and her husband Albert Pryor were teaching at the Kentucky State College for Negros, in Frankfort, Kentucky when Albert was summoned to teach in the Springfield, Massachusetts, school system. In the 1960s, Dorothy Pryor began teaching English at Technical High School, where students repeatedly honored her with the distinction “most popular teacher.” Following thirteen years at Technical High, Dorothy took a position at the Springfield Technical Community College, located on the grounds of the Springfield Armory. She remembers of her career, “I loved teaching. I loved my kids. I had a good time.”
African American physician Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931) opened the nation’s first interracial hospital and nursing school in Chicago, Illinois in 1891. Dr. Williams performed the world’s first open heart surgery in that city two years later.
Dorothy believes that “you don’t teach anybody what you know. You teach people who you are and where you’ve been.” In her classroom, she did not tolerate students’ disrespect for fellow classmates. Nor would she tolerate the false belief that one can judge mental ability by skin color, gender, or sexual orientation, an assumption which breaks down in the face of the life stories of real people. So, Mrs. Pryor would tell her students about individuals such as Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who was a pioneer in the field of heart surgery at the close of the nineteenth century.
A panoramic view of Springfield, Massachusetts, was photographed by the Haines Photo Co. around 1913.
In 1905, Eugene C. Gardner suggested that city of Springfield might be considered Massachusetts’ living room,
bright, cheerful and sunny, free to all well-behaved comers, unhampered by troublesome conventionalities, with room and opportunity for industry, study, recreation and social enjoyment – what the generous living-room with its hospitable hearth and ready welcome is to the private dwelling, Springfield is in the larger home of the grand old Commonwealth.1
Due in part to the presence of the Armory and the number of well-paying jobs which it brought to the city, during the nineteenth century Springfield, Massachusetts, became known as “The City of Homes.” A community affairs discussion paper written in 2009 outlines the economic decline of Springfield in the second half of the twentieth century. According to the report, manufacturing had been the dominant industry in the city before 1960 and the city’s average family income had topped the national average by 6%. By 1980, Springfield families were earning, on average, 83% of the national average; by the year 2000 they were earning only 73% . The report identifies the closing of the Springfield Armory as a significant factor in this economic decline:
Among the challenges faced by Springfield in the twenty years between 1960 and 1980, one of the most important was the closing of the Springfield Armory in 1968. The Armory employed over 2000 workers at the time of its closing. It had been a source of technological innovation for metal-working manufacturers in the Springfield area for roughly 200 years.2
In the early twenty-first century, the city of Springfield continues to seek ways to regain its former prosperity.
1Eugene C. Gardner, “The visible charm as it was, is and may be,” in Springfield Present and Prospective (Springfield: Pond and Campbell), 1905. http://explorewmass.blogspot.com/2007/05/springfield-present-and-prospective_27.html. Retrieved, April 2, 2010.
2Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Community Affairs Discussion Paper, “Toward a more Prosperous Springfield, Massachusetts: Project Introduction and Motivation” http://www.bos.frb.org/commdev/pcadp/2009/pcadp0901.pdf Retrieved April 2, 2010.