History of the Future Educators Association®
1950s: New Directions
Members of the Cheyenne, Wyo., chapter of Future Teachers of America participate in a social reading group in 1950. Image from Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University
In May 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” and that racially segregated schools were “inherently unequal,” thus mandating the end of racial segregation in public schools. That end would not come quickly, as many local school districts found ample room in the ruling to take their time in implementing integration. It wasn’t until the Supreme Court ruled on the matter again in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, a decade and a half after Brown, that there was no more legal justification for delaying integration of public schools.
We don’t have much information about how the long and often violent road toward public school integration affected FTA, although it must have. Throughout the next few decades, the topic of black education came up in FTA meetings and publications, and certainly human and civil rights became a clear issue for FTA when it refocused its mission in the early 1970s. However, we don’t have details about how and if FTA members engaged in the civil rights movement.
Honoring Future Teachers
President Eisenhower expressed his gratitude to future teachers in this 1954 letter. Image from Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University
In 1954, the NEA launched a “Salute to Teachers of Tomorrow” campaign in which leaders in government, business, and media honored future educators by writing letters “To the Future Teacher.” These letters included messages from President Dwight D. Eisenhower; Vice President Richard Nixon; former president Harry S. Truman; Gardner Cowles, president and editor of Look magazine; Ben Hibbs, editor of the Saturday Evening Post; Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America; Otis L. Weiss, editor and publisher of McCall’s; and leaders from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the American Association of School Administrators, the National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards, and, of course, the NEA.
The choice you have made entitles you to the good wishes and the deep gratitude of all your fellow citizens, for your chosen profession is indispensable to our nation’s preservation and improvement.– President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Morgan Retires
On Dec. 1, 1954, the founder of FTA, Joy Elmer Morgan, retired as FTA chairman after 17 years. It had been his advocacy as editor of the NEA’s Journal that had brought FTA about, and his writing of many key publications guided FTA through the following decades. In his parting message to FTA members, Morgan referenced a poem by Carl Shurz: “Ideals are like stars. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands; but, like the seafaring man, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you will reach your destiny.”
A Split
Up until this point, the national FTA served groups on both college and high school campuses. In 1955, the college chapters broke off and formed the Student National Education Association (Student NEA). The name Future Teachers of America was retained exclusively for high school units and associations. This seemingly innocuous split of the two organizations would create a crisis of identity between the two in 1970.
