(1876-1955)
New York City public school teacher dismissed during World War I due to her pacifist beliefs. Born on March 22, 1876, in Jersey City, New Jersey, Mary McDowell was the daughter of birthright members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). At sixteen she entered the Quaker Swarthmore College. She excelled academically, was Phi Beta Kappa, and won a Lucretia Mott Fellowship for postgraduate studies at Oxford University. After spending a year as a home student in the Association for the Education of Women at Oxford, McDowell returned to the United States where she taught at the Friends’ Academy on Long Island. During this period she also received a master’s degree in classical languages and education from Columbia University Teachers College.
In February 1905 McDowell received a permanent appointment as a teacher of Latin and Greek in the New York public school system. In April 1917, when the United States entered World War I, the New York board of education demanded that all teachers promote patriotism and demonstrate loyalty to the war effort. McDowell immediately joined the newly established Women’s Peace Party, led by prominent women Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, and Alice Hamilton. Though opposed to the war on religious grounds, McDowell was careful not to interrupt classroom learning. She did not call on her students to write letters, nor did she publicly criticize government leaders or school officials. When given directives to sign a loyalty pledge, raise money in class to support the war effort, and teach patriotic citizenship, McDowell quietly refused to participate. She felt strongly that her Quaker beliefs would be protected under the principle of academic freedom.
On January 10, 1918, McDowell was summoned before the New York City board of superintendents. Despite years of favorable classroom evaluations, McDowell’s supervising principal reported to district officials that she refused to support all school programs favoring the war effort. In late January the board recommended that McDowell be suspended from her teaching duties. The board decided that McDowell’s ability to carry out her duties had been seriously affected by her conscientious objection to war. On April 18, 1918, McDowell was formally notified that charges of conduct unbecoming a teacher had been filed against her. On June 19, 1918, by a vote of 4 to 0, the New York City board of education formally dismissed her.
McDowell believed that her firing had raised important civil liberties issues, especially with respect to her religious beliefs. She appealed her case to the New York state court of appeals. New York’s highest court sided with school officials, ruling that an essential part of a teacher’s job is to promote patriotic citizenship, especially in time of war. McDowell did not return to the classroom until June 1923, when, long after the war’s hyperpatriotism had dissipated, the city’s board of education reinstated her. The board maintained that the initial punishment was too severe and the product of public hysteria. She continued to teach until her retirement in 1943.
McDowell never abandoned the Quaker "inner spirit" of peace. When World War II broke out, McDowell helped establish the Pacifist Teachers’ League in 1940. Until her death on December 6, 1955, McDowell’s nonviolent resistance was expressed in a unique way. She mailed to the Internal Revenue Service only that amount of her required taxes not spent for war preparation. Her action antedated the War Tax Resistance Movement of the Vietnam antiwar protests.
Her contribution to women and war lies primarily in her willingness to risk her job and career in the name of freedom of conscience. Her legal battle represented the first in American history involving public pressures of patriotic loyalty versus female pacifism inside the school-house gates. She was the first female pacifist teacher to legally challenge a state’s educational authority during wartime.
