ABSTRACT
AS THE REGULAR monthly meeting of Memphis, Tennessee’s Board of Education drew to a close on the evening of February 10, 1873, Judge J. O. Pierce, a new member, rose to his feet. Speaking in behalf of the city’s corps of female teachers, the representative from the tenth ward introduced the following resolution:
Resolved, that it is the opinion of this board and will hereafter be its policy, that women employed as teachers in the Memphis city schools, are for the same services and in the same grade, entitled to the same salary as men employed as teachers.
Resolved, that the superintendent be appointed to a committee to prepare and report to this board at its next meeting, a schedule of salaries equalized upon the basis of the foregoing resolution for consideration. 1
Pierce’s petition neither shocked nor surprised his fellow board members. On at least one occasion during the last six years, a past superintendent and current board member included in his annual school report a recommendation to revise and upgrade the “disproportionate compensation” paid to women employed by the board. 2 Moreover, in recent months the women teachers had grown more vocal and persistent in communicating their dissatisfaction with the discriminatory wages they received to the board and to the public. 3