Ambition: To Be Successful
In the 1950s and 1960s it was fashionable to ask high school seniors what their life’s ambition was and to place their answers beside their portrait in the yearbook.
Image: Jay Pee Bee, Jackson P. Burley High School, 1958.
For many Virginia residents, opportunities for careers after graduation were limited by race, gender and/or resources, but that never has stopped young people from having dreams.
By compiling over 6360 such responses from the Black Virginia high schools yearbooks in our Digital Yearbook Collection, we can get a sense of what Black high schoolers thought about their future careers. Many gave realistic responses, but every now and then something special jumps out at you.
Vocational programs were still very popular in many high school across the nation at the time and so a large amount of the trades that were taught in the curriculum dominate the charts. The legacy of the Tuskegee Institute and Booker T. Washington’s practical skills based education may have made this even more prominent in Black high schools.
For boys, this included such skilled trades as
- Auto Mechanic
- Cobbler
- Construction/Masonry
- Woodworking/Cabinetry
Image: The Lion, Peabody High School, 1955.
For girls this often included classes in:
- Dressmaking
- Nursing
- Cosmetology
- Secretarial
Image: The Dragon, Maggie Walker High School, 1959.
It is no surprise then that we see these professions highly represented in the data, especially for the female students who had even more restrictions on their chosen career path.
Image: The Huntingtonian, Huntington High School, 1966.
Top 20 Overall Reported ``Ambitions``
Yellow represents female respondents while orange represents male respondents.
Outside of the common vocational curriculum, a few other common choices stand out. 390 of the 6369 students (about 16%) expressed interest in the military, either generally or in a specific branch. Or, as one 1951 Richmond senior articulated, “A Korea Career”.
Teacher is always a common career ambition and 921 students, both male and female, expressed interest in teaching a variety of subjects ranching from physical education to vocal music.
Often students are inspired by their own teachers, and it makes one wonder if a specific teacher was responsible for the dramatic jumps in the ambition to be a history teacher in Petersburg in 1962, or Portsmouth in 1966.
You can also see trends in the larger world reflected in how students are thinking about how to support themselves in the coming years. As computers start to become more mainstream there is an uptick in ambitions associated with them including “IBM Programmer”, “IBM Punch Card Operator” and “Data Processor”.
I will always have a soft spot for those who express dreams that are outside the norm, including
- Theatre Manager
- Sign Painter
- Sculptor
- Skin Diver
- Marriage Counselor
- Lithographer
Or for those whom we did not include in the dataset since they did not give a specific profession but instead sentiments such as
- “To Be Independent”
- “To Make Someone Happy”
- “To Receive What Life Has to Offer”
- “To Be A Success”
Image: The Huntingtonian, Huntington High School, 1966.
You can view the raw data, as pulled from the yearbooks, here.
Our Virginia Digital Yearbook Project is also available to view online. If you have a Virginia public high school yearbook that you would like to donate to the Library of Virginia, please contact the author at jessica.bennett@lva.virginia.gov
