Selections from the 1971 Cass Tech yearbook
When it comes to researching schools of Detroit, finding a yearbook is pretty much solid gold - they're a great source for pictures and history.
The manner in which a yearbook is written and laid out also provides insight into the way that students lived in that time.
Click on the images for a larger image.
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That's why I find the 1971 edition of Cass Tech's yearbook - The Triangle - especially interesting.
I have 22 Cass Tech yearbooks I use as sources for my research, from the 60's on up to the present. Most of them are pretty dull: rows of smiling portraits, out-of-focus snapshots of startled faculty, and an increasing reliance on clip art and funky fonts. They're boring. Like most yearbooks are.
But from the moment you open the '71 Triangle, it's different.
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From its very first pages, the yearbook is a political / social statement.
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I typically page through a yearbook quickly, scan any useful images, and return it to the pile. With this yearbook though, I actually started reading it.
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For someone who wasn't even born in, much less lived through the 70's, it's a look at what life was like back then.
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What really strikes me though is the attention to detail given to the layout, the hand-drawn illustrations and the content. It's genuinely fascinating.
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Rather than being a record of the school year, the yearbook sometimes reads like an open critique of the administration, the school board, the city, and the nation.
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The author write of their frustration with the levels of bureaucracy at Cass.
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In the pages above, the students are staging a sit-in to kick of a movement to "upgrade Cass with more student power." Below are the list of demands that the "ad-hoc committee for the preservation of Cass" delivered to the principal, and his response.
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