NEWS

Lost Schools: A photo that launched a revolution

Jason Clayworth, and Rodney White
DesMoines
The three-year old dispute between Iowa's public-school officials and the Old Order Amish community of Hazleton, la., became a subject of national interest with the reprinting all over the country of Thomas DeFeo's photograph, first published in the Des Moines Register and Tribune November 20, 1965. The picture showed Amish children, with their sideburns and black hats, scurrying for cover in the cornfields to escape the pursuing public-school truancy officer. For religious reasons the Amish did not permit their children to attend public schools; instead, they maintained their own private schools.

HAZLETON, Ia. – The iconic photo of Amish children fleeing into Iowa cornfields to escape school and law enforcement officers who were there to enforce compulsory public education laws turns 50 this fall.

Taken by Des Moines Register photographer Thomas DeFeo, the image was picked up in Life magazine and other publications, and historians credit it with rallying a national public outcry. It resulted in a religious liberties movement that substantially shifted Iowa's public education requirements, granting wide exemptions that remain in place today. The Register in the past month returned to the site as part of its yearlong "Lost Schools" project and spoke with some of the key players in the 1965 incident. It found:

• Second guessing. Arthur Sensor, a former superintendent at Oelwein, now 94, says he regrets his actions. Sensor said he was following state orders, but, if he could go back, he would allow himself to be fired rather than to try to force Amish children to attend his district.

• Forgotten photos. The Register uncovered dozens of photo negatives from the incident that had never been published. The Register has digitized the photos and made them available online at: DesMoinesRegister.com/LostSchools.

• Memories. Andy Raber, believed to be one of the fleeing boys in the photo, described himself in 1965 as a scared 9-year-old, but credits the act with saving the Amish way of life; Sarah Swartz, Raber's neighbor, recalled a harrowing scene as she attempted to block the bus to keep her children from public school. Later, authorities emptied the Swartz family's corn crib to pay fines for their civil disobedience, the now 87-year-old Buchanan County resident said.

• A new school. The original Hickory Grove school building from which the children fled was demolished last year and replaced with a new one-room school on the same site. The new structure looks similar to the old building but larger, is heated with wood, and — like its predecessor — has no electricity or running water.

• An ongoing way: State records show that Iowa has at least 55 one-room elementary schools that are exempt for religious purposes from most public education requirements. There are 1,382 students currently enrolled in such schools, nearly three times the number in 1975. Most of the students are Amish or Mennonite.

"It was a momentous sort of thing," said Erik Eriksen, a retired education consultant for the state who spent years documenting Amish school teachings and befriended several of the families involved in the 1965 scene.

Eriksen continued: "It cast the state of Iowa in a very, very bad light. It was a black mark from coast to coast and border to border and I'm sure beyond that. It was a situation in which the state found itself saying: 'We simply can't allow this to be.'"

Religious showdown between state, Amish

Amish, particularly Old Order Amishlike those who attend the Hickory Grove School, generally view the classroom as an extension of their daily lives and do not embrace education beyond the eighth grade. They reject worldly ideas or behaviors. Some teachings such as theories of evolution and the study of human anatomies run counter to their beliefs.

Amish believe that public schooling is problematic because it embraces outside influences that can weaken religious ties, ultimately leading to large numbers of young people leaving their communities. They believe that people who leave the faith are in danger of losing eternal salvation.

Iowa's Amish school controversy was in the making more than a decade before the 1965 incident.

In 1947 the Hazleton Township voted to consolidate with the Hazleton Independent School District. All rural one-room schools in the areas were closed with the exception of two that were purchased by the Amish community and run privately with no support from taxes.

Questions arose in 1961 about the lack of state-certified teachers in at least some of the Amish schools. Following the 1962 merger of the Hazleton and Oelwein districts, local school officials contacted the state about the issue and believed from the state's response that the Amish schools failed to meet minimum state education standards.

Officials from the Iowa Department of Public Instruction — today known as the Iowa Department of Education — told Oelwein officials that the department insisted that seventh- and eighth-grade Amish be sent to the Hazleton attendance center immediately and that kindergarten through sixth grades transition to the public school system within two years. The instruction must include teaching science, as required by law, the state department insisted, according to newspaper and written accounts provided by Sensor, the Oelwein superintendent at the time.

The Amish resisted. At least 10 Amish men were found guilty in 1962 for failure to send their children to schools with certified teachers. Eight were jailed for three days for failing to pay the fines.

The issue ultimately headed to court, where in 1963 Buchanan County District Court Judge George Heath ruled that Amish children could not be exempt from attending schools taught by certified teachers. The Amish appealed and, in the meantime continued to run their schools with uncertified teachers.

State and local officials attempted several times to force the Amish to send their children to public schools over the next two years. In March 1965, the Oelwein school board asked the Iowa attorney general for assistance and by September the state publicly concluded the problem was local and should be resolved by the Oelwein board.

On Nov. 18, school officials notified Amish parents that buses would pick their children up the following morning.

Parents like Sarah Swartz refused, and the highly emotional cornfield chase ensued. Register file photos from that day show law enforcement and school officials trying to force students at Hickory Grove onto the bus.

Sensor recalls hearing one of the Amish parents scream "lauf," which is "run" in German. The children scattered and the school's effort failed. Within days, the photograph of the children scrambling into the cornfield was plastered across national publications.

School officials were at a loss, torn between their state obligations and a turning tide of public opinion frowning on their actions. More than 100 letters streamed into Sensor's office, most of which he has saved and plans to donate to the Iowa Historical Society. The Register reviewed several of the letters, one comparing Sensor to the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany; another calling his actions "deplorable."

Buchanan County officials contacted state leaders following the incident. Gov. Harold Hughes requested a moratorium on compulsory education for the Amish. More efforts to resolve the matter followed until the Iowa Legislature in 1967 passed a law exempting the Amish from compulsory education and school standards based on their religious affiliation.

"It was a hard thing," Swartz told the Register last month. "I don't like to talk about it."

School official has misgivings on decision

Sensor, a World War II Air Force veteran, said he believed in 1965 that compulsory education for the Amish was a good idea — but only because he didn't understand their beliefs and way of life.

"I went to magistrate's court 18 or 20 times and testified against them and they were fined for not sending their kids to a proper school, and every time some outside organization paid their fine," Sensor said.

Sensor's perception changed within a few years following the incident after several in the Amish community befriended him. He and his wife ultimately welcomed into their home two Amish boys who left their communities and attended and finished high school while living with the Sensors.

"I now believe that if I had said to the parents: 'You are either going to send your kids to the public schools or you will be shot,' they would have sat there and let themselves be killed," Sensor said.

Local and state officials initially showed great support for Sensor's efforts, but that dissolved after the publication of the 1965 photos, Sensor said. He believes to this day that the majority of those who criticized him failed to comprehend the full facts or context of the situation.

Sensor said that if he had to make the decision again, he would refuse to enforce the state law.

"I would have sat down with the board of education and would have said, 'This is an unreasonable thing, we're not going to be able to accomplish this' and I would have suggested we try a different avenue," Sensor said. "If my board had not agreed with me, I would have resigned and found another job. I wouldn't have gone through that for anything."

Way of life remains largely unchanged

Amish leaders in Buchanan County allowed the Register access to their school April 15, their last day of classes for the 2014-15 school year. (The school runs for about 160 school days, 20 fewer than Iowa's public schools.)

The 30 children looked much the same as those pictured in 1965: The boys wore dress shirts in solid colors, the girls had bonnets, their books were well-worn. Science and current events are not taught, teacher Lizzie Gingerich said.

And the significance of the 1965 event is known in the community but not widely discussed, she said.

"We've never talked about it," Gingerich, 24, said about the students in the school.

Susie Hersherberger, the school's other teacher and Gingerich's cousin, added: "But mom talks about it. She remembers it."

Gingerich continued: "At that time it was really something I guess. I think it was probably a trying time for everyone."

Raber, one of the children who ran from school and law enforcement, said his parents had instructed him to flee. He recalls being scared as he ran through the cornfield.

Raber also recalls that his father refused to pay a fine levied against the family for refusing to send him and his siblings to public school. County officials eventually seized three hogs to pay the fee, he said.

"I think it was the wise thing to do. I, for my part, don't think I would want my children going to these high schools, big schools where you have 50 or 100 kids together," said Raber, who has 12 kids and 64 grandkids. "We don't use a computer in school, we don't even use a calculator in school."

He noted that things such as classroom-led prayer probably would be prohibited in public schools: "They were teaching a lot of things we were not used to being taught."

Amish populations in the U.S. have grown from about 5,000 in 1920 to about 300,000 today. Much of the growth has been in the past three decades, making it one of the fastest-growing population groups in the nation, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster, Pa.

Iowa currently has an estimated 8,320 Amish,according to the Youth Center.

Iowa education historian Bill Sherman, who helped introduce the Register to some of the Amish, says he believes the 1965 incident and backlash is one of the most significant in Iowa's educational history.

"It really paved the way for Amish schools and the Amish people to stay in Iowa," Sherman said. "I'm afraid that if we would have handled that differently and forced Amish children into public schools, there's a good chance that many of the Amish families would have left Iowa."

THE AMISH IMAGE

Amish people generally reject invitations for photography and avoid posing for face-on photos, mostly because of their religious beliefs. They cite the Bible's Second Commandment against making idols: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth ..." They also cite their own value of humility and believe posing for pictures erodes that value. The Des Moines Register respected the wishes of all Amish photographed for this story, which included no portrait photography. Additionally, Amish elders asked that no photos be taken of the children in the school, even if the children's backs were to the camera. They did, however, allow the Register to photograph the school building and its contents after the children were dismissed from class.

ADD YOUR MEMORIES

Boarded-up and derelict buildings — documented in hundreds of Iowa's communities through submitted photos by Des Moines Register readers —showcase the haunting reality of what happens to many structures and communities that lose their schools. In three months, our readers have helped document nearly 4,000 of Iowa's once 13,433 public school houses, hundreds of which have photos.

View the searchable database online and contribute your own memories, video and photographs on The Des Moines Register's interactive Lost Schools webpage at DesMoinesRegister.com/LostSchoolsShare.

Read previous installments of the series at DesMoinesRegister.com/LostSchools. Sign up for daily featured pictures by liking "Iowa's Lost Schools" on Facebook.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

The Des Moines Register is spending a year documenting the changes in Gowrie in northwestern Iowa between the Prairie Valley school district and the nearby Southeast Webster Grand district, which now have a grade-sharing agreement. The publication also is documenting the dissolution of the Corwith-Wesley district in far northern Iowa, a school with fewer than 110 students that is expected to permanently close at the end of this school year. Stories will be told in print, online and in a video documentary to be published by the Register this fall. The project is also under review by Iowa Public Television for possible statewide broadcast.