










































Publication Draft – SSCH – 2004


Reading Practices in African American Segregated Elementary Schools in the South: 
1940-1970 

Renarta Tompkins 
Mississippi State University  

 
 

Abstract: This study examined the instructional 
methods utilized by African American teachers in 
several segregated elementary schools in Georgia 
from 1940-1970. Using a cross-case analysis (Miles & 
Huberman, 1994) of the oral histories of six teachers’ 
experiences in teaching reading in 17 segregated 
elementary schools from 1940-1970, the following 
question was explored: What modes of literacy 
instruction did African American teachers use in 
segregated school settings?  

The study found that the instructional 
methodologies for reading and the materials employed 
by the teachers generally paralleled the recommended 
reading methodologies of mainstream teacher 
publications during the time period. These practices 
included reading aloud, round robin reading, phonics 
instruction, spelling, grammar, creative writing, 
recitation and memorization. However, three literacy 
related practices stand out, the first two, diagnostic 
assessment and flexibility in learning environment are 
not mentioned in the literature on segregated 
schooling. The third, informal literacy activities, 
merits mention because it figures prominently both in 
the reports of the teachers in the study and the 
segregated schools literature but receives far less 
emphasis in the mainstream reading literature. The 
study found that the teachers employed these informal 
literacy activities to broaden students’ literacy 
experiences beyond the classroom and the community. 

 
Introduction  
 Reading instruction generally excluded 
attention to the culture and ethnicity of minority 
students prior to desegregation. In instances where 
culture was included in the discourse on reading 
instruction, it was typically viewed through a deficit 
lens. Generally through the 1960s, students whose 
cultures or ethnic groups differed from the middle-
class White norm were variously labeled as “culturally 
deprived” (Foster, 1990) or “culturally disadvantaged” 
(Placier, 1994). In the predominance of cultural 
descriptors that reflected a deficit model, African 
American children were consistently portrayed as 
students without culture or as students for whom 
culture was a handicap to school success (Irvine, 
1991).  
 This acultural and deficit perspective 
characterized the discipline of reading instruction for 
the decades prior to desegregation. Yet current 
revisionist histories describe segregated schools in the 
south as places where African American teachers held 
high expectations, maintained rigorous curriculum, 
and enforced strong behavioral norms, while refusing 

to equate learning capacity with impoverished 
background or racial disparity (Morris & Morris, 
2000, Walker, 1996, Walker, 2001).  

However, neither the historical scholarship 
nor the reading scholarship has explored the nature of 
reading instruction in the southern African American 
segregated school environment. The historical 
literature on segregated African American schools 
affords little attention to any specific content area 
instruction, including reading. Likewise, in the 
reading scholarship, the experiences of African 
American children are ignored prior to desegregation, 
or simply dismissed as substandard. 

This study expands the literature on reading 
instruction by providing a historical case study of 
African American teachers and their strategies for 
reading instruction in segregated African American 
elementary schools in a southern state. Specifically, it 
explored the teaching of reading in segregated school 
settings from 1940-1970, relying upon interviews and 
analysis of archival documents. The study sought to 
address the following question: what modes of literacy 
instruction did African American teachers use in the 
segregated school setting?  

Based on anthropological and historical 
research that indicates that African Americans possess 
a distinct culture with “identifiable norms, language, 
behaviors, and attitudes” (Irvine, 1991, p.23), Irvine 
argued that the independent nature of the segregated 
African American school system allowed teachers and 
principals the autonomy to reflect the “patterns of 
communication, cultural preferences, and normatively 
diffused modes of behavior” (p. 35) of its community.  
In such an environment, a cross-case analysis of 
African American teachers may have revealed that 
they created culturally specific adaptations of reading 
instruction for students, adapting mainstream practices 
to reflect the cultural norms, values, and resources of 
the community.   

 
Methodology of the Study 
 This historical cross-case analysis explored 
reading instruction in segregated African American 
elementary schools in Georgia by interviewing 
African American teachers who taught between the 
years 1940 to 1970 and by supporting these oral 
history accounts through archival documentation.  
Data Sources 

Six female African American teachers were 
interviewed for this study. The participants 
represented experiences in 17 different segregated 
African American schools from 1940-1970. The 
location of the schools ranged from small rural 



 

 36 

schools to large urban schools. All the participants 
taught at the elementary school level, which spanned 
grades one through seven during the time frame of the 
study.  
 I also examined documents in public and 
private archival collections pertaining to reading 
instruction during the time period of 1940-1970. 
These included the documents of (1) The Southern 
Regional Educational Board, located at Atlanta 
University Archives, (2) The Division of Negro 
Education documents and county and school district 
historical documents, located at the Georgia Archives 
Building and (3) documents of the Georgia Teachers 
and Educators Association (GTEA), the African 
American teacher’s union, housed in a private 
collection. However, the laxity of official record-
keeping for Black schools and the destruction of many 
of the documents pertaining to these schools 
subsequent to desegregation allow only a generalized 
view of teaching in segregated schools in the state. Of 
these documents, most informative were the past 
issues of the Herald, the official magazine of the 
African American Georgia Teachers and Educators 
Association. 
 
Data Collection 

A three-tiered interview cycle (Seidman, 
1998) was utilized for each participant. Each interview 
provided a foundation on which to build the next 
interview and the use of multiple interviews increased 
rapport with the participants. All interviews consisted 
of a semi-structured question-answer format 
(Merriam, 1998) that focused on the teaching of 
reading in segregated schools.  

 
Data Analysis 
 Broad coding categories had been 
constructed through the review of the literature and 
formed the first level of coding (McCracken, 1988; 
Miles & Huberman, 1984). Coding themes were 
refined with each interview then compared across 
each case study. To improve the validity and 
reliability of oral history accounts, consistency was 
verified across multiple interviews with the same 
subject by repeating the same questions. Where areas 
of concern emerged, clarification was sought through 
other participants or archival documents. Throughout 
the study, archival data was used to confirm, expand, 
or challenge the oral report, where possible. 

A limitation of the study was the accuracy of 
the participants’ memories of the time period of the 
study, as well as the high participant mobility across 
school settings, which may have obscured practices 
specific to a particular school site. However, most 
participants were able to provide general information 
regarding their teaching of reading; although some 
found it difficult to pinpoint a practice to a specific 
site, most were able to distinguish between pre-

desegregation teaching and post-desegregation 
teaching.  

 
Results of the Study 
 Although the historical literature on 
segregated schooling has not focused specifically on 
reading, several studies provided insight into literacy 
instruction in segregated African American 
elementary schools (Morris & Morris, 2000; 
Robinson, 1978, Walker, 1996). The practices 
described in the historical literature provide context 
for interpreting the results of this study. 
 
Reading Materials 

The predominant basal reader used in 
mainstream White schools from 1940-1965 was the 
Dick and Jane reader (Fleish, 1955; Williams, 1995), 
likewise, in African American schools in this study, 
the most often mentioned basal for elementary 
instruction was the Dick and Jane reader (Dempsey & 
Noblit, 1993; Morris & Morris, 2000). However, Dick 
and Jane turned out to be only one of several different 
basal series being used by the teachers. Indeed, all but 
one of the teachers in the study had access to multiple 
sets of readers and often selected the reader they felt 
best suited the students’ needs. One teacher found that 
for “many kids, it [Dick and Jane] was too repetitive” 
and used it only for the lowest students. She used 
Row, Peterson and Company’s Alice and Jerry readers 
or the Allyn Bacon series for her more able students. 
Most teachers identified their basal text by the 
publisher’s name and demonstrated familiarity with 
the series by actually attributing certain characteristics 
of text to a particular series.  One of the teachers, Mrs. 
Waters explained it this way: 

 
Let’s say that for the lower group, you 
would want a series that really had a lot of 
vocabulary work and so forth and so forth, 
so you would put them in the Scott 
Foresman series…the next group might be 
in the Harcourt  Brace series. We never had 
a problem.  We had all those different series.  
You had to make a decision, but you got to 
know your series because you studied it.  

 
Mrs. Water’s explanation for the abundance of 
materials was that they never threw anything away.  

In addition to textbooks, teachers in the study 
frequently utilized supplementary materials, such as 
leveled reading kits and multi-level readers for 
instruction.  Consistent with Smith’s (2002) 
contention that by the mid-1950s, teachers were urged 
to utilize non-textbook materials in the classroom, 
several teachers used a children’s newspaper 
subscription in their classrooms, The Weekly Reader, 
to encourage outside reading.  One of the teachers 
ordered each child’s Weekly Reader on their 
individual independent reading level, even though she 



 

 37

was a sixth grade teacher. She stated, “Every child had 
his own and it was on a level they could read and they 
could go home and tell their parents the news and 
what was happening with the president and everything 
and they would just love being able to read the 
newspaper.” Other supplementary books were the 
result of teachers’ purchases with their own money. 
However, upon inquiry, it was found that none of the 
teachers attempted to collect literature that specifically 
reflected positive African American images. One 
participant felt that sufficient titles simply weren’t 
available back then. 
Instruction 

The African American teachers in this study 
identified several instructional strategies and methods 
used for formal reading instruction. The methods most 
mentioned were reading aloud, choral reading, round 
robin reading, and silent reading. Teachers also 
mentioned creative writing, phonics instruction, 
recitation and memorization, and discussion. These 
practices correlate with the descriptions of reading 
instruction in the historical literature on African 
American elementary schooling (Morris & Morris, 
2000; Noblit & Dempsey, 1996; Robinson, 1978 and 
are also consistent with the literature on White 
mainstream schooling (Smith, 2002; Martinez & 
McGee, 2000). However, in the cross-case analysis, 
two components, diagnostic assessment and flexible 
learning environments, emerged which were not 
reflected in the existing literature on segregated school 
instruction. Further, one component of instruction, 
informal literacy activities, is reflected heavily in 
African American segregated schooling but not in the 
literature on mainstream schooling.  

Evident in all but one account of reading 
instruction is the use of some form of diagnostic 
assessment, such as informal reading inventories, to 
determine a child’s literacy abilities prior to grouping, 
a practice consistent with mainstream instruction 
(Smith, 2002), yet absent from the historical literature 
on segregated schools. Two teachers mentioned the 
use of self-constructed assessments to measure 
students’ independent, instructional, and frustration 
levels of reading. One of the teachers, Mrs. Peters, 
described her home-made assessments this way:  

 
Well, the general thing that I used to use all 
the time, give a child a reader and let him 
read 100 words and if he missed more than 
five it was not his independent reading level.  
So, don’t try to assign him nothing in that 
because he can’t read it.  Missing five words 
out of a hundred, that was the basic one and  
then I had further tests.   

 
This method of leveling is still currently in use to 
determine appropriate reading levels for students 
(Smith, 2002). Other teachers used publisher-supplied 
tests to assess their students’ reading levels. These 

publisher-supplied tests apparently came with the 
purchased commercial reading text series. 

In addition, teachers provided flexibility in 
learning environments for students. This included 
flexible grouping, whole class, and individualized 
instruction. While ability grouping of students was a 
common practice and was recommended by the 
reading experts of the time (Smith, 2002), it was only 
one of the methods mentioned by the teachers in the 
study. An early elementary teacher, Mrs. Taylor, 
offered the following description of her ability 
grouping experience in one of the school. She 
arranged her students into three ability groups and 
partnered with another teacher so that one teacher 
could work with all the lower-achieving students 
while the other worked with all the higher-achieving 
students. The teachers alternated from year to year so 
that neither teacher was consistently assigned the 
same ability group. She commented that “back in 
those days it was an acceptable practice to move 
students back and forth among classrooms,” although 
she had noticed that teachers today do not share their 
instructional responsibilities in the same manner. 
 Three teachers made specific reference to 
their use of whole class instruction, usually with the 
teacher reading aloud and evoking responses from the 
students, particularly for teaching vocabulary and 
comprehension. When teaching first grade, Mrs. 
Taylor described how she used a program in the 1960s 
that provided filmstrips to accompany stories, while 
Mrs. Peters discussed the elaborate preparations that 
she made in anticipation of her Friday story-hour with 
the students.  During the discussion of whole group 
instruction, Mrs. Taylor stated, “We taught our 
stories”, which prompted a description of instruction 
that was a combination of reading a short portion of a 
story and then allowing students to discuss their 
interpretation of the story and how the story related to 
their lives. The role of discussion was confirmed by 
both Mrs. Taylor and another teacher, Mrs. Haver, as 
a way of developing students’ use of oral language.  
Mrs. Haver believed that vocabulary development was 
integral to her students’ success.  She loved engaging 
the children in conversations because she believed 
those conversations improved their language skills.  
For example, she encouraged discussions about the 
literature, about the subject they were learning, or just 
about themselves. She reports that she talked to them 
as much as they talked to her, encouraging them to 
think about what they wanted to do when they 
finished school even though they were only in the 
fourth grade.  

Despite large classes, three of the teachers in 
the study set aside some time for individualized 
instruction in their day, a practice consistent with 
Beauboeuf-Lafontant’s (2002) assertion that, in the 
classroom of caring African American teachers, 
“weak children were not left to themselves” (p.81). 
Individual instruction was provided for students who 



 

 38 

had not performed well within their reading groups 
and needed a little extra help. One teacher had a set 
goal of working individually with three children a day. 
While this practice was specifically discussed by three 
of the teachers, other teachers may have felt that they 
addressed individual needs sufficiently through ability 
grouping.  

Lastly, African American teachers 
supplemented in-class learning through informal 
modes of instruction. Numerous studies of segregated 
schools (Davis, 1996; Edwards, Royster & Bates, 
1979; Robinson, 1978; Tilford-Weathers, 1982; 
Morris & Morris, 2000; Savage, 2001; Walker, 1996) 
illustrate the ways in which elementary and secondary 
teachers reinforced literacy by requiring recitations 
and performances and by encouraging students to 
engage in literacy-related activities and clubs that 
encouraged discourse in literacy. The goal of many of 
these public demonstrations of literacy was to 
motivate students to develop the facility to speak 
clearly and to maintain poise under pressure 
(Edwards, Royster, & Bates, 1979), in addition to 
providing parents evidence of accomplishment in 
school. This practice of public literacy is supported by 
McHenry’s (2002) historical examination of African 
American literacy societies. McHenry’s study sites the 
development of public displays of literacy as a 
tradition of sharing literacy within the community. In 
addition to speaking and reading, writing was also 
supported. Students practiced writing skills by being 
placed on the school newspaper or yearbook 
committees in most elementary and secondary schools 
(Davis, 1996; Edwards, Royster & Bates,1979, 
Savage, 2001). While these activities likely were not 
exclusive to African American schools, the existence 
of these activities proved to be a prominent theme in 
the historical segregated school literature. Five of the 
teachers in the study had at least one form of public 
presentation of literacy each year. No distinction was 
made between those presentations that were school 
wide as opposed to those performed for PTA meetings 
or Christmas pageants. One suburban school had 
regularly scheduled monthly assembly programs, and 
two of the teachers from other schools recalled 
preparing presentations specifically for Negro History 
Week.  It was also in the area of these public 
performances that teachers related their most 
embarrassing or fun moments. Mrs. Harris related 
humorously that the month she began her teaching 
assignment was the same month that her class was 
scheduled to present the assembly program but, 
luckily, one of the other teachers “bailed” her out by 
taking on the task.  In another interview, Mrs. Peters’ 
seeming flair for drama was evident in her students’ 
assembly programs. She declared, “When it came my 
time for the assembly program, I would try to have 
something outstanding.” She enjoyed practicing with 
the students and would try to make sure that they did 
not make any mistakes and “do real, real good.”  One 

of her students later became an actor appearing in a 
well-acclaimed movie.  

In addition to public performance, library use 
was also an integral part of three of the teachers’ 
informal instructional activities. One of the teachers 
not only sent her students to the library once a week, 
but often borrowed large numbers of books for 
students to use in the classroom, occasionally inciting 
the wrath of the librarian. Her school was fortunate in 
having a library facility, fewer than 30% of all schools 
in the country boasted such a luxury until federal 
monies became available in the late 1960s (Martinez 
& McGee, 2000). Other teachers in the study 
mentioned the use of public libraries. The state of 
Georgia maintained a few Negro-only libraries for 
public use. However, it is unclear whether students in 
small rural towns had access to public facilities during 
the time frame of this study. 

The final mode of informal literacy 
instruction that emerged from the cross-case analysis 
was the use of fieldtrips, although only two teachers 
felt these were important specifically for improving 
reading achievement, citing the value of building 
students’ background knowledge for comprehension. 
Most teachers viewed the use of fieldtrips as a way to 
broaden students’ knowledge of the world, which 
confirmed Harris’ (1992) contention that African 
American teachers believed that literacy included the 
ability to understand and to participate in the 
sociocultural aspects of society. Fieldtrips that 
allowed students’ to be exposed to government, 
music, drama, and careers outside of their 
neighborhoods reflected one of the ways in which this 
understanding of the sociocultural aspects of the 
greater society could be achieved. Mrs. Taylor 
believed that “fieldtrips made a great deal of 
difference to the children,” then added that today there 
is media, such as computers and videos, and these 
media are used to build students’ experiences outside 
of the classroom. The option of using media was not 
available 50 years ago. Mrs. Haver used her fieldtrips 
to go to the State Capitol or the fire station and 
sometimes to visit neighborhood businesses and stores 
within walking distance of the school. Other fieldtrips 
mentioned were factories and cultural sites that would 
allow African Americans to visit. It should also be 
stated that most of these trips would have funded by 
the parents or teacher, no funding for fieldtrips was 
available from public monies for African American 
schools until after Brown v Board of Education. 

 
Discussion 
 This study provided a surprising portrait of 
African American teachers from 1940-1970.  By no 
means does this study excuse the neglect of the 
southern school boards towards African American 
segregated schools, rather it substantiates the agency 
of African American teachers in making the best of 



 

 39

the resources that they had despite the circumstances 
under which they and their students lived.  

The stereotypical depiction of African 
American teachers prior to desegregation is one of a 
dedicated individual working with few and outdated 
materials and utilizing old-fashioned methods of 
teaching. This study found that despite the isolation of 
African American teachers from their White 
mainstream counterparts, there was a flow of 
information that allowed them to learn and utilize the 
most recent methodologies and strategies in reading 
instruction. Overall, the consistency of the use of these 
strategies indicates that these teachers were abreast of 
the trends in reading instruction that were current 
during the time they were teaching. The teachers in 
this study did not confirm these deficits in materials. 
This availability of materials sharply contrasts with 
the literature (Foster, 1990; Robinson, 1978, Savage, 
2001), however, two factors may account for teacher’s 
perceptions of adequate materials. The first is 
increased funding by districts to counteract the 
implementation of Brown v Board of Education. The 
second factor may have been that the gradual 
accumulation of materials in African American 
schools over the years gave teachers the perception of 
abundance and variety. This may account for the 
practice of using multiple texts in the classroom to 
facilitate the groupings of students and individual 
instruction on various levels that teachers practiced. 
 Surprisingly, teachers did not appear to 
consider racism a factor in their instruction. No 
mention was made of inequities in funding, though 
ample public records exist to attest to lower funding 
for African American schools prior to 1950. Yet, 
while it was not mentioned as a factor in instruction, 
clearly teachers were aware of the circumstances for 
African American children and worked to counteract 
the effects of racism on their students by choosing 
fieldtrips that exposed students to new ideas and 
environments.  

In addition, while teachers did indicate that 
they attended separate professional development 
activities from their white counterparts, they 
expressed no concerns that their activities may have 
differed from their white colleagues. However, the 
reluctance to see themselves as less effective or less 
valued as teachers was consistent across interviews. 
The African American teachers in this study clearly 
expressed the belief that they delivered the best 
possible education to their students. 
 Finally, this study raises a number of 
additional questions regarding the practices of African 
American teachers and reading instruction. Such 
questions focus on the dissemination of current 
reading methodologies among the isolated African 
American teaching community, the value of teacher-
selected reading materials as opposed to mass 
textbook adoptions, and the similarity of literacy 
practices across multiple school settings despite the 

lack of professional development for African 
American teachers. These questions as well as others 
beg for deeper exploration of the historical practices 
of African American teachers. 
 
References 
 
Beauboeuf-Lafontant, T. (2002). A womanist 

experience of caring: Understanding the 
pedagogy of exemplary black women teachers. 
The Urban Review, 34(1). 

Davis, L. G. (1996). A history of Beaufort/Queen 
Street High School: 1928-1968 Kingston, NY : 
Tri-State Services. 

Dempsey, V. & Noblit, G. (1993). The demise of 
caring in an African American Community:  

One consequence of school desegregation. Urban 
Review, 25, 47-61 

Edwards, W., Royster, P., & Bates, L. (1979). The 
history of the education of Black citizens in  

Halifax County: 1866-1969. Springfield, VA: Banister 
Press. 

Ensign, J. E. (2002). Subsequent educational and 
professional attainment of Black and White 
students from two segregated schools. Journal of 
Negro Education, 71, 331-346. 

Flesch, R. (1955). Why Johnny can’t read. New York: 
Harper & Row Publishers 

Foster, M. (1990). The politics of race: Through the 
eyes of African American teachers. Journal of 
Education, 172 (3). 123-142. 

Harris, V. (1992). African-American conceptions of 
literacy: A historical perspective. Theory into 
Practice, 31, 276-286. 

Harris, V. (1994). Historic readers for African 
American children (1868-1944): Uncovering and  

reclaiming a tradition of opposition. In M. J. Shujaa 
(Ed), Too much schooling too little education, 
(pp.144-175). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 
Inc. 

Irvine, J. J. (1991).  Black students and school failure. 
Westport: Praeger. 

Martinez, M. G. & McGee, L. M. (2000). Children’s 
literature and reading instruction: Past, present, 
and future.  Reading Research Quarterly, 35 (1), 
154-169   

McCracken, G. (1988). The long interview. Newbury 
Park: Sage Publications. 

McCullough-Garrett, A. (1993). Reclaiming the 
African American vision for teaching: Toward an 
educational conversation.  Journal of Negro 
Education, 62, 433-440. 

McHenry, E. (2002). Forgotten readers: Recovering 
the lost history of African American literary  
societies. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 

Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case 
study applications in education. San Francisco, 
CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. 



 

 40 

Miles, M. B. & Huberman, M. (1984) Qualitative data 
analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage  Publications. 

Moore, D.W., Readence, J.E., & Rickelman, R. J. 
(1983). An historical exploration of content area 
reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 
18(4), 419-438. 

Morris, V. G. & Morris, C. L. (2000). Creating caring 
and nurturing educational environments for 
African American children. Westport, CT: Bergin 
and Garvey. 

Noblit, G. W. & Dempsey, V. O. (1996). The social 
construction of virtue: The moral life of schools.  
New York: State University of New York Press. 

Odom, E. J. (Ed.) (1956). The Herald: Official 
Journal of the Georgia Teachers and  Education 
Association. 

Placier, M. (1994, April). The cycle of student labels 
in education: The case of culturally 
deprived/disadvantaged and at risk. Paper 
presented at the Annual Meeting of the American 
Educational Research Association, New Orleans, 
LA. 

Robinson, D. R. (1978). The bell rings at four: A 
black teacher’s chronicle of change.   Austin, TX: 
Madrona Press. 

Savage, C. J., (2001). Because we did more with less: 
The agency of African American teachers in 
Franklin, Tennessee: 1890-1967. Peabody 
Journal of Education, 76(2), 170-203. 

Seidman, I. (1998). Interviewing as qualitative 
research. New York: Teachers College Press. 

Smith. N. B. (2002). American reading instruction. 
Newark, DE: International Reading Association. 

Tilford-Weathers, T. C. (1982). A history of Louisville 
Central High School 1882-1982. Louisville, 
Kentucky: local publication 

Walker, V. S. (1996). Their highest potential. Chapel 
Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. 

Walker, V.S. (2001). African American teaching in 
the south: 1940-1960. American Educational 
Research Journal, 38, 751-779. 

Williams, C. (1995). Reading deeper: The legacy of 
Dick and Jane in the work of Clarissa Sligh 
[Electronic Version]. Image, 38(3). 

United States Census Bureau (2004). Percent of 
people 25 years and over who have completed 
high school or college by race, Hispanic origin 
and sex: Selected years 1940 to 2003. 
Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 
Bureau of the Census. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


	Data Sources
	Data Collection
	Data Analysis
	Let’s say that for the lower group, you would want a series that really had a lot of vocabulary work and so forth and so forth, so you would put them in the Scott Foresman series…the next group might be in the Harcourt  Brace series. We never had a problem.  We had all those different series.  You had to make a decision, but you got to know your series because you studied it. 
	Mrs. Water’s explanation for the abundance of materials was that they never threw anything away. 

	References


