If you have yearbooks from Chicago institutions that would add to the Chicago History Museum’s collection, please check the Yearbook Finding Aid for the school and the years. If we do not already have copies, then you can fill out the Online Collection Donation Form.
More information can be found on the Collections Donations page.
Related collections include:
Yearbooks during this period devoted more space to capturing student experiences and fewer pages dedicated to faculty and administrative qualifications and institutional history. Yearbook editors included autograph pages for classmates and teachers. Some schools provided fill-in-the-blank pages for students to record their own descriptive words for important events, favorite activities, and special memories.
High schools emphasized providing students with technical skills to use in a job immediately after graduation. In addition to standard subjects, courses included bookkeeping, typewriting, stenography, sales and business management, and home economics. Shop classes allowed students to gain hands-on experience in mechanics, woodworking, metalworking, and other trades.
During World War II, yearbooks documented school and student contributions to the war effort, from buying bonds to salvaging resources like paper and metal to students taking nursing training and technical defense jobs.
Photographs and graphics are predominantly black and white. Color printing was sometimes incorporated into title pages, advertisements, or special graphics on the inside cover.
Group photographs of teachers and staff, grade levels and classroom groups, and student organizations and athletic teams remained popular. In addition to the student's portrait in the class or grade section, some schools in the early 1940s began including a second, individual portrait for athletic teams with students wearing their sports jerseys. Similarly, military training programs and ROTC programs included pictures of students in uniform.
As photography became more popular for capturing students' experiences, yearbook pages about curriculum content and clubs and organizations began to feature shorter written descriptions and include more photographs of students engaged in specific types of study or work.
Not all photographs included captions. A school's group photographs might provide captions on an adjacent page, identifying students by row with a first initial and last name. For pictures of students engaged in activities, such as a class lecture or choir practice, it was common to provide a description or commentary of what was happening in the photographs rather than naming individuals.
Some schools' formalized their group portraits by taking them in front of a neutral backdrop with students standing in clear rows. Other schools used group photographs to reflect the nature of the activity, such as students using the science lab or library or gathering around a table to listen to an instructor.
The inclusion of candid photography steadily increased within the means of the institution. It became common for yearbooks to feature a few montage pages of candid, informal, or action photographs from the academic year. Yearbook staff took pictures around the school campus or buildings during student outings, social events, or athletic games.
Photograph montage pages would often include handwritten captions of nicknames, initials, or descriptions.
Including baby photographs in high schools with smaller class sizes remained popular. A baby page for graduating seniors might include comparisons to current pictures or captions with clues to the baby's identity.
High school yearbooks also began to include photographs of parental clubs and organizations participating in events, such as the Parent Teacher's Association, Mother's Club, bake sale events, or social luncheons.
Yearbooks from 1931 to 1950 often include:
Students continued to use long- and short-form writing and hand-drawn illustrations to capture their experiences and memories of school. Yearbooks might include a range of short narratives, poetry, rhymes, jokes, satire, created dialogues, and cartoons and sketches. Humorous sections with jokes, "grinds," or "class charts" with descriptive adjectives maintained popularity.
Information about individual students differs between schools and depends upon the year. Some universities list only a student's name, while high schools might provide more details on a graduating student's achievements. Group photographs of lower grades by classroom or division might provide a caption identifying students by row with a first initial and last name.
Seniors or upper classes received more coverage than lower classes with larger photographs, longer character descriptions or quotes, or lists of the student's academic and extracurricular activities. Seniors might receive a full-page or quarter-page worth of content.
Some yearbooks only include information about the graduating students and no information about other seniors or lower classes.
Schools with more than one commencement ceremony during the year might publish separate yearbooks for winter and summer graduates.
Some schools began incorporating one or two colors when printing the title page or section pages, using the same color as a design accent on other pages.
A section for faculty and peer autographs and personal notes was common in high schools and colleges with smaller class sizes.
During this time, yearbooks incorporated more visual creativity. In addition to the photo montage pages, many yearbooks had a page or two of collaged photograph clippings, newspaper clippings or headlines, and painted or drawn illustrations. Some yearbook editorial groups embellished the collages by adding humorous taglines.
Advertisements or sponsor pages appeared at the end of many yearbooks. Students and other readers were encouraged to patronize the businesses and services.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many schools admitted students twice a year. Students could begin in the fall or spring semester, and the school held graduation twice a year, winter and summer. This admission schedule means that yearbooks from this time might have multiple sections of seniors, possibly two sections of graduating seniors, and the senior students still taking classes.
Some schools only published yearbooks for graduating students.
In the catalog and finding aid, a one-half fraction after the year designates a mid- or half-year publication, such as "1916 ½."
Since individual schools set admission schedules, some schools published books with February and June graduates from the same calendar year, and others published with June and February graduates from consecutive calendar years. If the school and years you are looking for include a ½ fraction, keep search years flexible and include a year before or after to account for when a student or graduate might be listed.
It was not until around the 1970s that most Chicago grade and high schools solidified a primary enrollment date in the fall and held a single graduation at the beginning of summer. However, colleges and universities still admitted students on a rolling basis.