Episode 4: Acting Out
In the 1930s, at a women's reformatory in upstate New York, an upstart social scientist made a study that launched the field of social network analysis. It was revolutionary, but missed something happening at the same time at the same school, something we know now in part from the story of the school's most famous inmate: Ella Fitzgerald.
KEY SOURCES
“Ward of the State; The Gap in Ella Fitzgerald’s Life” by Nina Bernstein. New York Times. June 23, 1996.
Impromptu Man: J. L. Moreno and the Origins of Psychodrama, Encounter Culture, and the Social Network by Jonathan D. Moreno
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song by Judith Tick (upcoming December 2023).
Who Shall Survive? By J. L. Moreno (and Helen Hall Jennings). 1934 & 1953 editions.
The First Book on Group Psychotherapy by J.L. Moreno
Jacob Levy Moreno 1889-1974 by René F. Marineau
J. L. Moreno (Key Figures in Counselling and Psychotherapy Series) by A. Paul Hare & June Rabson Hare.
“The Ungovernable Ella Fitzgerald” by Russ Immarigeon. October 29, 2014.
Board of Social Welfare, State of New York. Report on the Training School. Sept. 1936. New York State Governor Herbert H. Lehman central subject and correspondence files. New York State Archives.
Opinions of the New York State Attorney General. March 30, 1932.
New York State Governor Herbert H. Lehman central subject and correspondence files. New York State Archives.
Jacob L. Moreno papers. Center for the History of Medicine (Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine).
Dr. Brill Defies Move to Stop Lincoln Talk. New York Times. June 4, 1931.
“Emotions Mapped by New Geography.” New York Times. April 3, 1933.
Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development by Daniel Immerwahr
The Development of Social Network Analysis by Linton C. Freeman.
The Delaney Report (1915). Prison Public Memory.
The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice by Geoff Ward.
The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency by Anthony Platt.
Shadows Illuminated: Women in a Rural Culture by Terry Jaakkola & Julia Lambert Frericks [out of print via Minnesota Historical Society; source for details about Fannie French Morse’s person, habits, and suspicions of her time in Minnesota].
“In Memoriam: Fannie French Morse: 1866-1944” by Richard Firestone. Sociometry, Vol. 7, No. 1, (February 1944) pp. 76-78.
“REFORM METHODS REVERSED AT N. Y. TRAINING SCHOOL.” The Springfield Sunday Union and Republican. December 13, 1936.“Hudson Girls' School Shook Off Prison Air Under Mrs. Morse” by Paul Benton. The Ogdensburg Republican-Journal. May 5, 1931.
“Delinquent Girls Are Helped Through Work” by Virginia Pope. New York Times. August 22, 1926.
“Dr. Morse Retiring From State Duties” by Anne Petersen. New York Times. November 7, 1937.
“REFORMATORY WILL GET NEW RACE POLICY: Negro Discrimination Is Ordered To Be Abolished Special to The Amsterdam News.” The New York Amsterdam News (1922-1938); Nov 21, 1936; ProQuest pg. 1
“The Theater Where Ella Fitzgerald Got Her Start” by Reggie Nadelson. The New York Times Style Magazine. June 25, 2020.
Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz, Updated Edition by Stuart Nicholson.
The Voice of the Father (interview with J.L. Moreno)