Wonderful find. Amazing that the people who installed the new boards left the old boards with the writing intact. Did they do that on purpose as a sort of time capsule?
1917 could not have been a happy year. The war in Europe had been going on for three years.
April 2, 1917 — President Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States
April 4, 1917 — U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany.
April 6, 1917 — The House concurred.
December 7, 1917 — The US declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary.
Moms, Dads, sisters and brothers all over the country had to be terribly worried. I wonder if the kids in the school were protected from the year’s bad news.
Why did they replace all the blackboards at Thanksgiving in war time, I wonder?
And Influenza killed millions of people especially young kids.