OURPROUDHERITAGE
A telegram announcing NANE’ s first headquarters.
The first issue of The Journal of Nursery Education.
Those who presided over the organization in the 1950s faced a dearth of federal funds and public indifference to early childhood education while advocating for professional standards and increased funding. There was more work to be done.
1956 – 1965
The decade from 1956 to 1965 marked a time of tremendous capacity building, moving the organization from an all-volunteer effort to having a paid staff and dedicated headquarters. Affiliate groups were formally recognized beginning in 1956( NANE 1956). A telegram sent to every member in 1958 announced that an office had been established in Chicago, with June Aimen as organizational consultant. Articles of incorporation were filed in Illinois as a 501( c)( 3) nonprofit organization. NANE sent official delegates to the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth, including Dr. Marilyn M. Smith, who later became the association’ s executive director( Mohr 1960).( See“ NAEYC Presidents and Executive Directors” on pages 20-21 for a list of all NAEYC executive
directors.) In 1964, the association reorganized and changed its name to the National Association for the Education of Young Children to reflect a broader mission beyond nursery education. Cornelia“ Nell” Goldsmith was convinced to leave retirement and become NAEYC’ s first( and only) executive secretary. She worked in New York City. She moved organizational functions that operated in Rhode Island, Iowa, and Chicago to New York( Witherspoon 2001) and later established the first official headquarters office in Washington, DC( NAEYC, n. d.).
NAEYC leaders and staff were part of Project Head Start from its beginnings in 1964. Head Start was proposed by an interdisciplinary panel, and it was a part of the Office of Economic Opportunity’ s“ efforts to implement the community-action provision of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964”( Washington & Oyemade 1987, 6).“ Head Start was designed to offer poor people unlimited opportunities to participate in the initial planning and in all other phases of operating projects concerning their own children; in this sense, projects concerning their own future”( Greenberg
10 Young Children
Spring 2026