Showing posts with label educator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label educator. Show all posts

May 16 – Happy Birthday, Cheryl Clarke!

Posted on May 16, 2020


Born on this date in 1947...

Born and raised in Washington, D.C. The capital city of the United States. The location of a lot of powerful institutions as well as protests about the misuse of power.

Born at the height of the U.S. civil rights movement!

Cheryl Clarke's ancestors were enslaved, and her parents (and maybe Cheryl herself?) experienced first-hand Jim Crow segregation. 

It stands to reason that Clarke grew up with an urge to speak out against racism. To speak up for rights and justice. She was just 16 years old when she attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom - and ran into Martin Luther King, Jr.!

Clarke spent a lot of years in higher education. Not only did she receive a B.A., an M.A., an M.S.W. (Masters in Social Work), and a Ph.D. (!), she also became an administrator at Rutgers University. A lesbian, Clarke cared about the needs of LGBT students, and she worked to make the university better (more accessible, more relevant, more responsive) to students of color and to LGBT students. She started an office for social justice education and served as Dean of Students. Even though she retired from her administration career, she maintains a teaching affiliation with Rutgers.

But Clarke is better known for her writing. She is a poet and an essay writer. With her partner, she owns a used and rare bookstore, and with one of her sisters, she runs a Festival of Women Writers. She was part of an editor group for a literary magazine and is part of many community organizations. Awesome life, awesome contributions!




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March 10 - Happy Birthday, Hallie Quinn Brown

Posted on March 10, 2019

She was the daughter of enslaved people.

She worked hard to become educated (including becoming the first woman to earn a degree of Master of Science at Wilberforce University) - and she also gave back by working hard to help others get good educations.

I have written those sorts of sentences several times before. I keep finding stories about strong black women who achieved on their own merits but also worked to benefit others. Today's education hero is Hallie Quinn Brown.

Born in Pennsylvania on this date in 1849, Brown spent some of her childhood in Canada and studied at Wilberforce University in Ohio. 

Even though it was tougher to go South, far from her family and friends, Brown chose to do that because she felt she was more needed there. She taught children at "plantation schools" and also started a class for older folks so that they could learn to read. She worked in schools in South Carolina and in Mississippi before the organized suppression of black people in 1874 and 1875 made a rough place even rougher.

Brown returned to Ohio, where she got a teaching position and, later, a traveling-and-speaking position on behalf of her alma mater, Wilberforce. Brown is actually known for her mastery of elocution, which is the study of formal speaking - pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone. She apparently coaxed waves of laughter from her audiences when she wished to, or genuine tears, when she wanted that. She was considered to have a "magnetic" voice, and she could vary that voice in a bajillion ways.

When Brown returned to working in schools, she became a dean of one university, principal of Tuskegee Institute, and eventually professor at Wilberforce. She continued to speak at conferences and to help found organizations such as the Colored Women's League of Washington, D.C. 

I read that Brown was born (as I stated above) in 1849 and that she died in '49, as well - and I was thinking that it was a huge mistake, but then I realized that she'd died in 1949. She lived to be 100 years old!



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February 12 - Happy Birthday, Fannie Barrier Williams

Posted on February 12, 2019

Yet another amazing African American woman?

You betcha!

Fannie Barrier Williams was born on this date in 1855. Both of her parents were born in the North, apparently born free, and Barrier Williams was brought up in Brockport, New York. Even though her family was the only black family in their church congregation and maybe school and community, Barrier Williams said that their white neighbors were accepting and friendly.


It was after she grew up, and she moved away from Brockport and began to teach elsewhere, that Barrier Williams first experienced and saw racism and unfair treatment of black women. I wonder if the fact that she knew it could be different, and better, was part of the reason that Barrier Williams became fired up to make changes. 

Whatever the cause, she was an activist her whole life.

In addition to being an educator, Barrier Williams organized groups for African American voters and got involved with the women's suffrage movement. She helped found the National League of Colored Women and the National Association of Colored Women and the NAACP and Provident hospital (an interracial medical facility and school to train nurses) and Frederick Douglass Center and the Phillis Wheatley Home for Girls and the National Federation of Afro-American Women and and and...!



Barrier Williams helped to integrate a prestigious women's club and a library board, and she made sure that black people had representation at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. She spoke in public, including being asked to eulogize Susan B. Anthony in front of a suffrage convention.


All of this activism and accomplishment promoted the rights of black people, of women, and especially of black women. But it made society better and stronger for EVERYONE!


 

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