Posted on November 15, 2018
Another and another and another strong black woman from U.S. History:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh0WjY5M6p-Icrzwdc5f5gduShEOQVP5Na_wJEF8lvwrVa6JnZ7X7i6OQlccbIMqs26mLvVqrl2mgbBEvUSOnFAIgtTMapOQGIxgfnE0-J2RPR_sE4YTiEOKqlPiGUb_ysa-S9kwJFvwE/s320/young+sarah+jane.jpg)
I don't know if Woodson's parents gained their freedom before having their first child, or if they had to gain freedom for one or more of their kids. What I do know is that Sarah was the youngest of 11 kids!
She became one of the first black women in the U.S. to graduate from college, in 1856. This was of course still before the Civil War.
Then, in 1858, Woodson became the first black woman in the U.S. to become a college instructor!
This was STILL before the Civil War.
After the Civil War, Woodson was courageous enough to move to the South to teach black girls. She strongly believed that education was an important way for newly freed people to better their lives. But, at the time, many freed black people were fleeing away from the South and the violence former slaves faced there.
Eventually, Woodson married a widowed minister named Jordan Early, and she gained a stepfamily (he had eight children, four of whom lived to adulthood).
In addition to teaching for almost 40 years and serving as a principal and a professor, Sarah Jane Woodson Early was an activist in the temperance movement. This movement was a reform effort that sought to end the bad effects of alcoholism and drunkenness on individuals, families, and communities by simply outlawing alcohol. It was a well-intentioned idea, and in 1920 it became U.S. law through a Constitutional Amendment that is called Prohibition. But outlawing something so many people like and drink was a misstep with many bad consequences. Prohibition ended in 1933.
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