Every Day Is Special: March 10 - Happy Birthday, Hallie Quinn Brown

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!