Educators, Modern

By: Sheila T. Gregory

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Educators, Modern

In the twentieth century, two factors profoundly affected patterns of black school leadership. First, around the turn of the century, the influence of black women as community leaders decreased because of sexist attitudes; white women suffragists thwarted leadership positions of black women by discouraging their participation in politics. The second factor, school desegregation primarily in the South, significantly limited the number and the effectiveness of black administrators. In fact, during the 1960s, after the Supreme Court made its historic ruling on desegregation, the number of black female and male school principals in thirteen southern and border-states dropped more than 95 percent.

The African proverb “She who learns must also teach” echoes the importance that has historically been attached to black women's efforts to become educated and share their knowledge with others, regardless of the challenges they faced. Many black women sought careers in the teaching profession or as educational administrators because of a desire to make a difference in the lives of black children. Traditionally, most black women had to work for a living, and their employment options were limited to teaching in colored schools or domestic work. For example, in 1965, the Department of Labor reported that 70 percent of all black employees were women, compared with 40 percent of whites. Furthermore, in civil servant positions, the number of black women was four times that of black men.

Betty Powell teaching a class at Brooklyn College, New York City. On the chalkboard, she has diagrammed the “language event.”

© Cary Herz, from Lesbian Herstory Archives

view larger image

According to the United States Bureau of the Census Survey of the Population Employment, during the 1960s black women accounted for 5 percent of public school teachers; however, few secured principal, superintendent, or upper administrative posts. While some black women found success in a few of the “higher professions,” most were still relegated to traditional roles.

Education served as a vehicle for many blacks to escape poverty and prepare their future generations for leadership in the community and society. Black women teachers, principals, superintendents, college presidents, founders, and educational leaders served as role models and mentors for young black students and students of color.

Teachers

After the turn of the century, three initiatives were established to aid in the hiring of black teachers who shared their knowledge by training and supporting other educators. These programs included the Jeanes Fund of black “supervising teachers”; the county training school movement; and the summer school program.

The Jeanes Fund, established in 1908 by the Philadelphia Quaker Anna T. Jeanes, gave aid and support to African American teachers in selected, mostly rural, counties that were overwhelmed with the demands of the classroom. By 1937, there were some 474 Jeanes Fund supervisors in 506 counties, representing thirteen states and the Virgin Islands. Nearly all the Jeanes Fund supervisors were black and virtually all were women. Since that time, the role of teacher-supervisor evolved from model teacher to community organizer to supervisor of vocational work to supervisor of instruction. Also, during this period, black teachers were among the best-educated, best-trained, and most academically sound teachers of the South. For nearly sixty years, Jeanes supervisors provided professional leadership and training with support from teachers, parents, pupils, principals, superintendents, board members, and college personnel. Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Jeanes supervisors' leadership team helped to end segregation in schools while simultaneously positioning themselves in difficult assignments dealing with the problems black teachers faced in desegregated settings. The Jeanes story, covering a span of sixty years, ended in 1968 with the loss of leadership among the original seventeen segregated school systems.

From the late 1960s to 1973, some black teachers taught historical consciousness through the Mississippi Freedom Schools, the purpose of which was to correct the inadequacies of the Mississippi public school system by rejecting traditional teaching practices and encouraging black students to become active in their communities. The goals of the Mississippi Freedom Schools, whose members were primarily black women teachers and librarians, were to teach history, racial pride, and resistance. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Mississippi Freedom Schools was their linkage to black southern women and their roles in the civil rights movement. The curriculum for the Mississippi Freedom Schools included a strong academic structure, but also offered topics such as black history. The Mississippi Freedom Schools provided not only an effective education but also a collective voice with which to address women's issues and the role of the community in raising children.

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, a number of exceptional urban teachers, such as Fredericka Clark and Ruby Middleton Forsythe, made their presence felt on the national education scene. Clark was the only black female student at the University of Illinois in the 1930s. Upon graduation, she taught physical education and modern dance in the Chicago public schools for thirty-seven years.

Forsythe understood the need to create a community within a community among her students and the value of teaching children using a variety of methods. Beginning in 1939, in a one-room schoolhouse on Pawley's Island, South Carolina, where she taught for half a century, Forsythe went on to teach at the Holy Cross–Faith Memorial School, near Charleston, South Carolina. Her approach to teaching began with respect. Forsythe explains in African American Registry online:

"The schoolteacher today has to be mother, father, counselor, everything. The majority of children have nobody to sit down with them and teach them the little things that are right from the things that are wrong. Sometimes I have to stop the class, close the book, and sit down and say, “Let's Talk,” because their parents just don't have the time."

Since the end of slavery, black people in general and black women in particular have played important roles in leading schools for black children. In 1961, 68 percent of teachers were women, while 31 percent were men.

Principals

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than 70 percent of all teachers were women, yet relatively few women served as principals. In 2004, roughly 11 percent of all principals in the United States were black, although the credentials of black principals tend to surpass those of their white counterparts. There was some growth in the numbers of black principals, especially in predominantly black elementary and middle schools, but the actual number of black women principals remained with low in comparison with their overall representation in the school system. Furthermore, there was a paucity of research on principals of color. In fact, not until 1974 did the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission start collecting national statistics on the racial and ethic background of school administrators.

In an effort to contribute to the available literature on black women principals, authors like Madeline Cartwright published books about this field. Cartwright describes in detail the steps she took as principal of Blaine Elementary School to transform her crumbling building with underserved black children, apathetic parents, and frustrated teachers into an academically challenging school with improved test scores, a healthy school climate, active parent participation, and empowered teachers. Born in Philadelphia and motivated by her own personal struggles growing up as one of eleven children in a poor urban neighborhood, Cartwright was determined to have a school where “kids could find help, not disgrace.” In 1991, the Philadelphia school district hired Cartwright to lead a new, citywide movement to actively encourage stronger parental involvement.

Superintendents

Even at the turn of the twenty-first century, black women were nearly absent from the highest echelons of administration in public school districts, and black women were grossly underrepresented as superintendents. Prior to 1956, there were no black superintendents. During the 1984–1985 school year, of the over sixteen thousand public school districts in the United States, only twenty-nine were led by black women. In 1994, only 4 percent of all school superintendents in the United States were women, and less than a third of those were black women. In 1999, 51 percent of the United States population was female, and women held 75 percent of the teaching positions, as compared with only 12 percent of superintendent positions.

Perhaps the most notable black woman superintendent was Barbara Sizemore, who was educated and taught (for fifteen years) in the Chicago public schools. Sizemore served as principal in an elementary and middle school for four years and was director of the Woodlawn Experimental School Project for three years before becoming a superintendent of the District of Columbia's public schools system from September 1973 to October 1975. During her tenure as superintendent of the District of Columbia public schools, she emphasized the irrelevance of biased testing to the academic achievement of black students and the necessity of taking into account black culture within the curriculum. Sizemore also taught in the department of black studies at the University of Pittsburgh and was later professor emerita at the University of Pittsburgh and DePaul University. Sizemore consulted with numerous school districts, particularly those in the Chicago public school system.

Ruth Love was another trailblazer, named superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District in California in 1975. Love was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. Her grandfather was a faculty member at Langston University, and her father founded the first school for blacks in Lawton. She taught school in Oakland, California, and England; counseled in the Oakland schools; and began her role as an administrator in Africa and in the California state educational system. In 1971, Love became director of the Right to Read Program in the United States Department of Education and focused on the eradication of illiteracy through collective mobilization strategies. As superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District, she was responsible for 97 schools and 59,000 students, of whom 66 percent were black. In March 1981, Love took over as superintendent of the Chicago school system and became the first black and the first woman general superintendent of that system. She was responsible for 550 schools; 450,000 students; a staff of 45,000, including 17,000 teachers; and an annual budget of $1.3 billion.

College Presidents

In 1955 Willa Beatrice Player became the first black woman to lead a black women's college. Since 1955, there were many black women presidents but few who broke the traditional mold leading elite or predominantly white institutions. Shirley A. Jackson became the first black woman to head a major university specializing in technology. Barbara Ross-Lee became the first black woman to head a medical school in the United States. Ruth Simmons was selected as the first black president of an Ivy League university.

Shirley A. Jackson was born in Washington, DC. She enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and was one of ten blacks and forty-three women in a student body of eight thousand. In 1973 Jackson was awarded a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her work in elementary particle theory. She was the first black woman to hold a doctorate in physics and the first woman to earn a doctorate of any kind at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995 Jackson made history for a third time when she accepted President Bill Clinton's appointment as the first woman to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversaw the nation's civilian nuclear industry. In 1998 Jackson became the first black woman to head a major university specializing in technology when she took over a position as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, which had 6,500 students and an operating budget of $205 million.

A product of the Detroit housing projects and a sister of Diana Ross, the singer, Barbara Ross-Lee became the first black woman to head a medical school in the United States when she became dean of Ohio State University's medical school. After graduating from medical school in 1973, Ross-Lee established a private practice in Detroit and began practicing academic medicine. In 1993 she accepted the deanship at Ohio University, but she resigned in 2001 to accept the deanship of Allied Health Sciences and become vice president for health sciences and medical affairs at the New York Institute of Technology.

Ruth J. Simmons, born in Grapeland, Texas, became a Fulbright fellow and received a PhD in Romance languages and literature from Harvard University. In 1995, she became the first black woman to head one of the Seven Sisters colleges when she was named president of Smith College. In that role, Simmons doubled the endowment and improved minority recruitment. In 2001 Simmons was appointed president of Brown University, becoming the first black president of an Ivy League university.

Johnetta Betsch Cole made history in 1987 when she became the first black woman president of Spelman College, the oldest institution of higher learning for black women in the United States. Cole was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and after graduation from Oberlin in 1957, she attended Northwestern University, receiving a master's degree in anthropology in 1959 and a PhD in anthropology in 1967 from the same institution. Cole served on the faculties of Washington State University; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and Hunter College in New York, where she remained until 1987, when she became president of Spelman.

In 1995, of the 453 female presidents at United States colleges and universities, only 16 percent were women of color, and only 5.5 percent of those were black women. Furthermore, nearly half the black female presidents presided over historically black colleges or over relatively small institutions with enrollments of fewer than three thousand students.

College Founders

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when white missionaries articulated the need for black teachers to “educate the masses of ignorant Negroes,” several black women, such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Lucy C. Laney, established schools to educate black students. Since 1960, only a handful of women, such as Septima Poinsette Clark, Marie Fielder, and Marva Nettles Collins, achieved such recognition.

Septima Poinsette Clark is remembered as one of the most effective though unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1898, Clark taught for many years in the South Carolina public school system, and later she went to work for the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Georgia. Clark established the Innovative Citizenship Schools throughout the South after she was fired in 1956 from the board of education for being a member of the NAACP. In this role, she was responsible for visiting and recruiting teachers with the purpose of teaching thousands to read, write, register to vote, and stand up for their rights. Clark died in 1987.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Marie Fielder helped civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Whitney Young plot strategy for their causes and advised numerous government and civil rights organizations, including the United States Department of Education, the Black Panther Party for Defense and Justice, and the National Organization for Women. Fielder was known as one of the most influential women in the history of California education, achieving several firsts over the course of her sixty-year career. She was the first black woman with a doctorate to teach in the Bay area and one of the first researchers to prove cultural bias in IQ tests. She was also instrumental in making Berkeley public schools the first in the nation to desegregate through two-way busing, and she earned a national reputation for her theories on how diverse cultures and groups relate to each other. In 1974, she helped found the Fielding Graduate Institute, in Santa Barbara, California, which specialized in long-distance learning through electronic communication.

Born in 1936 and the first person of her family to attend college, Marva Nettles Collins graduated from Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, with a bachelor's degree in secretarial science and began teaching almost immediately in the Chicago public school system. In 1975, she left to open her own school, the Daniel Hale Williams Westside Preparatory School, located in the basement of Daniel Hale Williams University, a community college in Chicago. By the fall of 1976, Collins had an enrollment of eighteen students. Collins gained a reputation for her ability to increase test scores by building students' confidence and self-esteem.

The Way Forward

After 1960, several black women also made significant contributions as leaders of national organizations that directly or indirectly affect the quality of life of black students. These trailblazers include Dorothy Height, longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women; Elizabeth Duncan Koontz and Mary Hatwood Futrell, who both served as president of the National Education Association; and Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund.

Black women continued to make significant contributions in education, both individually and collectively. Many were teachers, principals, superintendents, college presidents, college founders, and national leaders in the field of education.

processed xml | source xml