Comfort Baker over came family tragedy and adversity to become an educator in Omaha, Nebraska and elsewhere. Photo Credit: North Omaha History
I always enjoy shining a spotlight on outstanding educators. Educators such as Comfort Baker, an African American orphan from North Carolina who became a teacher in Arkansas, Texas, and Arizona. Her story is one of commitment, resilience, and perseverance.
Comfort was born in New Bern, North Carolina, on Feb. 15, 1870. Sadly, she became an orphan at the age of 13, and so she was sent to Omaha, Nebraska, to live with an aunt and uncle. She did well in school there, even earning recognition for her outstanding attendance.
When she was 15, Comfort enrolled at Omaha High School. Unfortunately, that same year her uncle also passed away, and her aunt became confined to a mental hospital.
Faced with the necessity of supporting herself, Comfort secured a job as a domestic in the household of Colonel Watson B. Smith and his wife, Fanny. In 1889, after three years of hard work, Comfort finally graduated from high school. She was the first female African American student to graduate from high school in Omaha, Nebraska. In a graduating class of 50 students, Comfort earned her diploma with honors.
Following her high school graduation, Comfort determined to enter the profession of teaching. She enrolled in Fisk University, a historically Black university located in Nashville, Tennessee. She was able to attend college with the financial assistance of Belle H. Lewis, a high school mathematics teacher in Omaha. Comfort earned her diploma, with honors, from Fisk in 1893. During her years in Omaha, Comfort also became a published author. She wrote numerous articles that were published by the Omaha newspaper, The Enterprise.
Comfort accepted her first teaching position when she became a summer school teacher for African American students in Newport, Jackson County, Arkansas, but by 1896 she was teaching in the town of Corsicana in Texas, and by 1905, she was teaching in Gainesville, Texas. A decade later she was teaching seventh and eighth grade at Frederick Douglas Grammar and High School in El Paso, where she was employed from 1914 to 1917.
In 1917, Comfort married, and with her husband she relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. There she instructed courses in history, algebra, geometry, Latin, civics, and penmanship. She was the first African American teacher in the Phoenix Union High School District, where she taught for 21 years, serving several years as the principal of the school. During these years, Comfort continued to improve her professional techniques by completing courses at the University of Southern California and the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Comfort Blazer retired in 1940. In all, her career as an educator spanned 52 years. This highly-respected and distinguished trailblazer passed away on June 5, 1946, in Phoenix.
Today is a day we have set aside to honor our United States Veterans. But the call to service is something that many service members don’t lose once they are discharged. That’s one of the reasons that so many veterans gravitate towards the teaching professions once their military service is complete. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 2% of teachers in our nation’s classrooms are military veterans.
