Tag Archives: African American Teachers

Roberta Flack: Public School Teacher and Grammy Award Winning Music icon

Posted on by

imagesMany people have heard of the Grammy Award-winning songwriter and singer Roberta Flack, whose best-known songs are “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and “Where Is the Love?” But did you know that this famous jazz, folk, and R&B icon was once a public school teacher?

Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born February 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, although she was raised in Arlington, Virginia. Her mother was a church organist, so Roberta grew up in a musical household. At the age of nine, Roberta began to study classical piano, and by the time she was fifteen, she had won a music scholarship to Howard University. She completed her undergraduate work and her student teaching as the first African American student teacher at an all-white school near Chevy Chase, Maryland. Then Roberta accepted a position teaching music and English in Farmville, North Carolina, a gig which paid her only $2,800 per year. She also taught junior high school in Washington, DC, and at the same time she took side jobs as a night club singer. It was there that she was discovered and signed to a contract for Atlanta Records. The rest, as they say, is music business history.

In recent years, Roberta’s contribution to education came when she founded an after-school music program entitled “The Roberta Flack School of Music” to provide free music education to underprivileged students in the Bronx, New York City. 

Roberta Flack: Truly a Chalkboard Champion.

Hail to Carter Godwin Woodson: The Founder of Black History Month

Posted on by

dr-carter-g-woodsonCarter Godwin Woodson is often credited with originating annual Black History Month celebrations. He is also recognized as the first African American of slave parents to earn a Ph.D. in History. To be sure, these are noteworthy accomplishments. But there is so much more to this brilliant man’s life story than is usually publicized. Did you know that Carter was required much of his childhood to work on the family farm rather than attend school? As a child he taught himself to read using the Bible and local newspapers. He didn’t finish high school until he was 20 years old. Were you aware that he once worked as a coal miner in Fayette County, West Virginia, and then later went back there to teach school to black coal miner’s children, offering them a model for using education to get out of the mines? Did you know that Carter taught school in the Philippines, and then became the supervisor of schools, which included duties as a trainer of teachers, there? All these biographical details and more about this fascinating historical figure can be found in my book Chalkboard Champions.

Chalkboard Champion Fannie Richards: She Fought For Desegregated Schools in Detroit

Posted on by

imgresTo me, one of the most remarkable aspects about teachers is their willingness, ability, and dedication to bringing about positive social change. A wonderful example of this is Fannie Richards, a Michigan schoolteacher who worked to desegregate Detroit public schools.

Fannie Richards was born on October 1, 1840, in Fredericksberg, Virginia. Her parents were free African Americans. As a young child, Fannie’s family moved to Toronto, Canada, where Fannie was enrolled in school. When she grew up, Fannie traveled to Germany, where she worked with innovative educator Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel to develop the first kindergartens. When she completed this work, Fannie returned to the United States and settled in Detroit, Michigan.

Always eager to learn new skills, Fannie enrolled at the Teachers Training School in Detroit, and after her graduation, she became passionate about educating the African-American community of Detroit. Even decades before the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education decision was handed down in 1954, Fannie was advocating desegregation in Detroit schools. In 1863, while the Civil War was still raging, she opened a private school for African-American children in Detroit. A few years later, the Detroit Public School system opened a school for black children, and when Fannie learned the school board planned to open a second school, she applied for a teaching position. In 1869, she was hired to be a teacher in Colored School #2, the first African American teacher to work in Detroit Public Schools.

To Fannie’s delight, in 1871, the Michigan State Supreme Court ordered the integration of Michigan schools. That same year, the school board transferred Fannie to the newly desegregated Everett Elementary school, where she taught for 44 years. As a teacher, Fannie was known for her devotion to the children, using modern pedagogic methods, and maintaining a high standard of scholarship. 

Fannie Richards retired in 1922 after more than fifty years as an educator. This chalkboard champion passed away on February 13, 1922, at the age of 81. She is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.

Chalkboard Champion Maritcha Remond Lyons: Educator, Abolitionist, and Humanitarian

Posted on by

Maritcha2American history abounds with stories about teachers who have accomplished heroic achievements. One such teacher is Maritcha Remond Lyons, an African American woman who served the New York City public school system for forty-eight years. She was also an accomplished musician, an avid writer, and a published author.

Maritcha was born on May 23, 1848, in New York City, the third of five children born to parents Albro and Mary (Marshall) Lyons. She was raised in New York’s free black community, where her father operated a boarding house and outfitting store for black sailors on the docks of New York’s Lower East Side. Her parents emphasized the importance of making the best of oneself, and they also modeled the significance of helping others.

A sickly child, Maritcha was nevertheless dedicated to gaining an education. Maritcha once said she harbored a “love of study for study’s sake.” She was enrolled in Colored School Number 3 in Manhattan, which was governed by Charles Reason, a former teacher at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia.

Maritcha’s parents were abolitionists, and were both active in the Underground Railroad. Obviously, these activities were not without dangers. The family home came under attack several times during the New York City Draft Riots of July, 1863, when Maritcha was just a teenager. The family escaped to safety in Salem, Massachusetts, but after the danger passed, her parents insisted on sending their children to lie in Providence, Rhode Island. In Providence, Maritcha was refused enrollment in the local high school because she was African American. Because there was no school for black students, her parents sued the state of Rhode Island and won their case, helping to end segregation in that state. When she graduated, Maritcha was the first black student to graduate from Providence High School.

After her high school graduation, Maritcha returned to New York, where she enrolled in Brooklyn Institute to study music and languages, When she graduated in 1869, she accepted a teaching position at one of Brooklyn’s first schools for African American students, Colored School Number 1.

Maritcha’s worked first as an elementary school teacher, then as an assistant principal, and finally as a principal. During her nearly fifty-year career, she co-founded the White Rose Mission in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill District, which provided resources to migrants from the South and immigrants from the West Indies.

This remarkable chalkboard hero passed away at the age of eighty on January 28, 1929.

 

Robert Parris Moses: Civil rights activist, algebra teacher, and Chalkboard Hero

Posted on by

New York City math teacher Robert Parris Moses was a legendary figure during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. He was the courageous teacher who orchestrated the black voter-registration efforts and the Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. This heroic educator’s revolutionary work, which was not without risk to life and limb, transformed the political power structure of entire communities.

Now, nearly forty years later, Moses is advocating yet another transformational change: the Algebra Project. Moses asserts that a deficiency in math literacy in poor neighborhoods puts impoverished children at an economic disadvantage when it comes to being able to compete successfully for jobs in the 21st century, and that this disenfranchisement is as debilitating as lack of personal liberties was prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

His solution is to organize people, community by community, school by school, to overcome the achievement gap and give impoverished children 3127[1]the tools they need to claim their share of economic enfranchisement. Moses’s book, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project written with fellow Civil Rights worker Charles E. Cobb, Jr., can be found easily and reasonably-priced on amazon. A fascinating read for anyone who is interested in Moses’s story, either past or present. A chapter about this remarkable teacher will also be included in my second book, entitled Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and Their Deeds of Valor.  This book is also available on amazon; click on this link to view: Chalkboard Heroes.