Tag Archives: African American Teachers

Chalkboard Champion and Actress Myra Davis Hemmings

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Many chalkboard champions have enjoyed successes in fields other than education. One such individual is Myra Davis Hemmings, a teacher of English and drama at Phyllis Wheatley High School in San Antonio, Texas. Myra’s career as an educator spanned fifty-one years, but she can also boast about significant accomplishments in theater and film.

This gifted teacher and actress was born in Gonzales, Texas, in 1887, the daughter of Henry Davis and Susan (Dement) Davis. After graduating from Riverside High School in San Antonio, Texas, in 1909, Myra enrolled in Washington D.C.’s all-black Howard University. During her college years, Myra had the distinction of being president of both the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. She graduated from Howard in 1913 and immediately began her career in the classroom.  Later, Myra returned to the university to earn her master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Speech Department in 1947. In her later years, she was a national vice president, a former regional director, and an active member of the National Council of Negro Women. She was also a member of the NAACP.

In 1922, Myra married John W. Hemmings, a former Broadway actor. As a drama teacher, Myra directed plays from the 1920s to the 1950s at the Carver Community Cultural Center in San Antonio. She also became active as a director in the San Antonio Negro Little Theater.She and her husband helped to organize the Phyllis Wheatley Dramatic Guild Players. In addition to all this, the talented teacher appeared in three films.

Myra  Davis Hemmings passed away in San Antonio in 1968. She was 73 years old. Both the classroom and the theater miss this chalkboard champion greatly.

Charlotte Forten Grimke: The Chalkboard Champion of Emancipated Slaves

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Charlotte-Forten-11384-1-402[1][1]One of the most heroic teachers I have ever heard of is an African American woman named Charlotte Forten Grimke. This amazing woman, who was born a free black in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 17, 1837, became a teacher of newly emancipated slaves in Port Royal, South Carolina, during the Civil War. After the Union Army pushed through the area, freeing the slaves along the way, the government recognized that these newest citizens desperately needed assistance in basic literacy skills and some vocational training on how to take care of themselves. Charlotte agreed to travel to the South, despite the high risk to her own personal freedom and her rather delicate health. While the war raged on around them, she set up a school and diligently held classes for students who ranged in age from kinders to grandparents. When the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an all-black regiment, suffered high casualties at Fort Wagner on July18, 1863, Charlotte left her classroom with a substitute teacher and went to the soldiers’ aid as a nurse and letter writer at the nearby hospital where the injured had been taken.
You can read her fascinating story in her own words through her very copious journals, The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke, or you can read a shorter chapter about her life in my book, Chalkboard Champions. Either way, the story is a good read.

Lucia Darling: Montana’s Chalkboard Champion

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$RYF9QA5In October, 1863, twenty-seven-year-old Lucia Darling opened the first school in Montana on the banks of Grasshopper Creek in the frontier village of Bannack. Until a cabin could be built to serve as the schoolhouse, she used the sizable and comfortable home of her uncle, Chief Justice Sidney Edgerton, who had been appointed the governor of the territory. Makeshift desks and chairs, books, and other teaching materials were hastily acquired. Her students were the children of the three thousand or so homesteaders and gold miners who had established their claims in the wild and woolly Western town. “Bannack was tumultuous and rough,” the young school teacher wrote in her diary. “It was the headquarters of a band of highwaymen. Lawlessness and misrule seemed to be the prevailing spirit of the place.” Through her school, Lucia sought to inject some civilization into the place. Lucia was born in Tallmadge, Ohio, in 1839. Although raised on a farm, she spent her childhood in academic pursuits. When she was old enough, she became a qualified teacher and spent nine years teaching in an area of northeast Ohio. She also taught at Berea College, the first integrated college in Kentucky. She did this at a time when it was unusual for a woman to get a college education or go to work. In 1863, Lucia accompanied her uncle and his family as they relocated to the West, keeping a detailed diary of the route, the Indians they encountered, the historic landmarks they passed, the weather patterns, and the chores she completed each day along the journey. The group traveled by train from Tallmadge to Chicago, by river boat down the Missouri River to Omaha, and by covered wagon across the vast prairies of the West. After three months, the expedition finally landed in Oregon. From there Lucia made her way to Bannack, where she founded her school. After the Civil War, Lucia traveled to the Deep South where she taught for the Freedman’s Bureau, an organization founded by the US government in 1865 to provide educational opportunities for newly-freed African Americans. Lucia Darling: a true chalkboard champion.

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz: The Chalkboard Champion Who Served in President Nixon’s Administration

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eliz2[1]Many talented educators have also made important contributions to our country’s political arena. Such is the case with Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, a special education teacher from North Carolina.

Elizabeth Duncan was born June 3, 1919, Salisbury, North Carolina, the daughter of two educators. She was the youngest of their seven children. Elizabeth was only four years old when she was enrolled in elementary school, but she had already mastered the ability to read and write. The child excelled as an elementary school student, even helping her mother with the lessons of illiterate adult learners that her mother was tutoring in reading. ”I knew then that teaching was for me,” she related years later.

In 1935, Elizabeth graduated as the salutatorian from Salisbury’s segregated Price High School. Three years later, in 1938, she graduated from Livingstone College with a bachelor’s degree in English and elementary education. In 1941, she earned her master’s degree from Atlanta University. She also completed courses from Columbia University, North Carolina College, and the University of Indiana.

Elizabeth inaugurated her career as an educator when she accepted a position as a fourth grade teacher in North Carolina. Particularly interested in helping children with disabilities, she became a special education teacher at Price High School in Salisbury, North Carolina. She spent her entire career championing equal rights and better opportunities for African Americans, women, and the working poor. In 1968, this dedicated educator became the first African American president of the National Education Association.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed her to be an advisor to the US Secretary of Labor. She also served as the director of the Women’s Bureau. At the end of President Nixon’s first term Elizabeth returned to North Carolina to coordinate the nutrition programs for the Department of Human Resources. From 1975 until her retirement in 1982, she served as Assistant State Schools Superintendent.

Elizabeth’s many contributions did not go unnoticed. She was given the North Carolina Award for Public Service in 1977, and in 2006, Elizabeth Duncan Elementary School in Salisbury was named in her honor.

Talented Musician Conrad Johnson Chooses Career as a Music Educator Instead of Fame and Fortune

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94fd76bf924cd4922268ec9fd6206a54[1]Many music teachers and jazz aficionados have probably heard of Conrad Johnson, Sr., a music educator from Houston, Texas. In addition to his role as a remarkable educator, Conrad was a phenomenal musician.

Conrad once played with the legendary Count Basie, and Erskine Hawkins once tried to persuade him to join his orchestra. Conrad declined the fame and fortune because he didn’t want to leave his family or his give up teaching. “Conrad Johnson is one of Houston’s unsung cultural heroes,” says Rick Mitchell, former pop music critic for the Houston Chronicle. “He could have made a national name for himself with his two big bands. Instead he chose to devote his career to educating Houston’s future musicians. He is retired from the school system, but he’s still hard at work as an educator.”

Born in Victoria, Texas, the young Conrad was nine years old when his family moved to the port city of Houston. After graduating from Yates High School, Conrad attended Houston College for Negroes, and then Wiley College in Marshall in eastern Texas, where he graduated in 1941. He started his career as a music educator at Kashmere High School that same year.

Conrad made a lasting contribution to music when he formed the Kashmere Stage Band, an internationally-known school orchestra that won a number of awards during its decade-long existence. His kids always called him “Prof.” Under Prof’s tutelage, the student musicians in the Kashmere Band won forty-two out of the forty-six competitions they entered between 1969 and 1977. They recorded eight albums featuring more than twenty original compositions by Conrad, and they went on tour throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe.

In 1978, following a thirty-seven-year career, Conrad retired from his position at Kashmere High School. In his retirement, he continued to remain active in shaping music in Houston by conducting summer programs and in-home tutoring. In 2000, the talented educator was inducted into the Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame. The Conrad O. Johnson School of Fine Arts, a magnet school at Kashmere High School, is named after him. This wonderful teacher and musician passed away in 2008 at the age of 92.