Tag Archives: Civil Rights Activists

Kansas teacher Mamie Dillard was a suffragist and civil rights activist

Posted on by

Kansas teacher Mamie Dillard was a suffragist and civil rights activist. Photo credit: Public Domain

Many excellent classroom teachers also work tirelessly to improve society as a whole. One of these is Mamie J. Dillard, an African American teacher and suffragist from Kansas.

Mamie was born Mary Jane Dillard in Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, on September 10, 1874. Although her name was Mary Jane, she always preferred to be called Mamie. Her parents, Jesse and Fannie Dillard, were both born in Virginia. Neither of them could read or write. The family moved to Kansas in 1870.  As a young girl, Mamie was an excellent student. She graduated from Lawrence High School with top grades. In fact, she was the only African American in her graduating class.

The future educator earned her Bachelor’s degree from Kansas University in 1896. Once she earned her degree, she launched her career as an educator at the Pinckney Elementary School in Lawrence. One of her most famous students there was famous Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. In 1909, Mamie attended graduate school at the University of Kansas, where she studied English and special education. Once she completed her courses there, she accepted a position as the principal of the Lincoln School, a local segregated elementary school. In addition to her responsibilities at the school, Mamie was appointed delegate to the Negro National Educational Congress in 1916.

All her life, Mamie devoted herself to improving her community. She was an ardent activist for women’s suffrage. She promoted rights and votes for women and civil rights and leadership for the African Americans in her area. She was active in the African American Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She was also a member of the Double Six Club, the Home and Garden Club, and the Sierra Leone Club. In addition, she was a patron of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.  in 1933, of the Self Culture Club, a local organization for African American women. In 1933, Mamie became a member of the Self Culture Club, an organization that promoted education and community building among working mothers.

This Chalkboard Champion passed away in her home town of Lawrence on November 24, 1954. She was 80 years old. She was interred at Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence.

To read more about Mamie Dillard, see this article printed online in the Kansaspedia.

Sandra Adickes: Legacy of a Freedom School teacher

Posted on by

New York City English teacher Sandra Adickes with a group of her Freedom School students in 1964. Photo credit: Sandra Adickes

Thirty-year-old Sandra Adickes was an energetic and idealistic high school English teacher from New York City the year she ventured south into Mississippi to teach in a Freedom School. The goal of the summer program was to empower the black community to register to vote and to help bridge some of the gap of educational neglect that had long been a tradition in that Jim Crow state. Both blacks and whites realized that only through education and participation in the democratic process could African Americans ever hope to improve their lot.

The enterprise was not without danger. On the first day of Freedom Summer, three workers involved in the program disappeared while investigating the firebombing of the church facility designated for their voter recruitment activities. Six weeks later, as Sandra Adickes conducted her classes in Hattiesburg, the badly beaten and bullet-ridden bodies of the three missing men were discovered buried in an earthen dam in nearby Neshoba County.
At summer’s end, Sandra accompanied her fearless students when they decided to integrate the Hattiesburg Public Library. Sandra was arrested in the effort. Read her riveting story, and what became of her courageous students, in her book Legacy of a Freedom School. You can also find a chapter about this remarkable teacher in my book, Chalkboard Champions., available from amazon.

 

Remembering educator and Civil Rights leader Bob Moses

Posted on by

Math educator and legendary Civil Rights Movement leader Bob Moses organized Black voter registration efforts and the Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. Photo credit: The Pine Belt News

During Black History Month, we’d like to recognize Bob Moses. He was a legendary Civil Rights Movement leader who organized black voter registration efforts and Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. He was also an innovative math educator.

Bob Moses was born in New York City on Jan. 23, 1935, to a family of modest means. He was raised in the Projects in Harlem. Despite his family’s limited financial resources, Bob earned a scholarship to attend Stuyvesant High School, an elite public high school for gifted boys. Before his graduation in 1952, Bob was elected senior class president and served as the captain of the school’s baseball team.

Upon graduation, Bob earned another scholarship, this time to attend Hamilton College, a prestigious private liberal arts college in Clinton, New York. There he majored in philosophy and participated in both the basketball and baseball programs. After completing the requirements for his Bachelor’s degree in 1956, Bob traveled abroad extensively, working in a series of Quaker summer camps in Europe and Japan building housing for the poor, harvesting crops for a missionary hospital, and improving facilities for mentally disturbed children. The following year he earned his Master’s degree in Analytic Philosophy from Harvard University.

Bob was teaching at the prestigious Horace Mann High School in the Bronx when he became aware of the student sit-ins that were taking place in Greensboro, North Carolina. He decided to join them, and that decision launched the math educator’s path towards becoming a legendary figure during the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. Bob is best known for organizing the Black voter registration efforts and the Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. This heroic teacher’s revolutionary work, which was not without risk to life and limb, transformed the political power structure of entire communities.

Forty years later, Bob advocated for yet another transformational change: the Algebra Project. When he created this program, Bob asserted that a deficiency in math literacy in poor neighborhoods puts impoverished children at an economic disadvantage. The deficiency makes students unable to compete successfully for jobs in the 21st century. This disenfranchisement, he declared, is as debilitating as lack of personal liberties was prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Bob’s solution was to organize people, community by community, school by school, to overcome the achievement gap. He believed this would give impoverished children the tools they need to claim their share of economic enfranchisement. Bob described his work in this area in his  book, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project written with fellow Civil Rights worker Charles E. Cobb, Jr.

Sadly, Bob Moses passed away in Florida on Sun., July 25, 2021, at the age of 86.

A chapter about this remarkable teacher is also 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.

Pauline Young: Educator, librarian, and Civil Rights activist

Posted on by

Educator, librarian, lecturer, and Civil Rights activist, Pauline Young. Photo Credit: University of Delaware

Often have I marveled at how much America’s teachers contribute to the social betterment of society as a whole. One teacher who made such contributions was Pauline Young, an African American educator, librarian, lecturer, and Civil Rights activist from Massachusetts.

Pauline was born on August 17, 1900, in West Medford, Massachusetts. Her father was a caterer and her mother was an English teacher. After her father’s death, Pauline’s mother moved with her children to Wilmington, Delaware. Pauline often said that her Delaware childhood home was a “wayside inn and an underground railroad for visiting Negroes and white literary friends, who wouldn’t go to the hotel, you know, since the hotel wouldn’t admit Negroes.” WEB DuBois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and James Weldon Johnson were among the guests who visited her home.

As an adolescent, Pauline attended Howard High School, the only school in Delaware that admitted Black students. Both her mother and her aunt, who was married to poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, were teachers at the school. After her graduation from high school, Pauline enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the only African American student in her class. At this school Pauline earned a Bachelor’s degree in History and English in 1921.

Once she earned her degree, Pauline accepted a position to teach Social Studies and Latin at Huntington High School, a school for Black students in Newport News, Virginia. Later she was hired to be the librarian at her alma mater, Howard High School. During her tenure there, Pauline also taught course in History and Latin. Her career spanned 36 years.

During her years as a teacher at Howard, the indefatigable educator accomplished a myriad of other achievements. In 1935, Pauline completed the requirements for a graduate degree from the Columbia University School of Library Service. She also traveled to the Southwest, where she taught at the University of Southern California. This amazing educator next went to Alabama, where she completed courses in pilot training at the Coffey School of Aeronautics in Chicago, Illinois, and flight instruction at Temple University. Pauline then instructed courses in pre-flight at Howard High School. In addition to these pursuits, the intrepid educator also worked actively for the NAACP and the United Service Organizations (USO), and collaborated on writing projects with WEB DuBois.

Pauline’s career at Howard spanned 36 years, from 1919 to 1955. After her retirement from Howard High School, Pauline helped to found the American Federation of Teachers. She also traveled to Jamaica, where she served as a teacher for the Peace Corps from 1962 to 1964. While there, she helped train librarians and library staff members. She also served as a librarian of the Jamaican Scientific Research Council. She worked on the Jamaican library’s first indexing system, where over 80,000 books were cataloged.

Once Pauline returned to the United States, she accepted speaking engagements and substitute teaching assignments. In 1968, she instructed a course in Afro-American history at the Central YMCA in Wilmington, Delaware. She also became active in the Civil Rights Movement. She even met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and participated in his 1963 March on Washington. She also took part in King’s March for Equality from Selma to Montgomery, as well as other peaceful protests.

This remarkable educator passed away on June 26, 1991, in Wilmington. She was 91 years old. For her lifetime achievements, Pauline was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Delaware Women in 1982. She also garnered recognition from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Association of University Women.

To read more about Pauline A. Young, see this link by historian Judith Y. Gibson at the University of Delaware.

Chalkboard Champion and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune

Posted on by

Mary McLeod Bethune was a teacher, women’s rights activist, and civil rights leader. Photo Credit: NMAH, Smithsonian Institution

Many fine educators have also made significant contributions to their communities and to society as a whole. One of these is Mary McLeod Bethune, an African American teacher who was was also a women’s rights activist and civil rights leader.

Mary McLeod Bethune was born on July 10, 1875, to former slaves in a log cabin on a plantation in Maysville, South Carolina. Her parents were Samuel and Patsy McLeod. Mary was the last of the couple’s 17 children, and the only one of the McLeod children to be born into freedom.

When the Civil War was won, Mary’s mother worked for her former owner until she could buy the land on which the McLeod family grew cotton. By nine years of age, young Mary could pick 250 pounds of cotton a day.

Even as a young child, Mary showed an unusual interest in books and reading. However, in those days it was rare for African Americans to receive an education. Nevertheless, a charitable organization interested in providing educational opportunities for Black children established a school near Mary’s home. Her parents could scrape together only enough money to pay the tuition for one of their children, and Mary was chosen. The future educator earned a scholarship to attend the Scotia Seminary, a boarding school in North Carolina. She graduated from there in 1894. She also attended Dwight Moody’s Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, Illinois. Her studies there spanned two years.

When she grew up, Mary retained her strong desire to extend educational opportunities to other African Americans. She established her career as a teacher. While teaching in South Carolina, she married fellow teacher Albertus Bethune. The union produced one son in 1899.

In 1904 Mary founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. Starting out with only five students, she helped expand the school to more than 250 students over the next few years. Today, this school is known Bethune-Cookman University.

In her later years, Mary became a close friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and also a trusted adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt. In recognition of her outstanding abilities, the President made her a member of his unofficial “Black Cabinet.” He also appointed her the head of the National Youth Administration in 1936. In 1937 the indefatigable educator organized a conference on the Problems of the Negro and Negro Youth, and she fought tirelessly to end discrimination and lynching. In 1940, Mary became the Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP), a position she held for the rest of her life. In 1945, she was appointed by President Harry Truman to be the only woman of color present at the founding meeting of the United Nations.

This celebrated educator passed away peacefully on May 18, 1955. For all her accomplishments, Mary McLeod Bethune is truly a Chalkboard Champion. To read more about her, see this link at the website for the National Women’s History Museum.