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Education & Educators

Amy Littlejohn Roberts

Amy Littlejohn Roberts (1878-1935)-was able to attend, complete her course of study and graduate from Elizabeth City Colored Normal School in 1895.

Saint Augustine’s School

1919 High School Graduating Class at Saint Augustine’s School.

Albemarle Regional Library Bookmobile

Photo Black Mobile Library
Albemarle Regional Library Bookmobile, North Carolina. [North Carolina Digital Collections]

Albion Academy

Albion Academy (1878-1933), a school for black elementary and high school students, founded by the Presbyterian Board o'f Missions for Freedmen, and State Colored Normal School at Franklinton, Franklin County, N.C. was once known to be one of the best black high schools.

Allegra Westbrooks

Allegra Westbrooks, North Carolina's first Black library supervisor

Allen Home School

Photograph: Allen Home School students,1921 courtesy UNC-A Special Collections & The Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection from N.C. Digital Heritage Center.

Alma Boykin

Meet 94-year-old Alma Boykin, a beloved volunteer at Hunter Elementary for 13 years

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858-1964)
was an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Black Liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African American scholars in United States history.

Annie Mae Tucker

Annie Mae Tucker, circulation librarian at the Stanford L. Warren Library in Durham, NC, is captured in this mid-1940s photograph with a group of patrons choosing books from the Bookmobile on a stop in the Rougemont area.

Black Issues Forum

Photo:A discussion on 'HBCU Legacy and Leadership' on UNC-TV's 'Black Issues Forum.'
UNC-TV

For more than 150 years, historically black colleges and universities have fostered African-American leaders and fueled social movements.

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington North Carolina Education Tour At The Home of Samuel H. Vick, November 1, 1910.”

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington North Carolina Education Tour At The Home of Samuel H. Vick, November 1, 1910.”

Brown v Board of Education

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled to abolish school segregation as it violated the 14th Amendment.

This decision in Brown v. Board of Education legally initiated integration, but enforcement at the state level was slow to manifest, particularly in the racially tense southern states.

Charles Waddell Chesnutt

Chesnutt, Charles W. 1858-1932, Writer. Charles Waddell Chesnutt, an Afro-American man of letters, was born in Cleveland, Ohio

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown, educator and founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, was born in Henderson, NC.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown: Palmer Memorial Institute students studying. The Palmer Institute was named after Alice Freeman Palmer, former president of Wellesley College and benefector of Dr. Brown.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown: Sedalia Quartet traveled throughout the East Coast region, singing to raise funds for the Palmer Memorial Institute.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Dr Charlotte Hawkins Brown with student in her office at Palmer Memorial Institute.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown with Nat King Cole, Maria Cole, and Cookie Cole

Charlotte Hawkins Brown's Palmer Institute

Palmer Memorial Institute, Dr Charlotte Hawkins Brown school -The old campus from the 1910's and 1920's -The building with the green roof is Grinnell Hall, the domestic science cottage.

Charotte Hawkins Brown

Dr Charotte Hawkins Brown with three women.Photo is from the 1920's.

Currituck Union High School Class of 1958

Currituck Union School opened to serve all students, grades 1-12, in 1950. Opening enrollment was 460 students.
The Historic Jarvisburg Colored School, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is now open for tours. Admission is free.

Darius Swann

The Rev. Darius L. Swann, whose efforts to send his young son to a racially integrated school in Charlotte spurred a Supreme Court decision that unanimously endorsed busing, igniting a national debate over tactics to unravel segregation in public schools, died March 8 in Centreville, Va. He was 95.The cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Vera Swann.

Division of Cooperation in Education and Race Relations Conference

Photograph of doctors attending a conference held by the Division of Cooperation in Education and Race Relations

Dorothy Counts

Photo On Left: 1957 Dorothy Counts, 15, attempts to become the first black student to attend Harding high school in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr Edwin Tompkins, a family friend, escorts her. Photograph: Douglas Martin/AP

Photo On Right: 2018 Dorothy Counts-Scoggins poses for a portrait outside of the school she attempted to integrate on 4 September 1957. Photograph: Logan Cyrus for the Guardian

Durham Colored Library

Durham Colored Library, opened in 1916 at the Corner of Fayetteville and Pettigrew streets.

Elizabeth Johnson

Photograph:Elizabeth Johnson wears a Winston-Salem State University cap and stoll that she received as a gift to reveal that she will be walking with this year's graduating class during a surprise party for her 99th birthday Thursday, May 2, 2019, at Pinecrest Retirement Community in Hickory, N.C.--credit Allison Lee Isley/Journal

Ethel Mae Singleton Bennett

As a girl, Mrs. Ethel Mae Singleton Bennett (1914-2005) walked two miles to and from school—from her home in the Hickman Hill section near Havelock. The school is still standing and the Havelock Preservation Society has taken steps to preserve the structure.

G.C. Hawley High School Class of 1939

G.C. Hawley High School-Creedmoor, NC
This is the first graduating class- 1939
Principal G.C. Hawley, is on the left side of the graduates.

Gladys Knight and Nat King Cole

Photo: Gladys Knight, 7 years old, meets Nat King Cole in Atlanta in 1952. Maria Cole is standing behind Nat.

Hillside Park High School

The original Hillside Park High School was built in 1922 on the northern edge of land donated by John Sprunt Hill for Hillside Park.

Irwin Holmes

Photo: Durham native Irwin Holmes was NC State University's first Black graduate.

JoAnne Smart Drane

JoAnne Smart Drane Remembers The Integration of Woman's College UNCG
Monday, February 11, 2013

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.

Joe Holt, Jr.

Joe Holt, Jr.: The first student to challenge Raleigh's segregated schools
At 13 years old he became the first Black student in Raleigh to challenge segregated schools. For 3.5 years, his family endured lynching threats, bomb threats and abduction threats — all for the opportunity for equal education.

John Chavis

On June 15, 1838 John Chavis, died. He was a free Black man, a teacher, preacher and a Revolutionary War veteran.

Julius Rosenwald School

Long-Lost Piece of Black History: Early 19th Century Schoolhouse Found

By Monica Manney / Concord
Published 4:15 PM ET Jun. 07, 2021

CONCORD, N.C. — Following the abolition of slavery, a Jewish philanthropist learned African Americans had little access to education. So, he built more than 5,000 schools across the South.

Julius Rosenwald,

Photo Descriptions: Julius Rosenwald visits Hickstown School on a visit to Durham. Photo courtesy of Fisk University Franklin Library, Special Collections.

Lincoln Academy

Lincoln Academy, named after President Abraham Lincoln, was opened as a boarding school for African-American girls in the fall of 1888 by Emily Catherine Prudden. On the 23rd of January, 1888, Miss Prudden, an educator and missionary, obtained land for the academy when she paid 141 dollars for 14 and 1/10 acres near Crowder’s Mountain in Gaston County, North Carolina.

Lincoln Academy Students

Photograph of students outside Lincoln Academy in KingsMountain, North Carolina.

Lincoln Academy first grade class, 1945

Photograph of first graders at Lincoln Academy. Located infolder labeled: Series: A Subseries: Lincoln AcademPhotographs, Campus, Students, Staff 1945.

Marjorie Lee Browne

On September 9, 1914, Marjorie Lee Browne was born. She was an African American mathematician and professor. She was one of the first African-American women to receive a Ph.D in mathematics.

She was born in Memphis, TN., her father was a railway postal clerk and her mother died before she was two years old. Because her father had taken two years of college, excelling in arithmetic, he passed on his love for math to mathematical concepts to her.

Merrick Washington Magazine

Image description: Left image is a photograph of Mr. John Carter Washington- 1921-2017 sitting left of Mrs. Lyda Moore Merrick
1890-1987
Right side of image is the cover of an edition of the Merrick Washington Magazine.

Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved
By: Clarence Lusane- February 12, 2014

“Why We Shouldn’t Forget That U.S. Presidents Owned Slaves”

Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved
By:By Clarence Lusane- February 12, 2014

Image: In this drawing from about 1815, enslaved people pass the Capitol wearing shackles and chains. (Library of Congress)

Mollie Huston Lee

Mollie Huston Lee was born on January 18, 1907 in Columbus, Ohio.

"After graduating from Columbia in 1930, she moved to North Carolina to begin working as a librarian at Shaw University. She was instrumental in organizing the North Carolina Negro Library Association in 1934. It became the first association controlled by blacks to be admitted as a chapter of the American Library Association.

Monroe Nathan Work

Monroe Nathan Work, a leading early 20th Century sociologist, was born on August 15, 1866 to his ex-slave parents in Iredell County, North Carolina. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Cairo, Illinois where Monroe’s father worked as a tenant farmer.

Nettie McGimpsey McIntosh

Photo of Nettie McGimpsey McIntosh (1927-2014),.pictured here in 2004 donating to the History Museum of Burke Co., a wash pot that was on her grandparents' farm.

Nettie McGimpsey McIntosh

Photo of Nettie McGimpsey McIntosh (1927-2014),.grandfather, Riley Rufus McGimpsey, his wife and their children taken in 1903 in Burke Co.
This photo hangs in The History Museum of Burke Co

North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Inc.

This is a copy of the "BYLAWS North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teahers, Inc."
(As amended at the Annual Convention, November 1953, in Kinston, N.C.)

*This belonged to the grandfather (Rev. G.C. Hawley) of the Creator and Admin of North Carolina Museum of African Americans' History & Culture*

North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teahers, Inc.

This is a copy of the "BYLAWS North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teahers, Inc."
(As amended at the Annual Convention, November 1953, in Kinston, N.C.)

*This belonged to the grandfather (Rev. G.C. Hawley Principal of G.C. Hawley HS-Creedmnoor, NC), of the Creator and Admin of North Carolina Museum of African Americans' History & Culture*

North Carolina Museum of History

Oberlin School Students--Oberlin Villiage Raleigh, NC

Photograph: Students of Oberlin School Before Brown vs. Board of Education--Oberlin Villiage Raleigh, NC--Credit-Shared From FB page Friends Of Oberlin Village-

Friends Of Oberlin Retrospective
March 28, 2016By EmergeNC Magazine

P. S. Jones Marching Band

The P. S. Jones Marching Band in the early 1950's.
This photo was taken in front of the Main entrance of what then Washington Elementary School on Bridge near and Seventh Streets.

The newly built P. S. Jones High School was located at Bridge and Ninth Street.

Palmer Institute

"On February 14, 1971, the Alice Freeman Palmer building burned down in the early morning hours.

Designed by Winston-Salem architect C. Gilbert Humphries, the AFP building was completed in 1921. It was supposedly the first fireproof building on campus. It was the first building in Sedalia to have electricity and indoor plumbing.

Patti Zarling

How to improve transfer outcomes for community college students

A new guide advises two- and four-year institutions to coordinate programs, offer tailored advising and make transferring a priority.
by Patti Zarling -Published March 5, 2018

Peter Weddick Moore

Mr. Moore was the first president of what is now Elizabeth City State University. He is also recognized for his contribution to the public school system in the area that had a major impact on the life of many African-Americans in Pasquotank County.

Plymouth State Normal School

The Plymouth State Normal School operated from 1881-1903 to train African American teachers for work in public #education, which was legally segregated.

Reverend Grover Cleveland Hawley

Reverend Grover Cleveland Hawley 1907-1990
His loving and devoted wife of 55 years, Frances Johnson Hawley died in May 2005.

Rosenwald Schools

"Children Go Where I Send You": Rosenwald Schools In Hertford County, NC
A Film By Caroline Stephenson & Jochen Kunstier

Rosenwald Schools

In 1913 educator Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald devised a matching grant program to help build black schools in the South. If a rural black community raised a contribution and the white school board agreed to operate the facility, Rosenwald would contribute cash – usually about one fifth of the total project. Eighteen Rosenwald schools were built in Durham County, the first, Rougemont, completed in 1919. Only one stands today.

Rosenwald Schools

"Children Go Where I Send You": Rosenwald Schools In Hertford County, NC
A Film By Caroline Stephenson & Jochen Kunstier

The Colored Library, in Oxford, NC

The Colored Library, in Oxford, NC

The Hickstown School

Photo Description: A three teacher school for the African American children in Durham.
Photo courtesy of Fisk University Franklin Library, Special Collections

The North Carolina Historical Review

By 1910, North Carolina led the nation in the number of bachelor of arts degrees awarded to African American women. Of the 168 degrees awarded in the state by 1910, Bennett College had granted 71.

Three B's of Education

Photograph Description:
Left:Charlotte Hawkins Brown: "Education, religion, and deeds."
Top Right:Mary McLeod Bethune: "The head, the heart, and the hand."
Bottom Right:Nannie Helen Burroughs: "The book, the Bible, and the broom."

Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School students i

Photograph of students at the Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School in Wake Forest, NC, circa the 1920s-1930s. Photograph from the collections of the State Archives of North Carolina. Presented on the Wake Forest Historical Museum online.

West End School students and teachers

Students and teachers stand in front of Durham’s West End School, 1906.

Courtesy Durham Historic Photographic Archives, North Carolina Collection, Durham County Library

West Street Graded School Class of 1911

This photo shows the 1911 class of New Bern's @West Street Graded School.
It's taken from one of the oldest known North Carolina African American high school yearbooks, held by New Bern-Craven County Public Library.

Willa B. Player

Dr. Willa B. Player
(August 9, 1909-August 29, 2003)

In 1953, Dr. Player became the first female president of Bennett College for Women In Greensboro, NC and the first African American woman in the country to be named president of a four-year fully accredited liberal arts college.

William Claudius Chance, Sr.,

William Claudius Chance, Sr.,
(23 Nov. 1880–7 May 1970)
was an educator and humanitarian, was born in Parmele. His parents were W. V. and Alice Chance; his grandparents, who reared him, were Bryant and Penethia Chance; all were former slaves.

Zula Clapp

Zula Clapp (1882-1976) was 1 of 3 girls who made up the first graduating class of Palmer Memorial Institute, in 1905. She married Riley Totton in 1918. Together they reared 12 children and instilled in them the value of educational pursuit and moral character. Her high school years were spent at Palmer Memorial Institute. She taught school for several years, but after marriage, she devoted time solely to family and church activities.

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