Black History, Education
Prudence Crandall
(1803-1890) opened an academy on the Canterbury Green in 1831 to educate daughters of wealthy local families. The school was extremely successful until the following fall when she admitted Sarah Harris, a 20-year-old black woman. Sarah had hoped to become a teacher with the help of the education the academy could provide. Reflecting the attitudes of the times, Sarah’s admittance to the academy led parents to withdraw their daughters.
Miss Crandall made contacts throughout the northeast’s free black communities to attract young black women students. They came from as far away as Boston, New York City and Philadelphia. The state responded by passing the “Black Law” which made it illegal for Crandall to operate her school. (more…)
Black History, Education
Fannie M. Jackson Coppin
Fannie M. Jackson Coppin, was not only the first black woman to graduate from college in the United States, but she was also the first woman to head a coeducation institute of learning in the United States. She enjoyed a long administration in which she managed to make many positive changes for the students at the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth(ICY) later to be known as Cheyney University.
Fannie managed to do away with corporal punishment and she established a dialogue between the school and the parents making them more involved in the schooling of their children. She initiated monthly report cards that reported not only grade marks but conduct marks as well. (more…)
Black History, Education
- Nikki Giovanni
Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. A leading poet of the Black Arts Movement, Giovanni’s work reflects her radical politics. In 1967 she graduated from Fisk University and published her first poetry collection, Black Feeling. It was followed by the poetry collections Black Talk (1968) and Black Judgment (1970). Truth Is on Its Way, a recording of Giovanni reading poems set to gospel and other black music, was a bestseller in 1971.
After the birth of her son in 1969, Giovanni’s work became more personal and less political. In 1989 she began teaching English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni was published in 1996 and Blues for All the Changes: New Poems appeared in 1999.
Over the past thirty years, Nikki’s outspokenness, in her writing and in person, has brought the eyes of the world upon her. One of the most widely read American poets, she prides herself on being “a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English.” (more…)
Black History, Education, Literature
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Benjamin Brawley (1882-1939) was a prominent African American author and educator. He studied at Atlanta Baptist College, University of Chicago, and Harvard, and he taught at Atlanta Baptist College, Howard University, and Shaw University. Women of Achievement (c1919) is one of Brawley’s numerous books and articles on African American culture. Brawley also published widely in literary studies.
Several of his books were considered standard college texts, including The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States (1918) and New Survey of English Literature (1925).
Born in 1882 in Columbia, South Carolina, Brawley was the second son of Edward McKnight Brawley and Margaret Dickerson Brawley. He studied at Atlanta Baptist College (renamed Morehouse College), graduating in 1901, earned his second BA in 1906 from the University of Chicago, and received his Master’s degree from Harvard University in 1908. Brawley taught in the English departments at Atlanta Baptist College, Howard University, and Shaw University. (more…)
Black History, Education
The Dictionary Lady
In 1992, 
noticed that children on their way to school in her Savannah, Georgia, neighborhood were not carrying books. With $50, she bought thirty dictionaries and handed them out to children on the street corner. In each book, she wrote the motto of the United Negro College Fund, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
When others heard of her idea, they began sending her money so she could expand the project. She also sold t-shirts to raise more money. By 1996, she had given dictionaries to more than 17,000 children, by 1999, nearly 35,000. Annie Plummer was one of 12 children. She dropped out of school to have a baby and her first job was as a maid. She managed to find time to become involved in community affairs and is an example to us all of how anybody can have a good idea to help people.
Black History, Education
Established in 1944. the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) is an American philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for black students and general scholarship funds for 39 private historically black colleges and universities. The UNCF was incorporated on April 25, 1944 by Frederick D. Patterson (then president of what is now Tuskegee University), Mary McLeod Bethune, and others. The UNCF is headquartered at 8260 Willow Oaks Corporate Drive in an unincorporated area in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, east of the city of Fairfax.
In 2005, the UNCF supported approximately 65,000 students at over 900 colleges and universities with approximately $113 million in grants and scholarships. About 60% of these students are the first in their families to attend college, and 62% have annual family incomes of less than $25,000.
UNCF also administers over 450 named scholarships. This is in contrast with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund that raises money for the public historically black colleges and universities.
