Famous African American Teachers

Introduction: Dr. Charles K. Ross, Director, African-American Studies
The University of Mississippi

Africans, delivered to America during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, brought with them a commitment to education. This desire for learning caused them to be placed in the difficult position of forcibly learning English but not legally being taught how to read and write. Although caught in this paradox, African Americans such as Jupiter Hammon, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Mary Jane Patterson, and Booker T. Washington all had significant educational accomplishments.

Several African Americans received degrees from white institutions of higher learning during the 19th century and historically black colleges were formed beginning in 1837 with the establishment of Cheyney State Training School in Pennsylvania.

With the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction, African Americans in the South found themselves retrenched to land as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, legally stripped of the right to vote, and socially segregated. Against this backdrop, education became the leading tool in the fight for equal rights politically, economically and socially. The individuals featured during Black History Month by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning represent and epitomize some of the many accomplishments, contributions, and achievements by African American teachers.

Father Patrick Francis Healy (February 2, 1834 - January 10, 1910) Georgia born son of Irish-American plantation owner Michael Healy and mulatto slave Mary Eliza, was sent by his family to school in New York. Patrick then attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. After graduation in 1850, he started on the road to become a Jesuit priest and continued his study at the University of Leuven in Belgium where he became the first American who acknowledged his part-African background to receive a doctorate. While there he also became the first black man to become ordained into the priesthood in 1864.

In 1866 Father Healy returned to the United States to teach philosophy at Georgetown University. Eight years later, in 1874, he became its twenty-ninth president. As its first black president and the first of any major university, Dr. Healy helped the school develop by updating the science curriculum, expanding the law and medicine programs, and adding buildings, including Healy Hall in 1881.

Healy retired from Georgetown in 1881 and traveled extensively before his death. He was truly a man of firsts for the African-American community in the world at large.

References:

O'Toole, J. (2002). Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820-1920. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.

“Patrick Francis Healy Inaugurated,” American Memory Project, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jul31.html

Archives: Teachers featured earlier this month
John Robert Edward Lee
Sarah Mapps Douglass
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson
Mary Smith Peake
Peter Humphries Clark
Mary McLeod Bethune
William Leo Hansberry
Inez Beverly Prosser
W.E.B. DuBois
Hallie Quinn Brown