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.

John Hope (June 2, 1868-February 19, 1936) was born in Augusta, Georgia, the son of a Scotsman, James Hope and Mary Frances Butts. Because Hope was shortly after the Civil War in a time when interracial marriage was still prohibited by Georgia law, his parents simply lived together as husband and wife until 1876 when his father died. James was a wealthy businessman whose plans were not carried out when he died. As a result, John had to help support the family of five children and his mother. He went to work for a lawyer for $4.00 per month at age 10 and was able to continue schooling through the eighth grade at age 13. Then he quit school and went to work for a restaurant in Augusta.

It was only in 1886 when John was returned to school at the urging of a local minister. Hope enrolled in Worcester Academy, a preparatory school in Massachusetts. From there he went Brown University in Rhode Island where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1894.

Hope’s first teaching position was at Roger Williams University in Nashville where he taught natural sciences, Greek and Latin. In 1898, Hope moved to Atlanta with his wife, the former Lugenia Burns, to accept a position at Atlanta Baptist College. In 1906 he became the acting President of the College and in 1907 was named the first black President of a Baptist school. He was still president when the college was renamed Morehouse College in 1913. When Atlanta’s black institutions united to form Atlanta University, Hope was its first president.

Hope was continually torn between education and being an activist to promote black causes along with other prominent African Americans of the time. He did serve as President of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, was on the Advisory Board of NAACP and the Executive Committee of the National Urban League, and was founder and President of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. It has been written that Hope was comparable to Booker T. Washington because of his efforts in moving higher education for blacks ever forward.

References:

Davis, L. (1998). A Clashing of the Soul: John Hope and the Dilemma of African American Leadership and Black Higher Education in the Early Twentieth Century. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-855 (Accessed February 14, 2008).

http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/biographies/Hope_John.htm

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
Father Patrick Francis Healy
Charlotte Forten Grimke
Harper Councill Trenholm
Mary Church Terrell
Alexander Twilight